Intelligibility of modifications to dysarthric speech

Abstract

Dysarthria is a motor speech impairment affecting millions of people. Dysarthric speech can be far less intelligible than that of non-dysarthric speakers, causing significant communication difficulties. The goal of this work is to understand the effect that certain modifications have on the intelligibility of dysarthric speech. These modifications are designed to identify aspects of the speech signal or signal processing that may be especially relevant to the effectiveness of a system that transforms dysarthric speech to improve its intelligibility. A result of this study is that dysarthric speech can, in the best case, be modified only at the short-term spectral level to improve intelligibility from 68% to 87%. A baseline transformation system using standard technology, however, does not show improvement in intelligibility. Prosody also has a significant (p < 0.05) effect on intelligibility.