Markham Duncan, Hazan Valerie
University College London, London, UK.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2004 Aug;47(4):725-37. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2004/055).
The aims of this study were to evaluate whether talker intelligibility is consistent across listeners differing in age and gender and to investigate the process of attunement to talker characteristics in children and adults. Word intelligibility rates were obtained from 135 listeners (adults, 11-12-year-olds, and 7-8-year-olds) for 45 talkers from a homogeneous accent group. There were 2 test conditions, each containing multiple talkers. Both test conditions contained multiple talkers. In the single-word condition, key words were presented in isolation, whereas in the triplet condition, triplets of key words were preceded by a precursor sentence by the same talker. For identical word materials, word intelligibility at a signal-to-noise ratio of +6 dB varied significantly across talkers from 81.2% to 96.4%. Overall, younger listeners made significantly more errors than older children or adults, and women talkers were more intelligible than other classes of talkers. The relative intelligibility of the 45 talkers was highly consistent across listener groups, suggesting that talker intelligibility is primarily determined by talker-related factors rather than by the interrelation of talker- and listener-related factors. The presence of a precursor sentence providing indexical information did improve word intelligibility for the bottom quartile of listeners in each of the listener groups.
本研究的目的是评估说话者的可懂度在不同年龄和性别的听众中是否一致，并调查儿童和成人对说话者特征的适应过程。从135名听众（成人、11 - 12岁儿童和7 - 8岁儿童）那里获取了来自同一口音组的45名说话者的单词可懂度率。有两种测试条件，每种条件都包含多名说话者。在单字条件下，关键词单独呈现，而在三联词条件下，关键词三联词之前有同一名说话者说出的一个前置句子。对于相同的单词材料，在信噪比为 +6 dB 时，不同说话者的单词可懂度从81.2%到96.4%有显著差异。总体而言，年轻听众比年长儿童或成人犯的错误明显更多，女性说话者比其他类别的说话者更易懂。45名说话者的相对可懂度在不同听众群体中高度一致，这表明说话者的可懂度主要由与说话者相关的因素决定，而非由说话者和听众相关因素的相互关系决定。提供索引信息的前置句子的存在确实提高了每个听众群体中最末四分位数听众的单词可懂度。
