The Effect of Situation-Specific Non-Speech Acoustic Cues on the Intelligibility of Speech in Noise

Abstract

In everyday life, speech is often accompanied by a situationspecific acoustic cue; a hungry bark as you ask 'Has anyone fed the dog?'. This paper investigates the effect such cues have on speech intelligibility in noise and evaluates their interaction with the established effect of situation-specific semantic cues. This work is motivated by the introduction of new object-based broadcast formats, which have the potential to optimise intelligibility by controlling the level of individual broadcast audio elements, at point of service. Results of this study show that situation-specific acoustic cues alone can improve word recognition in multi-talker babble by 69.5%, a similar amount to semantic cues. The combination of both semantic and acoustic cues provide further improvement of 106.0% compared with no cues, and 18.7% compared with semantic cues only. Interestingly, whilst increasing subjective intelligibility of the target word, the presence of acoustic cues degraded the objective intelligibility of the speech-based semantic cues by 47.0% (equivalent to reducing the speech level by 4.5 dB). This paper discusses the interactions between the two types of cues and the implications that these results have for assessing and improving the intelligibility of broadcast speech.

Personalization in Object-based Audio for Accessibility: A Review of Advancements for Hearing Impaired Listeners

“…However, the distinction between useful and masking sounds is more complex. This is evidenced by the effect of redundant nonspeech information on intelligibility [90,91,89] and the personal preferences reported by Shirley et al [14]. While Woodcock et al demonstrate some generality in people's categorization of broadcast sounds [125], the usefulness or masking potential is not generalizable.…”

“…Research by Bilger in 1984 showed that word recognition in noise by older listeners with sensorineural hearing loss more than doubled when the speech was semantically predictable (from recognizing 37% of keywords up to 76%) [82]. Recent adaptations of his work consistently demonstrate this effect [83][84][85][86].…”

“…Other types of single mode cues can be provided by nonspeech sounds, an area that controlled studies have only recently explored [89][90][91]. A 2016 study by Hodoshima showed that some types of preceding sounds aid intelligibility of urgent public address style speech [89].…”

User-guided Rendering of Audio Objects Using an Interactive Genetic Algorithm

“…Meanwhile, in broadcast domains, the clarity and intelligibility of dialogue is often crucially important [6]. The interaction between speech signals and other audio and visual objects, such as music and sound effects, and the overall effect on the audience, must be well-understood for a variety of audience groups [7].…”

R2SPIN: Re-Recording the Revised Speech Perception in Noise Test

“…For this reason a single test, once developed, is often utilized for many decades [1,12]. This facilitates comparison of current results to previous research and the normative values for the original test [13]. However if not regularly assessed and revised, these tests have the potential to become invalid (because of assumptions about target population) or for recordings to become obsolete.…”