THE CONTEXT EFFECT IN SPEECH RECOGNITION OF SENTENCES

Context plays an important role in speech recognition. The goal of the present study was to quantify context effects in speech recognition u sing the Basle Sentence Understanding Test. This test consists of two types of sentences according to the amount of contextual information: they contain sentences with highly predictable (HP) final words and se ntences with low predictable (LP) final words. The effect of different contextual situations on speech recognition was investigated in this study using the Basle Sentence Understanding Test. The speech recognit ion threshold of HP sentences was found to be 6 dB lower than that of LP sentences. However, contextual effects can only be demonstrated if the context is clearly understandable. In the Basle Sentence Understan ding Test, this is achieved by special masking techniques. The signifi cance of the recognition of the contextual part of the sentence with r espect to the recognition of the whole sentence is different in HP and LP sentences.