Relations between speech intelligibility and psychoacoustical modulation transfer function (PMTF)

The modulation transfer function, MTF, has proved to be a powerful measure for predicting speech intelligibility in speech transmission channels. We extended it to include the ear, by measuring the psycho-acoustical MTF, i.e. the PMTF. Tone thresholds of 11 normal-hearing and 20 hearing-impaired subjects were measured in presence of unmodulated and intensity modulated noise. Octave frequencies from 500 to 4,000 Hz were used. The noise was octave filtered around the frequency of the probe tone. Six modulation frequencies from 1 to 50 Hz were used. From these results the PMTFs were calculated, as well as the corresponding psycho-acoustical speech transmission indices, i.e. the PSTIs. The subjects' speech discrimination scores in quiet and speech reception thresholds in noise were also measured. A correlation coefficient of 0.85 between the speech discrimination score in quiet and the PSTI was obtained. For the speech reception threshold in noise and the PSTI, the correlation was 0.71. The first of these two figures is promising, but our method needs some improvement, as it gave some problems due to fatigue effects.