Direct Magnitude Estimates of Speech Intelligibility in Dysarthria

Effects of a Chosen Standard

weismer{at}waisman.wisc.edu

Direct magnitude estimation (DME) has been used frequently as a perceptual scaling technique in studies of the speech intelligibility of persons with speech disorders. The technique is typically used with a standard, or reference stimulus, chosen as a good exemplar of "midrange" intelligibility. In several published studies, the standard has been chosen subjectively, usually on the basis of the expertise of the investigators. The current experiment demonstrates that a fixed set of sentence-level utterances, obtained from 4 individuals with dysarthria (2 with Parkinson disease, 2 with traumatic brain injury) as well as 3 neurologically normal speakers, is scaled differently depending on the identity of the standard. Four different standards were used in the main experiment, three of which were judged qualitatively in two independent evaluations to be good exemplars of midrange intelligibility. Acoustic analyses did not reveal obvious differences between these four standards but suggested that the standard with the worstscaled intelligibility had much poorer voice source characteristics compared to the other three standards. Results are discussed in terms of possible standardization of midrange intelligibility exemplars for DME experiments.

KEY WORDS: speech intelligibility, perceptual scaling, dysarthria

Submitted on June 26, 2001
Accepted on January 3, 2002

CiteULike    Connotea    Delicious    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				K. C. Hustad Speech Intelligibility in Children With Speech Disorders Language Learning and Education, January 1, 2012; 19(1): 7 - 11. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. McHenry An Exploration of Listener Variability in Intelligibility Judgments Am J Speech Lang Pathol, May 1, 2011; 20(2): 119 - 123. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				T. L. Eadie and M. Kapsner-Smith The Effect of Listener Experience and Anchors on Judgments of Dysphonia J Speech Lang Hear Res, April 1, 2011; 54(2): 430 - 447. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				G. A. Constantinescu, D. G. Theodoros, T. G. Russell, E. C. Ward, S. J. Wilson, and R. Wootton Home-based speech treatment for Parkinson's disease delivered remotely: a case report Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, March 1, 2010; 16(2): 100 - 104. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				D. J. Zajac, A. A. Harris, J. E. Roberts, and G. E. Martin Direct Magnitude Estimation of Articulation Rate in Boys With Fragile X Syndrome J Speech Lang Hear Res, October 1, 2009; 52(5): 1370 - 1379. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. T. Neel Effects of Loud and Amplified Speech on Sentence and Word Intelligibility in Parkinson Disease J Speech Lang Hear Res, August 1, 2009; 52(4): 1021 - 1033. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				N. J. Donovan, D. L. Kendall, M. E. Young, and J. C. Rosenbek The Communicative Effectiveness Survey: Preliminary Evidence of Construct Validity Am J Speech Lang Pathol, November 1, 2008; 17(4): 335 - 347. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				L. W. Ellis and S. A. Beltyukova Effects of Training on Naive Listeners' Judgments of the Speech Intelligibility of Children With Severe-to-Profound Hearing Loss J Speech Lang Hear Res, October 1, 2008; 51(5): 1114 - 1123. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				S. A. Beltyukova, G. M. Stone, and L. W. Ellis Rasch Analysis of Word Identification and Magnitude Estimation Scaling Responses in Measuring Naive Listeners' Judgments of Speech Intelligibility of Children With Severe-to-Profound Hearing Impairments J Speech Lang Hear Res, October 1, 2008; 51(5): 1124 - 1137. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]