The Effects of Bandwidth Reduction on Human and Computer Recognition of Children´s Speech

Bandwidth affects recognition of children´s speech by humans and machines. The increase in automatic speech recognition errors caused by reducing bandwidth from 8 to 4 kHz is over 100% greater for children´s speech than for adults´. The increase in error rate as bandwidth decreases is similar for computer recognition of speech from children whose pronunciation is judged to be good, and human recognition of general children´s speech. For children with poorer pronunciation, bandwidth effects are masked by general variability. The results predict machine error rates for telephone bandwidth children´s speech between 30% and 95% greater than for adults´.