Friday, April 29
03:30 pm – 03:45 pm
Multi-Interest
Session 23

Alana Baxter, BA; Kate Bunton, PhD, CCC-SLP
Level of Instruction: Intermediate   –   Tuquoise I & II

A common recommendation for communication partners of people with hearing loss is to speak clearly, but how effective is this simple instruction? Can clear speech be affected by real or imagined background noise? This study examined the acoustic properties of conversational and clear speech produced under four different conditions. Twelve subjects (8 female, 4 male) with a mean age of 20 years were recorded reading three passages and a set of sentences under four conditions. The first condition for every subject was to read conversationally as though speaking to a friend. In the other three conditions, given in random order, subjects were instructed to speak as clearly as they could while listening to multitalker babble or speech shaped noise over headphones, or imagining that they were in a noisy room.  Acoustic measures reflected rate, frequency, and intensity. Results of this study will inform audiologists and speech language pathologists about whether they are giving helpful instructions related to clear speech production to communication partners of hearing impaired patients.

Learner Outcomes:  At the completion of this presentation, participants will be able to identify the importance of clear speech, describe conditions that elicit clear speech production and identify acoustic measures that reflect clear speech production.