Speech intelligibility is a human-made perceptual metric quantifying the degree to which speech can be understood by a listener. Parameters: (1) listener population and hearing condition, (2) test material (phonemes, words, sentences), (3) presentation condition (SNR, reverberation, distortion), (4) scoring method (percent correct, word recognition score, intelligibility index). Mechanism: measured via controlled listening tests and predicted via acoustic models such as the Speech Intelligibility Index; persists through standardized test protocols, speech science literature, hearing aid and telecommunication standards, and evaluation metrics used in speech enhancement research. [formal: intelligibilitas orationis | substrate: behavior | horizon: generations | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.03]
Accepted ontology entry
speech-intelligibility
Speech intelligibility is a human-made perceptual metric quantifying the degree to which speech can be understood by a listener. Parameters: (1) listener population and hearing condition, (2) test material (phonemes, words, sentences), (3)…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made perceptual metric built to persist as a standardized measure of speech understanding used in speech science, audiology, and telecommunications.
Names and aliases
- speech-intelligibilityen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmsps9i0v06eejlssqrjcqyviSERVES →
Speech intelligibility is a quality metric computed to evaluate and guide signal processing systems that enhance, compress, or transmit speech. It serves signal processing by providing the target objective that processing algorithms optimize for.
Relations to this entry
- speech-processing← SERVES
Speech processing (analysis, synthesis, enhancement) is built and maintained for the sake of improving how well speech can be understood — speech intelligibility is its designed purpose. Servant (speech-processing) points at master (speech-intelligibility) per Law 8d.
- speech-enhancement← SERVES
Speech enhancement algorithms are built specifically to improve speech intelligibility in degraded conditions. The servant technique points to the master goal of making speech understandable; removal of the intelligibility goal removes the purpose for which the enhancement is designed.
Record identity
- Created
- Aug 31, 2026, 12:52 PM UTC
- Content hash
- f6036e823f45868440d01100df5144b8980f0166e9522ba9b6ea039546581ee3