Familiar listeners and speech recognition technologies may improve the speech intelligibility of adults with Down syndrome1

Participants: Four young females and two males with Down syndrome were recruited to participate in the study, their age range was between 21 and 30 years. The participants had to meet the following criteria: (a) having a diagnosis of Down syndrome; (b) living with a family member (communication partner) who must be familiar with the individual’s speech; (c) having a normal vision and hearing abilities as indicated by the interaction with the investigator; (d) using speech as the primary communication method; and (e) having limited speech intelligibility. Furthermore, four undergraduate students were also recruited to serve as unfamiliar communication partners.