Subjective and objective assessment of the listening quality of customer support waiting loops

This paper assesses the perceived listening quality of customer support waiting loops using both a subjective experiment as well as an objective perceptual assessment with POLQA (ITU-T Rec. P.863) and VISQOL. A modified version of the methodology defined in the ITU-T Rec. P.835 was derived and used in this paper to subjectively assess the...

Gaze behaviour and electrodermal activity: Objective measures of drivers’ trust in automated vehicles

Studies show that drivers’ intention to use automated vehicles is strongly modulated by trust. It follows that their benefits are unlikely to be achieved if users do not trust them. To date, most studies of trust in automated vehicles have relied on self-reports. However, questionnaires cannot capture real-time changes in drivers’ trust, and are...

Subjective and objective measurement of the intelligibility of synthesized speech impaired by the very low bit rate STANAG 4591 codec including packet loss

This paper deals with the intelligibility of speech coded by the STANAG 4591 standard codec, including packet loss, using synthesized speech input. Both subjective and objective assessments are used. It is shown that this codec significantly degrades intelligibility when compared to a standard narrowband filtered version of the synthesized...

Subjective and objective measurement of synthesized speech intelligibility in modern telephone conditions

This paper investigates the impact of different telephone channels, represented by impairments as introduced by modern telecommunication networks (e.g. speech coding, bandwidth limitation, packet loss, etc.), on the intelligibility of synthesized speech. Both subjective and objective assessments are used. Two different speech intelligibility...

Validity and inter-observer reliability of subjective hand-arm vibration assessments

Exposure to mechanical vibrations at work (e.g., due to handling powered tools) is a potential occupational risk as it may cause upper extremity complaints. However, reliable and valid assessment methods for vibration exposure at work are lacking. Measuring hand-arm vibration objectively is often difficult and expensive, while often used...

The SQUASH was a more valid tool than the OBiN for categorizing adults according to the Dutch physical activity and the combined guideline

Objective: To examine whether the "Short QUestionnaire to ASsess Health-enhancing physical activity" (SQUASH) and the "Injuries and Physical Activity in the Netherlands" questionnaire ("Ongevallen en Bewegen in Nederland," OBiN) were valid in assessing adherence to physical activity (PA) guidelines. Study Design and Setting: Participants (N =...

Association between objective and subjective measurements of comfort and discomfort in hand tools

In the current study, the relationship between objective measurements and subjective experienced comfort and discomfort in using handsaws was examined. Twelve carpenters evaluated five different handsaws. Objective measures of contact pressure (average pressure, pressure area and pressure-time (P-t) integral) in static and dynamic conditions,...

Relationships of contact pressure with subjective experiences of comfort and discomfort in using hand saws

The relationships of objective measurements (contact pressure and productivity) with subjective experienced comfort and discomfort in using hand saws was examined. Professional carpenters evaluated five different hand saws. The pressure-time integral during the static pressure measurement (beta = –0.24, p<.01) was highly related to comfort and...

Phoneme-group specific octave-band weights in predicting speech intelligibility

In an earlier study we derived robust frequency-weighting functions for prediction of the intelligibility of short nonsense words.These frequency-weighting functions are applied for prediction of intelligibility such as with the speech transmission index (STI).Six independent experiments revealed essentially similar frequency-weighting functions...

Validation of the revised STI-r method

The revised model for the speech transmission index (STIr, Speech Communication 28 (1999) 109), was validated with an independent set of 68 test conditions. For a subset of 18 conditions, including only additive noise and band-pass limiting, it was veri.ed that the STIr provides a good prediction of the CVC-word score. The additional...