Effect of Accent on Speech Intelligibility in Multiple Speaker Environment with Sound Spatialization

Cocktail Party Effect has been used to isolate one sound above others in a multiple speaker environment. In previous studies, we have demonstrated that intelligibility can be improved by introducing directionality and gender differences in a multiple speaker environment. In this study, we examine the effect of accents on speech intelligibility. To improve clarity of speech, each speaker is assigned a direction using Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) which creates an auditory map of multiple conversations. We see that listeners can comprehend an odd accent in a multiple speaker environment better than the accent used by most speakers. An overall improvement of 31.4% was observed when this effect was tested over 12 subjects.