Intelligibility of speech produced during simultaneous communication

Abstract

This study investigated the overall intelligibility of speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC). Four hearing, experienced sign language users were recorded under SC and speech alone (SA) conditions speaking Boothroyd's (1985) forced-choice phonetic contrast material designed for measurement of speech intelligibility. Twelve hearing-impaired listeners participated, with three of them randomly assigned to audit the speech sample provided by each one of the four speakers under the SC and SA conditions. Although results indicated longer sentence durations for SC than SA, results showed no difference in the overall intelligibility of speech produced during SC versus speech produced during SA, nor any difference in pattern of phonetic contrast recognition errors during SC. This conclusion is consistent with previous research indicating that temporal alterations produced by SC do not produce degradation of temporal or spectral cues in speech or disruption of the perception of specific English phoneme segments.

Learning outcomes: As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to (1) describe simultaneous communication; (2) explain the role of simultaneous communication in communication with children who are deaf; (3) discuss methods of measuring speech intelligibility; and (4) specify the ability of listeners to perceive speech produced during simultaneous communication.