Intelligibility in competing noise by males with partial laryngectomies

Abstract

Although levels of intelligibility among alaryngeal speakers using various speech modes have been investigated [J. G. Clark and J. C. Stemple, J. Speech Hearing Res. 25, 333–338 (1982); M. Kalb and M. Carpenter, J. Speech Hearing Disoral. 46, 77–80 (1981)], little data are available for speakers with partial laryngectomies. The specific research questions of the investigation were “To what degree do the patients with hemilaryngectomy or supraglottic laryngectomy maintain intelligibility when speaking in various levels of competing noise?” and “Are there differences in speech intelligibility as a function of whether the partial laryngectomy was in the vertical or horizontal plane?” Nine hemilaryngectomees, nine supraglottic laryngectomees, and nine normal laryngeal male speakers recorded 20 SPIN test sentences with no competing noise and with 75 dB A white noise. Intelligibility scores (identification of each sentence's final word by 30 normal‐hearing listeners) were analyzed using logistic regression and indicated that the two surgical groups did not differ significantly from each other in either noise condition and that in both conditions the two groups differed significantly from the normal laryngeal group.