Construction of Mental Models in the Comprehension of Natural and Synthetic Speech

Author: Susan A. Duffy and Lynne C. Nygarrd

Abstract:
In a series of five experiments, the comprehension of synthetic speech was compared to natural speech. Subjects heard a series of three-sentence passages that described a spatial arrangement of four objects and then drew a diagram representing the spatial arrangement. passage were presented using either natural speed or synthetic speed produce by rule. Passage difficulty was manipulated by varying coreference relations across sentences. Subjects made more errors on the difficult passages and spent more time listening times and performance on the diagram task did not differ from that of the natural voice. When Votrax was used, performance on the diagram task was worse than for the natural voice. A predicted interaction of voice with passage difficulty did not emerge. Results are discussed in terms of a limited resource model of spoken language comprehension.