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Published on: July 6, 2011
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Written standard sentence materials convey social information
Alayo Tripp1, Benjamin Munson1
1Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA tripp158@umn.edu, munso005@umn.edu.
JASA Express Letters
|December 30, 2021
Summary
Written Harvard/IEEE sentences, commonly used for speech recognition tests, were found to convey perceived race and gender information. This social information may influence speech intelligibility measures.
Area of Science:
- Speech recognition technology
- Psycholinguistics
- Sociolinguistics
Background:
- Harvard/IEEE (H/I) sentences are standard for English speech recognition testing.
- The potential for written sentences to convey social information like race and gender is under-explored.
- Social information may bias objective speech intelligibility assessments.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if written Harvard/IEEE sentences convey perceived race and gender.
- To compare this with sentences from Reddit, expected to carry social information.
- To provide recommendations for managing social information in speech intelligibility testing.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of 80 Harvard/IEEE sentences for perceived social cues.
- Comparison with a set of sentences sourced from Reddit.
- Rater perception analysis to identify conveyed social information (race, gender).
Main Results:
- A significant number of raters perceived race and gender information in the written H/I sentences.
- Reddit sentences also conveyed social information as expected.
- The study confirmed the presence of unintended social cues in speech recognition test materials.
Conclusions:
- Written Harvard/IEEE sentences can unintentionally convey social characteristics like race and gender.
- This perception of social information may impact speech intelligibility test results.
- Strategies are needed to mitigate the influence of social cues in speech recognition evaluations.
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