Effects of listener sophistication on judgements of tracheoesophageal talker intelligibility

The purpose of this project was to provide preliminary data on comparative judgments of tracheoesophageal (TE) speech intelligibility by two groups of listeners who varied in their listening sophistication. Four highly proficient TE talkers produced the stimuli for the study. Stimuli represented all consonant manner classes in both pre- and postvocalic contexts. The two listener groups were composed of 10 naive listeners and 10 experienced speech pathologists. Data from each listener group was analyzed for overall intelligibility and intelligibility by pre- and postvocalic phonetic position. Scores were also quantified by phonetic manner class. Statistically significant differences were identified between judgments of the two listener groups for prevocalic stops and fricatives. Experienced listeners did, however, generally judge talkers to exhibit higher intelligibility compared to naive listeners. The potential clinical implications of these data are discussed.