Speaking Clearly for Children With Learning Disabilities

TLDR

The study compared speech‑in‑noise perception in children with and without learning disabilities and examined whether naturally produced clear speech improves intelligibility, also identifying acoustic‑phonetic features that promote understanding. Sixty‑three LD children and thirty‑six controls listened to simple English sentences in noise, with speaking style (conversational vs clear) and signal‑to‑noise ratio (–4 dB vs –8 dB) varied within participants and talker gender (male vs female) varied between participants. Children with learning disabilities performed worse overall and were more affected by lower signal‑to‑noise ratios, but both groups benefited substantially from clear speech—especially from a female talker—without training, and for many LD children clear speech raised performance to the control level.

Abstract

This study compared the speech-in-noise perception abilities of children with and without diagnosed learning disabilities (LDs) and investigated whether naturally produced clear speech yields perception benefits for these children. A group of children with LDs ( n =63) and a control group of children without LDs ( n =36) were presented with simple English sentences embedded in noise. Factors that varied within participants were speaking style (conversational vs. clear) and signal-to-noise ratio (–4 dB vs. –8 dB); talker (male vs. female) varied between participants. Results indicated that the group of children with LDs had poorer overall sentence-in-noise perception than the control group. Furthermore, both groups had poorer speech perception with decreasing signal-to-noise ratio; however, the children with LDs were more adversely affected by a decreasing signal-to-noise ratio than the control group. Both groups benefited substantially from naturally produced clear speech, and for both groups, the female talker evoked a larger clear speech benefit than the male talker. The clear speech benefit was consistent across groups; required no listener training; and, for a large proportion of the children with LDs, was sufficient to bring their performance within the range of the control group with conversational speech. Moreover, an acoustic comparison of conversational-to-clear speech modifications across the two talkers provided insight into the acoustic-phonetic features of naturally produced clear speech that are most important for promoting intelligibility for this population.