The intelligibility of clear and conversational allophones of coda consonants

Abstract

For many hearing-impaired (HI) listeners, hearing-aid amplification provides near-normal speech recognition in quiet. Nonetheless, many of these same listeners show large speech deficits, relative to normal-hearing (NH) listeners, that are not effectively addressed via amplification in noisy listening conditions. One compensating strategy HI listeners use is to ask talkers to speak clearly. However, as one of the features of clear speech is a shift to higher frequencies, HI listeners may not benefit as much as NH listeners if the new frequencies are outside their audible range. This study examined the intelligibility of conversationally- and clearly-spoken coda consonants in nonsense syllables. These free-variant allophones of 21 American English consonants were produced in three phonological environments: syllable (utterance) final; syllable final followed by schwa; and syllable final followed by palatal approximant and schwa. The stimuli were presented in broadband noise and in quiet to NH and HI listeners. Consonant confusions were investigated to determine whether NH and HI listeners receive similar clear-speech advantages. [The views expressed in this abstract are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Departments of the Navy, Army, or Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the US Government.]