The role of listener familiarity in the perception of dysarthric speech

The effects of two qualitatively different familiarization procedures on listeners' perceptions of speech produced by a Korean woman with moderate-severe spastic-ataxic dysarthria were investigated. Thirty listeners were randomly assigned to one of three listening conditions. Prior to this task, members of the two experimental listening groups were familiarized with a speech sample produced by the woman with dysarthria. Listeners assigned to the Paragraph group heard the speaker read a paragraph twice as they followed along with a script. Listeners assigned to the Word List group heard the speaker read the same words comprising the paragraph, but the words were presented in a random order. This list was heard twice, as the listeners followed along with a script. The Control group performed the transcription task without receiving prior exposure to the dysarthric speech. The 30 listeners then orthographically transcribed sentences produced by the dysarthric speaker. Results showed that listeners familiarized with this dysarthric person's speech pattern (Word List and Paragraph groups) performed significantly better on the sentence transcription task than listeners who were not familiarized (Control group). Although the Paragraph group did not significantly outperform the Word List group, as was predicted, a trend in that direction did exist.