Abstract
Speech evaluation is important in maxillofacial rehabilitation. The monosyllable speech intelligibility （SI） test is one of the most widely used evaluation methods in Japan.However, the listening part of the test, taking time and effort, makes the test unduly subjective. The aim of the present study was to develop an automatic SI test system that does not require listening procedures. The speech of ten normal adults and seventeen maxillectomy patients with and without prostheses was evaluated using a newly developed automatic SI test system that employs computerized speech recognition techniques. The results from patients were compared with their corresponding Sls obtained using a perceptual method. The new system was used without any problems and enabled the examiner to obtain the results immediately: in normal subjects, there was no significant difference in their scores for the automatic SI test which involved three days. In patients with prostheses, there was no significant correlation between the scores on the automatic SI test and the scores on SI test obtained by the perceptual method, whereas in patients without prostheses, there was a highly significant correlation observable. These results indicate that our system, which involves no listening procedure, may effectively be used in identifying speech disorders in maxillofacial patients.
