EEG-based Objective Quality Assessment of Interrupted Speech

Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2023 Jul:2023:1-4. doi: 10.1109/EMBC40787.2023.10340901.

Abstract

As an important dimension of speech degradation, interruption destroys the acoustic waveform information of a speech signal and seriously affects the quality rating in speech perception. Existing studies assessing the quality of interrupted speech mainly focus on subjective methods. This work used event-related potentials (ERPs) to objectively investigate the effects of two interruption factors (i.e., interruption duty cycle and interruption rate) on the perceived quality of the periodically interrupted speech. An oddball-paradigm based ERP experiment was designed, and the periodically interrupted stimuli were presented to participants in the ERP experiment. Meanwhile, participants were instructed to provide their subjective quality ratings of interrupted speech under the same interruption conditions. The experimental results showed that the degree of both interruption duty cycle and interruption rate affected the peak latency of mismatch negativity (MMN) of the collected ERP response, with a smaller MMN peak latency under conditions with a smaller interruption duty cycle or a larger interruption rate. These findings are largely consistent with the subjective quality rating results, suggesting that the peak latency of MMN response can be potentially used as an objective quality indicator of the periodically interrupted speech.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Acoustics
  • Electroencephalography
  • Evoked Potentials / physiology
  • Humans
  • Speech Perception* / physiology
  • Speech*