Some acoustic-phonetic correlates of speech produced in noise

Abstract

Acoustical analyses were carried out on the digits 0-9 spoken by two male talkers in the quiet and in 90 dB SPL of masking noise in their headphones. The results replicated previous studies demonstrating reliable increases in amplitude, duration and vocal pitch while talking in noise. We also found reliable differences in the tilt of the short-term spectrum of consonants and vowels. The results are discussed in terms of: (1) the development of algorithms for recognition of speech in noise; (2) the nature of the acoustic changes that take place when talkers produce speech under adverse conditions such as noise, stress or high cognitive load; and, (3) the role of training and feedback in controlling and modifying a talker's speech to improve performance of current speech recognizers.