The Effect of Breathy Vocal Quality on Speech Intelligibility and Listening Effort in Background Noise.
Jing Shen, Elizabeth Heller Murray, Erin R Kulick
PMID 37817666WHAT IT FOUND
Severe breathiness lowered speech intelligibility in noise, while even mild breathiness increased listening effort.
The two factors did not interact, so breathiness and noise added to the difficulty separately rather than multiplying it.
Key findings
01Severe breathiness significantly lowered speech intelligibility in noise, but mild-moderate breathiness did not.
02Both mild-moderate and severe breathiness significantly increased listening effort, as measured by pupil dilation.
03There was no significant interaction between breathiness and noise level for intelligibility or overall listening effort.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used young listeners with normal hearing, so it does not show how older adults or those with hearing loss would perform. The noise used was nonspeech, which avoids linguistic interference but may not fully represent real-world environments like cafeterias. The effect sizes for intelligibility were small, suggesting young normal-hearing listeners had enough cognitive capacity to handle the combined challenges without a multiplicative effect.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The work was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that mild breathiness is harmless because intelligibility scores did not drop. The data show that even mild breathiness significantly increased the listener's effort, meaning communication is more taxing for the partner even when words are understood.