ASA 124th Meeting New Orleans 1992 October

3pPP2. Effects of discard intervals and compression frequency on comprehension of connected discourse in time compressed speech.

Nancy E. Poch

Dept. of Commun. Dis., Penn State Univ., 3-G Moore Bldg., University Park, PA 16802

Time compressed speech studies have shown decreasing speech intelligibility for compression rates above 40%. The discard intervals and/or sampling periods, however, are rarely reported in these studies and have not been generally considered. In addition, most studies used primarily monosyllabic words or isolated sentences. This study examines the effects of discard intervals and sampling periods on comprehension of short paragraphs in normal hearing listeners at a constant 50% compression rate. Discard intervals from 15 to 135 ms were used. Subjects were given a set of 16 possible associations for each compressed paragraph and asked to select 3 that actually occurred in the paragraph. Comprehension scores were reduced for longer discard intervals. Detailed results and implications for audiological testing will be discussed.