Speech recognition in individuals with dysarthria

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of speech training on the recognition accuracy of a speech recognition system (i.e. DragonDictate) for three speakers with moderate dysarthria and three typical speakers. A pretest was administered to measure speech intelligibility and mental state. Each subject participated in training sessions with the computer that involved the repetition of 70 stimulus items. Stimulus items were selected from a word list which contained acoustic-phonetic contrasts.

The results indicated superior recognition accuracy scores for typical speakers in contrast to speakers with dysarthria. Additionally, speakers with dysarthria required more sessions to achieve ceiling on recognition scores in comparison to the typical speakers. In summary, the speakers with dysarthria were able to obtain high recognition accuracy scores after training the system.