Listener effort for highly intelligible tracheoesophageal speech

The purpose of this study was to determine whether: (a) inexperienced listeners can reliably judge listener effort and (b) whether listener effort provides unique information beyond speech intelligibility or acceptability in tracheoesophageal speech. Twenty inexperienced listeners made judgments of speech acceptability and amount of effort required to listen to 14 male tracheoesophageal speakers using a paired comparison paradigm. Intelligibility was controlled to limit the analysis to the relationship between ratings of listener effort and speech acceptability. Results showed that as a group, inexperienced listeners reliably rated both speech acceptability and listener effort. In addition, ratings of speech acceptability and listener effort were strongly correlated (r > .99); however, there was evidence that some individual listeners assigned different ratings for each dimension for the same speech samples. Results have important implications for communication success for tracheoesophageal speakers.Learning outcomes: Readers will be able to describe: (a) the measurement of listener burden in speech and (b) the differences and relationships among listener effort, speech acceptability and speech intelligibility.

► Inexperienced listeners reliably judged listener effort in tracheoesophageal speech.
► Ratings of listener effort and of speech acceptability were highly correlated.
► Equally intelligible samples received a range of ratings for effort and acceptability.
► Listener effort may capture information not expressed in ratings of acceptability.