Production and perception of clear speech

Abstract

When a talker believes that the listener is likely to have speech perception difficulties due to a hearing loss, background noise, or a different native language, she or he will typically adopt a clear speaking style. Previous research has established that, with a simple set of instructions to the talker, ‘‘clear speech’’ can be produced by most talkers under laboratory recording conditions. Furthermore, there is reliable evidence that adult listeners with either impaired or normal hearing typically find clear speech more intelligible than conversational speech. Since clear speech production involves listener-oriented articulatory adjustments, a careful examination of the acoustic-phonetic and perceptual consequences of the conversational-to-clear speech transformation can serve as an effective window into talker- and listener-related forces in speech communication. Furthermore, clear speech research has considerable potential for the development of speech enhancement techniques. After reviewing previous and current work on the acoustic properties of clear versus conversational speech, this talk will present recent data from a cross-linguistic study of vowel production in clear speech and a cross-population study of clear speech perception. Findings from these studies contribute to an evolving view of clear speech production and perception as reflecting both universal, auditory and language-specific, phonological contrast enhancement features.