The effect of listeners' experience on the evaluation of intonation contours produced by hearing-impaired children.

This study investigated the effect of the listener's experience on the evaluation of intonation contours produced by hearing-impaired children. Stimuli included imitations of intonation (based on synthetic speech stimuli) produced by hearing-impaired children. Twenty listeners (10 experienced and 10 naive) evaluated the intonation production by means of two evaluation tools: a rating scale and a forced-choice test. No significant differences were found between the two listener groups using the forced-choice test, either for the falling or for the rising contours. However, a significant difference was found between the two listener groups using the rating scale, with regard to both the rising and the falling contours. Thus, the effect of experience decreased when using the forced-choice procedure. This finding supports the use of the forced-choice method for providing a perceptual measure of speech production performance that is independent of the listener's experience.