Acoustic-phonetic characteristics of older children’s spontaneous speech in interactions in conversational and clear speaking styles

Abstract

This study investigated (a) the acoustic-phonetic characteristics of spontaneous speech produced by talkers aged 9–14 years in an interactive (diapix) task with an interlocutor of the same age and gender (NB condition) and (b) the adaptations these talkers made to clarify their speech when speech intelligibility was artificially degraded for their interlocutor (VOC condition). Recordings were made for 96 child talkers (50 F, 46 M); the adult reference values came from the LUCID corpus recorded under the same conditions [Baker and Hazan, J. Acoustic. Soc. Am. 130, 2139–2152 (2011)]. Articulation rate, pause frequency, fundamental frequency, vowel area, and mean intensity (1–3 kHz range) were analyzed to establish whether they had reached adult-like values and whether young talkers showed similar clear speech strategies as adults in difficult communicative situations. In the NB condition, children (including the 13–14 year group) differed from adults in terms of their articulation rate, vowel area, median F0, and intensity. Child talkers made adaptations to their speech in the VOC condition, but adults and children differed in their use of F0 range, vowel hyperarticulation, and pause frequency as clear speech strategies. This suggests that further developments in speech production take place during later adolescence. [Work supported by ESRC.]