Aldhafeeri, Alqahtani, & Aldholmi, (2022). Speech rate and intelligibility of Arab Airlines’ safety instructions. ExLing 2022, 5-8.
We first analyzed and reported the speech rate (SR) of safety instructions (SIs) for nine Arab airlines, including Saudia, Flynas, EgyptAir, and Oman Air. EgyptAir had the slowest SR and Omani Air the fastest, a statistically significant difference (Kruskal-Wallis, p<0.001). Then, we assessed the impact of normal and accelerated (by 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%) SR in passenger-boarding noise (-6 dB) on speech intelligibility evaluation. Listeners' ratings demonstrated that intelligibility diminished to 48% at the original SR and to 7% at the 20% accelerated SR and that SR was a statistically significant factor (repeated-measures ANOVA, p<0.01). Arab airlines are advised to consider this finding and consult the International Civil Aviation Organization on the recommended SR.
Previous research has utilized the duration ratio and occasionally the duration difference as single-value metrics to measure and compare the temporal acoustics of durationally contrastive…
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