Chinese Speech Intelligibility Research Articles

Chinese speech intelligibility and speech intelligibility index for the elderly

The speech intelligibility index (SII) and speech transmission index (STI) are widely accepted objective metrics for assessing speech intelligibility. In previous work, the relationship between STI and Chinese speech intelligibility (CSI) scores was studied. In this paper, the relationship between SII and CSI scores in rooms for the elderly aged 60–69 and over 70 is investigated by using auralization method under different background noise levels (40dBA and 55dBA) and different reverberation times. The results show that SII has good correlation with CSI score of the elderly. To get the same CSI score as the young adults, the elderly need a larger SII value, and the value increases with the increase of the age for the elderly. Since hearing loss of the elderly is considered in the calculation of SII, the difference in the required SII between the elderly and young is less than that of the required STI under the same CSI score condition. This indicates that SII is a more consistent evaluation criterion for different ages.

Relationship Between Chinese Speech Intelligibility of Elderly and Speech Transmission Index

In this paper, the relationship between Chinese speech intelligibility (CSI) scores of the elderly aged 60–69 and over 70 years old, and speech transmission index (STI) were investigated through the auralization method under different reverberation time and background noise levels (BNL, 40 dBA and 55 dBA). The results show that the CSI scores of the elderly are significantly worse than those of young adults. For the elderly over 70, the CSI scores become much lower than those of young adults. To be able to achieve the same CSI, the elderly, especially those over 70, need much higher STI and greater SNR than the young. The elderly aged 60–69 and over 70 need to improve their STI by 0.419 and 0.058 respectively under BNL 40 dBA, as well as 0.282 and 0.072 respectively under BNL 55 dBA, so as to obtain the same CSI scores as the young adults.

Facultys Awareness to the Situation of Students with Mild Hearing Loss in a Single School in a Large City in China

Plenty of research has shown that noisy environment has significant impact on childrens speech recognition, especially on children with different degrees of hearing impairment. Modifications on the construction of classroom and improvement in study environment help assist children with MHL to perceive more information in class. Several research studies assessing environment of classrooms in normal schools which are for normal children and children with hearing loss in China have found that traffic noise, speech shape masking, babble noise and other typical noises around school sites impose negative impact on Chinese speech intelligibility of children in elementary school. By analyzing the result of a designed questionnaire, this research focused on the facultys awareness to the situation of students with mild hearing loss in a single school in Wuhan, a large city in China in order to find possible measurements that can be taken by the faculty to improve the learning experience of students with hearing loss at school.

Study on Chinese Speech Intelligibility Under Different Low-Frequency Characteristics of Reverberation Time Using a Hybrid Method

Study on Chinese Speech Intelligibility Under Different Low-Frequency Characteristics of Reverberation Time Using a Hybrid Method

An Observational Study to Evaluate Association Between Velopharyngeal Anatomy and Speech Outcomes in Adult Patients With Severe Velopharyngeal Insufficiency.

By measuring velopharyngeal structure and evaluating speech intelligibility, to explore and observe the association between velopharyngeal anatomy and speech outcomes in these patients. Thirty-one adult patients with velopharyngeal insufficiency after the primary palatoplasty aged 18 to 35 years (mean 22.03 years) were enrolled as the study group. The patients had significant hypernasality and audible nasal emission. The degree of velopharyngeal closure assessed by electronic nasopharyngeal fiberoptic endoscopy was grade III. Cephalometric analysis was performed on lateral cephalograms to measure velopharyngeal structure, including hard palate length (ANS-PNS), velar length (PNS-U), pharyngeal depth (PNS-PPW), and oropharyngeal airway space (U-MPW). Their speech intelligibility was evaluated through the Mandarin Chinese speech intelligibility test, and each speech sample was examined by 2 speech and language pathologists. The results were assessed with the SPSS 23.0 software package, and regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between velopharyngeal structure and speech outcomes. A significant negative correlation was confirmed between speech intelligibility and pharyngeal depth. Pharyngeal depth also showed a linear relationship with speech intelligibility, and there was no significant correlation between speech intelligibility and other measures (hard palate length, velar length, oropharyngeal airway space). In the velopharyngeal anatomy, only pharyngeal depth was associated with speech intelligibility in adult patients with severe velopharyngeal insufficiency, this is consistent with our clinical observation. It suggests that appropriate reduction of pharyngeal depth during palatopharyngoplasty may have a good effect on the speech recovery in patients with cleft palate and patients with velopharyngeal insufficiency after palatorrhaphy.

The effect of low frequency reverberation on Chinese speech intelligibility in two classrooms

The previous study had investigated the students’ speech perceptions in two primary school classrooms with similar reverberation time and found that the speech intelligibility in a classroom was better than that in other one. It is speculated that due to difference in the improvement in low frequency reverberation. In this study, the reverberation time and speech transmission index were obtained and compared from these two classrooms by simulated. The subjective Chinese speech intelligibility was evaluated through simulated binaural room impulse responses. The effect of low frequency reverberation on Chinese speech intelligibility in two classrooms was discussed. The result shows that improving the low frequency characteristic of reverberation time can be helpful to improve the Chinese speech intelligibility in classroom.

Perceptual Characteristics of Chinese Speech Intelligibility in Noise Environment

Speech intelligibility is affected by various interfering factors in a speech transmission system. Noise is one of the most common affecting factors. Subjective listening experiments were, respectively, carried out in pink noise, speech noise, and white noise-interfering environment. The perceptual characteristics of the initials, finals, tones, and syllable intelligibility were analyzed, and the function relationships between Chinese speech intelligibility and SNR in noise environment were concluded, which could be used to evaluate or predict the Chinese speech intelligibility under noise transmission conditions.

Comparison of speech intelligibility of elderly aged 60–69 years and young adults in the noisy and reverberant environment

In contrast to young adults with the normal hearing ability, most of the elderly can difficultly hear the speech signals in an unfavorable noisy and reverberant environment. In this paper, the effect of noise and reverberation in a room environment on the Chinese speech intelligibility of elderly (60–69 years old persons) and young adults with the normal hearing ability at different reverberation time (RT), background noise level (BNL), and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is investigated by using the auralization method. The results show that the speech intelligibility scores of Chinese elderly and young adults decrease with the increase in RT but increase with the increase in SNR. The obtained speech intelligibility scores of the young adults are higher than those of the elderly under the same test conditions. The speech intelligibility scores of the elderly are poorer than those of the young adults at high BNL, long RT, and low SNR. Namely, it is found that the elderly are more sensitive to the changes in reverberation case and reverberation plus noise case than the young adults. Moreover, the difference in the speech intelligibility scores between the elderly and young adults decreases with the decrease in the BNL. Lastly, it is shown that a low BNL is beneficial for improving the Chinese speech intelligibility of the elderly in a noisy and reverberant room environment.

Chinese speech intelligibility of elderly people in environments combining reverberation and noise

To investigate the relationship between speech transmission index (STI) and subjective Chinese speech intelligibility score of elderly people, subjective Chinese speech intelligibility evaluations were conducted under different conditions combining reverberation and interfering noise. The results show that Chinese speech intelligibility score of elderly people increases with STI and is 30% lower than that of young people averagely under the same acoustical conditions. Age, reverberation time and signal-to-noise ratio have significant influence on the Chinese speech intelligibility score. And signal-to-noise ratio has the greatest influence.

Effect of continued nursing support on speech intelligibility and the quality of life in postoperative patients with tongue cancer

Objective To research and analysis the effect of continued nursing support on speech intelligibility and the quality of life in postoperative patients with tongue cancer. Methods A total of 80 patients treated in our hospital with tongue cancer from May 2014 to August 2016 were selected and randomly divided into the intervention group and the control group in accordance with the convenience sampling method, 40 cases in each group. All patients received the same health guidance education after discharge according to care routine.At the same time, the patients in the intervention group received the continued nursing support. Intervention effects were observed in two groups by using the Chinese speech intelligibility test table and the University of Washington Quality of Life Questionnaire (UW-QOLv4). Results One day before the operation, the speech intelligibility (94.8±4.9) scores, the survival quality (1 076.3±51.9) scores in the intervention group compared to the scores (96.0±3.2, 1 084.7±46.5) in the control group,there were no statistical difference (t=-1.297,-0.762, both P>0.05). Two weeks after the operation, there were also no statistical difference (t=1.136,P>0.05) on the speech intelligibility scores between the intervention group (33.7±3.1) and the control group(32.9±3.2). One month,three months and six months after the operation, the scores in the intervention group(61.2±2.7,79.5±4.3,90.9±2.4 respectively) were much higher than that in the control group(49.6±2.4,63.6±3.8, 78.6±3.5) with significant difference (t=20.309,17.524,18.331, all P<0.05).Six months after the operation,the scores in the intervention group(786.4±67.1) were much higher than that in the control group (597.6±58.2) with significant difference(t=13.443,P<0.05). Conclusions The implementation of continued nursing support can effectively improve speech intelligibility and the quality of postoperative survival in patients with tongue cancer. Key words: Tongue neoplasms; Quality of life; Continued nursing; Speech intelligibility

Chinese speech intelligibility of children in noisy and reverberant environments

Reverberation time and signal-to-noise ratio in classrooms are critical factors to speech intelligibility. In this study, the combined effect of reverberation time and signal-to-noise ratio on Chinese speech intelligibility of children was investigated in 28 elementary school classrooms in China. The results show that Chinese speech intelligibility scores increase with an increase of signal-to-noise ratio and the age of children, and decrease with an increase of reverberation time in classrooms. Younger children require higher signal-to-noise ratio and shorter reverberation time than older children to understand the speech. The A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio combined with a wide range of reverberation time can be used to predict speech intelligibility score and serve as a criterion for classroom design for elementary schools.

Effect of Different Types of Noises on Chinese Speech Intelligibility of Children in Elementary School Classrooms

Effect of Different Types of Noises on Chinese Speech Intelligibility of Children in Elementary School Classrooms

Chinese Speech Intelligibility in Low Frequency Reverberation and Noise in a Simulated Classroom

Chinese Speech Intelligibility in Low Frequency Reverberation and Noise in a Simulated Classroom

Relationship Between Chinese Speech Intelligibility and Speech Transmission Index Under Reproduced General Room Conditions

The subjective Chinese (Mandarin) articulation scores of a total of 50 sound conditions, namely at 12 receiver positions in four rooms, were obtained by expert listeners based on in-situ measured binaural room impulse responses (BRIRs) and binaural technology for headphone reproduction from a phonetically balanced test. The relationship between Chinese speech articulation scores and the speech transmission index (STI) according to IEC 60268-16 was established. The spectrum difference between the average spectrum of Chinese and that recommended by IEC may noticeably influence the measurement results with a STI difference of up to 0.054. However, the STI method can evaluate Chinese intelligibility without modulating the correction factor values recommended by IEC; the standard deviation between the articulation scores and the curve was 5.70%, which is relatively small.

The roles of fundamental frequency contours and sentence context in Mandarin Chinese speech intelligibility

Flattening the fundamental frequency (F0) contours of Mandarin Chinese sentences reduces their intelligibility in noise but not in quiet. It is unclear, however, how the absence of primary acoustic cue for lexical tones might be compensated with the top-down information of sentence context. In this study, speech intelligibility was evaluated when participants listened to sentences and word lists with or without F0 variations in quiet and noise. The results showed that sentence context partially explained the unchanged intelligibility of monotonous Chinese sentences in quiet and further indicate that F0 variations and sentence context act in concert during speech comprehension.

Investigation on the effects of source directivity of Chinese speech intelligibility in real and virtual rooms

Subjective Chinese speech intelligibility was evaluated by using three sources with different directional patterns: an omnidirectional source, a source with similar directivity of a human speaker, and a human speaker source in both real and virtual rectangular rooms with different reverberation times. The result shows that subjective Chinese speech intelligibility scores exhibit statistical differences under different source conditions. Speech intelligibility scores obtained by using an omnidirectional source are lower than those obtained by using the other two sources. Therefore, the use of omnidirectional sources will undermine speech intelligibility compared with real human speech in rooms. Subjective Chinese speech intelligibility obtained from virtual rooms using auralization is basically similar to that obtained in real rooms under different source directivity conditions. Using the auralization technique enables the proper evaluation of subjective Chinese speech intelligibility with different directional sources.

강의실의 실내흡음력 증가에 따른 한국어 및 중국어의 음성요해도 비교

본 논문은 강의실의 실내흡음력이 증가함에 따라 발생하는 물리적 음명료도 (D50, STI)의 변화가 한국어와 중국어의 주관적 음이해도 (음성요해도)에 미치는 영향을 조사하였다. 이를 위해 중규모 강의실에서 흡음재를 설치하기 전과 후의 물리적 음향성능을 측정하고, 음절요해도 테스트 법을 사용해 음성요해도를 평가하였다. 음성요해도 평가시 한국어와 중국어의 두 가지 언어를 대상으로 진행함으로써 두 언어의 특성에 따른 음성요해도의 차이를 비교하였다. 실험결과 흡음재를 설치함에 따라 물리적 음명료도가 증가하였으며, 음성요해도 또한 증가함을 알 수 있었다. 또한 동일한 조건에서 음절요해도 테스트를 수행한 결과 한국어보다 중국어의 음성요해도가 더 높은 것으로 평가되었으며 이것은 한국어와 중국어의 발음특성의 차이에 기인한 것으로 사료된다. 한편 물리적 음명료도와 주관적 음명료도의 상관관계 분석결과 (<TEX>$R^2$</TEX>) D50의 경우 한국어는 0.696, 중국어는 0.707로 나타났으며 STI의 경우 한국어는 0.651, 중국어는 0.665로 매우 높은 상관관계가 있음을 알 수 있었다. The present study aims to investigates the effects of the physical sound clarity (D50, STI) on the subjective speech intelligibility of the both Korean and Chinese languages which can be caused by increase of the sound absorption in classroom. In order to this, sound measurements were undertaken at a classroom with and without absorption materials. Also, speech intelligibility tests were conducted by Korean and Chinese students using their native languages. As the results, it was found that both sound clarity and speech intelligibility were improved with increasing sound absorption. Also, it was revealed that Chinese speech intelligibility was more improved than Korean with same impose of sound absorption. It was considered by the difference of phonetic characteristics of two languages. Analysing correlation of physical sound clarity and subjective speech intelligibility, it was shown that D50 is highly correlated with Korean (0.696) and Chinese (0.707) respectively. Also, STI was highly correlated with Korean (0.651) and Chinese (0.665). Thus, it can be concluded that D50 and STI have significant correlations with the speech intelligibility.

Relationship between Chinese speech intelligibility and speech transmission index in rooms based on auralization

Based on simulated monaural and binaural room impulse responses, the relationship between Chinese speech intelligibility scores and speech transmission index (STI) including the effect of noise is investigated using a phonetically balanced test in virtual rooms. The results show that Chinese speech intelligibility scores increase monotonically with STI values. The correlation coefficients are 0.95, 0.90 and the standard deviation is 5.6%, 6.7% under diotic and dichotic listening conditions, respectively. Compared with diotic listening based on monaural room impulse responses, dichotic listening based on binaural room impulse responses can improve by 2.7 dB signal-to-noise ratio for Chinese speech intelligibility. The STI method can better predict and evaluate Chinese speech intelligibility in rooms.

Chinese speech intelligibility at different speech sound pressure levels and signal-to-noise ratios in simulated classrooms

The speech intelligibility in classroom can be influenced by background-noise levels, speech sound pressure level (SSPL), reverberation time and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The relationship between SSPL and subjective Chinese Mandarin speech intelligibility and the effect of different SNRs on Chinese Mandarin speech intelligibility in the simulated classroom were investigated through room acoustical simulation, auralisation technique and subjective evaluation. Chinese speech intelligibility test signals recorded in anechoic chamber were convolved with the simulated binaural room impulse responses, and then reproduced through the headphone by different SSPLs and SNRs. The results show that Chinese Mandarin speech intelligibility scores increase with increasing of SSPLs and SNRs within a certain range in simulated classrooms. Chinese Mandarin speech intelligibility scores have no significant difference with SNRs of no less than 15 dBA under the same reverberation time condition.

Sequential Treatment of Speech Disorders in Velocardiofacial Syndrome Patients

Speech disorders are the most common presentations of patients with velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS) and are difficult to be treated with very good treatment outcome. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the clinical diagnosis and outcomes of sequential treatment of therapy for VCFS. A retrospective study of 120 patients (ages ranged from 4.3 to 38 years old, with a mean age of 10.2 years) was conducted and thoroughly reviewed retrospectively oral speech evaluation, oral examinations, and lateral cephalometry of 33 patients. Comparison was made in 33 patients (age range, 4-17 years; mean age, 7.24 years); patients were compared with and age-matched controls, using IQ scores and speech intelligibility tests. A Chinese speech intelligibility test and blowing test were also used to evaluate the outcomes of modified pharyngeal flap surgery, behavioral therapy, and speech therapy. The average age of the primary diagnosis for VCFS was 13.9 years. No cleft palate and reduced mobility in pharyngeal function were found by oral examination. Speech intelligibility in the 33 patients with VCFS was 33%, with an average IQ test score of 67. Chinese speech intelligibility of 33 patients who underwent pharyngoplasty and speech therapy was improved from 47% to 98%, and the duration of blowing test increased from 17 to 38 seconds. The average length of therapy period was estimated to be 8 months. Hypernasality and reduced mobility in palate and pharyngeal structures of VCFS patients could be measured with Chinese speech intelligibility test and blowing tests. The pharyngeal flap surgery and the behavioral therapy are proved to be an effective protocol for VCFS.