Factors affecting the intelligibility of high-intensity-level-based speech

Area of Science:

• Acoustic Phonetics
• Auditory Perception
• Speech Processing

Background:

• Speech intelligibility is crucial for communication.
• Understanding how acoustic properties like intensity affect speech perception is important.
• Previous research has explored various factors influencing speech clarity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of selected intensity ranges (SIR) on the intelligibility of Mandarin speech.
• To determine optimal intensity parameters for enhanced speech recognition in different listening conditions.

Main Methods:

• Mandarin sentences were processed to isolate high-intensity segments within a 5-dB SIR.
• Noise was used to replace non-selected speech segments.
• Normal-hearing listeners performed speech recognition tasks with the processed stimuli.

Main Results:

• The SIR with the greatest intensity density (upper boundary 3 dB below peak) showed the highest intelligibility in quiet.
• An SIR with the upper boundary at the peak intensity level improved performance in noise.
• Higher effective signal-to-noise ratios contributed to better intelligibility in noisy environments.

Conclusions:

• The selection of intensity range significantly influences speech intelligibility.
• Optimizing SIR parameters can enhance speech recognition in both quiet and noisy settings.
• Findings have implications for speech processing technologies and hearing aid development.