Tjaden Kris, Sussman Joan
Department of Communicative Disorders and Sciences, University at Buffalo, 122 Cary Hall, 3435 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14214, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2006 Aug;49(4):888-902. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2006/064).
This study addressed three research questions: (a) Can listeners use anticipatory vowel information in prevocalic consonants produced by talkers with dysarthria to identify the upcoming vowel? (b) Are listeners sensitive to interspeaker variation in anticipatory coarticulation during prevocalic consonants produced by healthy talkers and/or talkers with dysarthria, as measured by vowel identification accuracy? (c) Is interspeaker variation in anticipatory coarticulation reflected in measures of intelligibility?
Stimuli included 106 CVC words produced by 20 speakers with either Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis or by 16 healthy controls characterized by an operationally defined normal, under, or over level of anticipatory vowel coarticulation. Ten listeners were presented with prevocalic consonants for identification of the vowel. Ten additional listeners judged single-word intelligibility. An analysis of variance was used to determine differences in vowel identification accuracy and intelligibility as a function of speaker group, coarticulation level, and vowel type.
Listeners accurately identified vowels produced by all speaker groups from the aperiodic portion of prevocalic consonants, but interspeaker variations in strength of coarticulation did not strongly affect vowel identification accuracy or intelligibility.
Listeners appear to be tuned to similar types of information in the acoustic speech stream irrespective of the source or speaker, and any perceptual effects of interspeaker variation in coarticulation are subtle.
本研究探讨了三个研究问题：（a）听众能否利用构音障碍者在元音前辅音中产生的预期元音信息来识别即将出现的元音？（b）根据元音识别准确率来衡量，听众对健康说话者和/或构音障碍者在元音前辅音产生过程中预期协同发音的说话者间差异是否敏感？（c）预期协同发音的说话者间差异是否反映在可懂度测量中？
刺激材料包括由20名患有帕金森病或多发性硬化症的说话者或16名健康对照者产生的106个CVC单词，这些健康对照者的预期元音协同发音水平在操作上被定义为正常、低于或高于正常水平。向10名听众呈现元音前的辅音以识别元音。另外10名听众判断单字的可懂度。使用方差分析来确定元音识别准确率和可懂度作为说话者组、协同发音水平和元音类型的函数的差异。
听众能够从元音前辅音的非周期性部分准确识别所有说话者组产生的元音，但协同发音强度的说话者间差异并未强烈影响元音识别准确率或可懂度。
无论来源或说话者如何，听众似乎都能在声学语音流中调整到类似类型的信息，并且协同发音的说话者间差异的任何感知效应都很微妙。
