Teaching and Learning Guide for

This guide accompanies the following article : Rajka Smiljanic and Ann Bradlow, ‘Speaking and Hearing Clearly: Talker and Listener Factors in Speaking Style Changes’, Langauge and Linguistics Compass 3/1 (2009): DOI: 10.1111/j.1749‐818X.2008.00112.x Author’s Introduction Clear speech is a listener‐oriented speech modification that talkers naturally and spontaneously adopt when listeners have perceptual difficulties due to a hearing impairment, different native language, or presence of noise in the environment. Clear speech research is motivated by the need to understand how these talker‐, listener‐, and signal‐related factors impact normal speech intelligibility. Over time, clear speech studies have explored speech intelligibility variation for a wide range of talker and listener groups, such as normal hearing, hearing impaired, native, non‐native, younger and elderly adults, and individuals with Parkinson disease. This body of research has also examined various speech signal conditions, such as signals presented in noise and reverberation and signals modified through digital speech enhancement procedures. The over‐arching aim of these studies is to provide insight into, on the one hand, which conversational‐to‐clear speech acoustic–articulatory modifications contribute to increased intelligibility and, on the other, how the nature of the listener’s perceptual deficit determines which of the clear speech strategies will be most beneficial. Through these investigations, clear speech research provides a window into the interaction of lower level, sensory and perceptual and higher level, cognitive factors that affect language processing. Furthermore, clear speech research informs us about the speech production mechanisms of plasticity that allow talkers to adjust their output to the communicative situation, and about the speech perception processing mechanisms that allow listeners to take advantage of these acoustic–articulatory modifications. This research, thus, has important theoretical implications for developing reliable models of linguistic behavior as well as practical implications for various populations (e.g., non‐native and clinical) where speech production and intelligibility are compromised. Key Readings (in the order they are discussed in the Review) Picheny, M. A., N. I. Durlach, and L. D. Braida. 1985. Speaking clearly for the hard of hearing I: Intelligbility differences between clear and conversational speech. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 28: 96–103. Picheny, M. A., N. I. Durlach, and L. D. Braida. 1986. Speaking clearly for the hard of hearing II: Acoustic characteristics of clear and conversational speech. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 29: 434–46. Ferguson, S. H., & Kewley‐Port, D. 2007. Talker differences in clear and conversational speech: Acoustic characteristics of vowels. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50: 1241–1255. Krause, J. C. and L. D. Braida. 2004. Acoustic properties of naturally produced clear speech at normal speaking rates. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 115(1): 362–78. Liu, S. and F.‐G. Zeng. 2006. Temporal properties in clear speech perception. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 120(1): 424–32. Smiljanić, R., and A. R. Bradlow. 2005. Production and perception of clear speech in Croatian and English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 118(3): Pt. 1, 1677–88. Bradlow, A. R., and T. Bent. 2002. The clear speech effect for non‐native listeners Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 112: 272–84. Smiljanic, R. and A. Bradlow. 2008. Temporal Organization of English Clear and Plain Speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 124.5: 3171–82. Zeng, F.‐G., and S. Liu. 2006. Speech perception in individuals with auditory neuropathy. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49: 367–80. Focus Questions What other speaking style changes are similar to clear speech modifications and in what way? In what aspects may these other speaking style changes differ from clear speech? Explain why some of the different effects may arise? How does the H&H Theory (Lindblom, 1990) provide a conceptual framework for understanding the origin and nature of conversational‐to‐clear speech adjustments? What are the broad and long‐term goals of clear speech research in terms of its production and perception? Why is term ‘conversational’ speech not completely accurate in describing the elicited speech in most clear speech studies? How would you adapt the talkers’ task to elicit more spontaneous conversational and clear speech? What problems would this pose for your measurements and analyses? Why is it difficult to establish a direct link between individual acoustic–phonetic cues and their impact on intelligibility? What possible role in language processing could some of these conversational‐to‐clear speech modifications play (e.g., speaking rate decrease, vowel space expansion, increased energy in the 1000–3000 Hz range of long‐term spectra)? How do cue enhancement studies address the link between individual acoustic‐phonetic cues and

Audiology · Cognitive psychology · Cued speech · Linguistics · Motor theory of speech perception · Perception · Speech perception · Speech production · Speech recognition · Computer Science · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Psychology