Logatom corpus for the assessment of the intelligibility in Spanish speaking environments and its relation with STI measurements

A 1000 consonant–vowel–consonant structure logatoms corpus (CVC-structure), grouped in 10 phonetically equally balanced lists of 100 words each, was developed to satisfy the need of subjective assessment of speech intelligibility in American Spanish speaking environments. This corpus was tested and correlated with the Speech Transmission Index (STI) measurements to compare its articulation intelligibility score with other lists’ scores.Through the development of this work it was determined that in two different acoustically poor rooms that have the same STI (with STI < 0.50), the intelligibility score is lower when the articulation test is performed in a quiet room with high reverberation time than when it is performed in a very noisy room with low reverberation time. The final correlation curve of the American Spanish CVC-structure corpus was around 10% points higher than the CVCEQB curve obtained by Steeneken and Houtgast in 2002.

► A CVC corpus is developed to assess intelligibility in Spanish speaking environments.
► The CVC logatom Spanish corpus was tested and correlated with the STI.
► In different acoustically poor rooms with equal STI the intelligibility score differs.
► The obtained correlation curve is compared with the ones obtained by other authors.