Covertly improving intelligibility with data-driven adaptations of speech timing
Human talkers often address listeners with language-comprehension challenges, such as hard-of-hearing or non-native adults, by globally slowing down their speech. However, it remains unclear whether this strategy actually makes speech more intelligible. Here, we take advantage of recent advancements in machine-generated speech allowing more precise control of speech rate in order to systematically examine how targeted speech-rate adjustments may improve comprehension. We first use reverse-correlation experiments to show that the temporal influence of speech rate prior to a target vowel contrast (ex. the tense-lax distinction) in fact manifests in a scissor-like pattern, with opposite effe...
| Authors | Paige Tuttösí, Angelica Lim, H. Henny Yeung et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 31 March 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 31 March 2026 |
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