The perception of speech sounds recorded within the uterus of a pregnant sheep

Abstract

The intelligibility of speech stimuli recorded within the uterus of a pregnant sheep was determined perceptually using a group of untrained judges. The intrauterine sound environment of the ewe was intended to simulate that of a pregnant woman. Two separate lists, one of meaningful and one of nonmeaningful speech stimuli, were delivered through a loudspeaker to the side of the ewe and were simultaneously recorded with an air microphone located 15 cm from the flank and with a hydrophone previously sutured to the neck of the fetus. Perceptual test tapes generated from these recordings were played to 102 judges. The intelligibility of the phonemes recorded in the air was significantly greater than the intelligibility of phonemes recorded from the uterus. A male talker’s voice was more intelligible than a female talker’s voice when recorded from within the uterus, but not so when recorded in the air. An analysis of the feature information transmission from recordings inside and outside the uterus revealed that voicing information is better transmitted in utero than place or manner information.