Listener Effort and Response Time When Transcribing Words Spoken by Children with Dysarthria

摘要

The relationship between an objective (listener response time) and subjective (direct magnitude estimate or DME) measure of listener effort was determined for 28 listeners transcribing audio recordings of 40 words spoken by young children with spastic dysarthria. Words were presented in background noise at +10 dB SNR. Response time score was listeners' median response time to identify a word. DME effort score was the median DME rating assigned by listeners to a word. Relationships between accuracy scores (number of listeners who transcribed a word correctly) and each measure of listener effort were also determined. A moderately strong correlation was found between response time and DME of listener effort scores (r = 0.733, p < .001) (words with longer response times tended to have higher effort ratings). Weaker relationships were found between accuracy and response time (r = -0.460, p = .003) and accuracy and DME effort scores (r = -0.593, p < .001) (words with higher accuracy scores tended to have shorter response times and lower effort ratings). Controlling for accuracy scores, a partial correlation coefficient of r = 0.644 (p < .001) was found between response time and DME effort scores, indicating that response time was a significant predictor of DME, independent of word accuracy.