Speech and Hearing Science Commons^™

Average Speech Directivity, Samuel D. Bellows, Claire M. Pincock, Jennifer K. Whiting, Timothy W. Leishman

Directivity

Speech directivity describes the angular dependence of acoustic radiation from a talker’s mouth and nostrils and diffraction about his or her body and chair (if seated). It is an essential physical aspect of communication affecting sounds and signals in acoustical environments, audio, and telecommunication systems. Because high-resolution, spherically comprehensive measurements of live, phonetically balanced speech have been unavailable in the past, the authors have undertaken research to produce and share such data for simulations of acoustical environments, optimizations of microphone placements, speech studies, and other applications. The measurements included three male and three female talkers who repeated phonetically balanced passages …

Autoscore: An Open-Source Automated Tool For Scoring Listener Perception Of Speech, Stephanie A. Borrie, Tyson S. Barrett, Sarah E. Yoho Leopold

Psychology Faculty Publications

Speech perception studies typically rely on trained research assistants to score orthographic listener transcripts for words correctly identified. While the accuracy of the human scoring protocol has been validated with strong intra- and inter-rater reliability, the process of hand-scoring the transcripts is time-consuming and resource intensive. Here, an open-source computer-based tool for automated scoring of listener transcripts is built (Autoscore) and validated on three different human-scored data sets. Results show that not only is Autoscore highly accurate, achieving approximately 99% accuracy, but extremely efficient. Thus, Autoscore affords a practical research tool, with clinical application, for scoring listener intelligibility of speech.

Contextual Interference In Speech Motor Learning Secondary To Similar Phonemes, Katelyn M. Bond

Capstones and Honors Theses

Purpose: The contextual interference (CI) effect is a motor learning phenomenon where learners experience difficulty during training resulting in poor performance; however, improved performance is observed in transfer conditions. Different variables elicit a CI effect, and the purpose of this study is to investigate whether phoneme (or sound) similarity may result in a CI effect during speech motor learning.

Method: The study included twenty-nine participants whose hearing and speech abilities were within the normal range. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two training sessions involving nonwords with either similar or dissimilar phonemes. Each training session included nonword repetition training …