A FURTHER INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN VOICE VARIABLES AND SPEECH INTELLIGIBILITY IN HIGH LEVEL NOISE

A study was undertaken to determine the relationships between talker intelligibility in noise and several voice variable measures derived from intensity, duration and pitch analyses of several speech samples. In addition, the best combination of the voice variables for predicting speech intelligibility in noise was determined. A talker intelligibility score as well as measures on 14 speech variables were determined from an analysis of speech samples obtained from 88 subjects. Product-moment intercorrelations among all the variables were computed. All the relationships between talker intelligibility in noise and the voice variables investigated were found to be linear. Mean syllable intensity and mean syllable duration were found to make the highest contribution to talker intelligibility scores. When combined with other speech variables, intensity and duration were most highly correlated with pitch variability. A multiple correlation coefficient of 0.88 was found for the relationship between talker intelligibility in noise and mean syllable intensity, mean syllable duration and pitch variability. (Author)