Covertly improving intelligibility with data-driven adaptations of speech timing

ArXi:2603.30032v1 Announce Type: new Human talkers often address listeners with language-comprehension challenges, such as hard-of-hearing or non-native adults, by globally slowing down their speech. However, it remains unclear whether this strategy actually makes speech intelligible. Here, we take advantage of recent advancements in machine-generated speech allowing precise control of speech rate in order to systematically examine how targeted speech-rate adjustments may improve comprehension.