Speech Recognition for Environmental Control: Effect of Microphone Type, Dysarthria, and Severity on Recognition Results

This study examines the use of commercially available automatic speech recognition (ASR) across microphone options as access to environmental control for individuals with and without dysarthria. A study of two groups of speakers (typical speech and dysarthria), was conducted to understand their performance using ASR and various microphones for environmental control. Specifically, dependent variables examined included attempts per command, recognition accuracy, frequency of error type, and perceived workload. A further sub-analysis of the group of participants with dysarthria examined the impact of severity. Results indicated a significantly larger number of attempts were required (P = 0.007), and significantly lower recognition accuracies were achieved by the dysarthric participants (P = 0.010). A sub-analysis examining severity demonstrated no significant differences between the typical speakers and participants with mild dysarthria. However, significant differences were evident (P = 0.007, P = 0.008) between mild and moderate-severe dysarthric participants. No significant differences existed across microphones. A higher frequency of threshold errors occurred for typical participants and no response errors for moderate-severe dysarthrics. There were no significant differences on the NASA Task Load Index.