Date of Award
Winter 12-21-2023
Additional Affiliations
Brain, Behavior, & Cognition
Degree Name
Master of Arts (AM/MA)
Degree Type
Thesis
Abstract
Unfamiliar accents can make speech communication difficult, both by reducing speech intelligibility and by increasing the effort listeners must put forth to understand speech. However, these two constructs, while related, are independent: for example, two 100% intelligible utterances may require different amounts of effort to accurately process. To better characterize the relationship between intelligibility and effort, this study presents speakers of four intelligibility levels (one natively-accented English speaker, and three Mandarin-accented English speakers) within a dual-task paradigm (featuring a vibrotactile secondary task) to measure listening effort. We found a negative nonlinear relationship between intelligibility and effort, with the steepest slope between the native speaker and the highly intelligible Mandarin-accented speaker, and the shallowest slope between the two least intelligible Mandarin-accented speakers. These results suggest a local plateau in effort that arises relatively soon after intelligibility begins falling.
Language
English (en)
Chair and Committee
Kristin Van Engen
Committee Members
Julie Bugg, Mitchell Sommers
Recommended Citation
Mallard, Mel, "Characterizing the Relationship between Accented Speech Intelligibility and Listening Effort" (2023). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2983.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/2983
Included in
Cognition and Perception Commons, Cognitive Science Commons, Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons