Intelligibility of interrupted speech

The effects of speech interruption are illustrated with audio examples below. The first example is of a male voice

saying "The watchdog gave a warning growl." This is followed by several processed versions in which 50%

of the speech waveform is replaced by silence. This was achieved by multiplying the digital signal with a

square wave window function alternating between 0 and 1. The audio examples illustrate interruption rates of

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and 512 Hz. The figure shows the waveform of the sentence processed

with a 1-Hz interruption rate.

.WAV format .AU format

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School of Human Development

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