Comprehension of Synthetic Speech by Blind Children

Abstract

This research investigated the ability of blind children to comprehend synthetic speech as a result of practice in listening to it. After four 11- to 13-year-old blind students from a state residential school for the blind were tested to establish their listening grade levels, they listened individually to tape recordings of the Kurzweil Reading Machine reading stories that were one level below their tested level. After each story, the children answered multiple-choice comprehension questions read aloud by the researcher by marking braille answer sheets. Each child listened to four stories per day for 10 days (total: 40 stories). Comprehension scores were obtained by calculating the percentage of correct answers to questions about each story. Statistical analyses of the children's scores revealed a significant difference among comprehension scores at the .10 level of confidence and the presence of a linear trend at the .01 level of confidence. These results suggest that as exposure to synthetic speech increases, so does comprehension of synthetic speech.