Department of Linguistics, Australian Hearing Hub, Macquarie University, 16 University Avenue, New South Wales 2109, Australia.
Department of Psychology and Perception in Action Research Centre, Faculty of Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2021 Apr;149(4):2896. doi: 10.1121/10.0004774.
Everyday environments impose acoustical conditions on speech communication that require interlocutors to adapt their behavior to be able to hear and to be heard. Past research has focused mainly on the adaptation of speech level, while few studies investigated how interlocutors adapt their conversational distance as a function of noise level. Similarly, no study tested the interaction between distance and speech level adaptation in noise. In the present study, participant pairs held natural conversations while binaurally listening to identical noise recordings of different realistic environments (range of 53-92 dB sound pressure level), using acoustically transparent headphones. Conversations were in standing or sitting (at a table) conditions. Interlocutor distances were tracked using wireless motion-capture equipment, which allowed subjects to move closer or farther from each other. The results show that talkers adapt their voices mainly according to the noise conditions and much less according to distance. Distance adaptation was highest in the standing condition. Consequently, mainly in the loudest environments, listeners were able to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver location in the standing condition compared to the sitting condition, which became less negative. Analytical approximations are provided for the conversational distance as well as the receiver-related speech and SNR.
日常环境对言语交际施加了声学条件，要求说话者适应环境以便听见和被听见。过去的研究主要集中在言语水平的适应上，而很少有研究调查说话者如何根据噪声水平调整他们的会话距离。同样，也没有研究测试距离和噪声中的言语水平适应之间的相互作用。在本研究中，参与者对佩戴隔音耳机聆听不同现实环境（53-92dB 声压级）的相同噪声记录进行了自然对话，使用无线运动捕捉设备跟踪对话者的距离，这允许参与者彼此靠近或远离。结果表明，说话者主要根据噪声条件调整他们的声音，而根据距离调整的情况要少得多。站立时的距离适应度最高。因此，在最响亮的环境中，与坐着相比，站立时听者能够在接收者位置提高信噪比（SNR），这使得 SNR 变得不那么负。本文还提供了会话距离以及与接收者相关的语音和 SNR 的分析近似值。
