Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-125). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2005." Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wyoming, 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 17, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-139).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 112-121).

No description available.

Nineteen normal-hearing university undergraduates performed an "objective" and a "subjective" test of speech intelligibility accuracy (SIA), speed (SIS) and ease (SIE) for different levels of low-pass filtered speech. During objective testing subjects listened to monosyllabic words low-pass filtered through an earphone, and repeated words as correctly and quickly as possible. They simultaneously turned off a probe light as quickly as possible whenever it appeared. Objective SIA was assessed as percentage of incorrectly-repeated phonemes, objective SIS as elapsed time between word presentation and a subject's voice response, and objective SIE as probe-reaction time to turning off the light. During subjective testing subjects listened to common sentences low-pass filtered through a loudspeaker in a background of competing speech. Subjective SIA, SIS and SIE were assessed using magnitude estimation in which subjects assigned numbers to how accurately, quickly or easily they understood the sentences. The most important finding was generally improved accuracy, speed and ease of objectively- and subjectively-measured speech intelligibility with decreased filtering. The experimenter further analyzed results by determining how well each measure of SIA, SIS and SIE met assumptions of test sensitivity, selectivity, reliability, convergence, discriminability and sufficiency. Overall, the objective SIA measure best met assumptions, followed by the three subjective measures, the objective SIS measure, and the objective SIE measure. Results have clinical and research implications for testing and understanding normal and impaired speech intelligibility and perception. First, results are encouraging for audiologists who use objective SIA and subjective measures to test speech intelligibility of their patients. Second, results suggest that persons listening to degraded speech, or persons with auditory problems, may have difficulties in SIS and SIE as well as problems already documented for SIA. Accordingly, audiologists should consider SIS and SIE during audiologic evaluations, aural rehabilitation, and auditory research. Finally, a few subjects showed exceptionally fast voice-response and probe-reaction times which has implications for understanding the nature and limits of human auditory processing.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-84).

published_or_final_version / toc / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Master / Master of Science in Audiology

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Master / Master of Science in Audiology

Spoken language conveys two forms of information: transactional (content, what is said) and interactional (how it is said). The transactional message shared during spoken communication has been studied extensively in different listening conditions and in people of all ages using standardized tests of speech intelligibility. However, research into interactional aspects of speech has been more limited. One specific aspect of interactional communication that warrants further investigation is the communication of emotion in speech, also called affective prosody. A series of experiments examined how younger and older adults produce affective prosody, recognize emotion in speech, and understand emotional speech in noise. The emotional valence and arousal properties of target words from an existing speech intelligibility test were rated by younger and older adults. New stimuli based on those words were recorded by a younger female and an older female using affective prosody to portray seven emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, pleasant surprise, sadness, neutral). Similar to previous studies, the acoustical parameter that best differentiated the emotions was fundamental frequency (F0). Specifically, discriminant analysis indicated that emotional category membership was best predicted by the mean and range of F0. Overall, recognition of emotion and intelligibility were high. While older listeners made more recognition errors and had poorer intelligibility overall, their patterns of responding did not differ significantly from those of the younger listeners on either measure. Of note, angry and sad emotions were recognized with the highest degree of accuracy, but intelligibility was highest for items spoken to portray fear or pleasant surprise. These results may suggest that there is a complementarity between the acoustic cues used to recognize emotions (how words are said) and those used to understand words (what is said). Alternatively, the effect of emotion on intelligibility may be modulated primarily by attentional rather than acoustical factors, with higher performance associated with alerting emotions.