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Sample records for spontaneous speech samples

  1. Detection of target phonemes in spontaneous and read speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mehta, G; Cutler, A

    1988-01-01

    Although spontaneous speech occurs more frequently in most listeners' experience than read speech, laboratory studies of human speech recognition typically use carefully controlled materials read from a script. The phonological and prosodic characteristics of spontaneous and read speech differ considerably, however, which suggests that laboratory results may not generalise to the recognition of spontaneous speech. In the present study listeners were presented with both spontaneous and read speech materials, and their response time to detect word-initial target phonemes was measured. Responses were, overall, equally fast in each speech mode. However, analysis of effects previously reported in phoneme detection studies revealed significant differences between speech modes. In read speech but not in spontaneous speech, later targets were detected more rapidly than targets preceded by short words. In contrast, in spontaneous speech but not in read speech, targets were detected more rapidly in accented than in unaccented words and in strong than in weak syllables. An explanation for this pattern is offered in terms of characteristic prosodic differences between spontaneous and read speech. The results support claims from previous work that listeners pay great attention to prosodic information in the process of recognising speech.

  2. Detection of target phonemes in spontaneous and read speech

    OpenAIRE

    Mehta, G.; Cutler, A.

    1988-01-01

    Although spontaneous speech occurs more frequently in most listeners’ experience than read speech, laboratory studies of human speech recognition typically use carefully controlled materials read from a script. The phonological and prosodic characteristics of spontaneous and read speech differ considerably, however, which suggests that laboratory results may not generalize to the recognition of spontaneous and read speech materials, and their response time to detect word-initial target phonem...

  3. Detection of target phonemes in spontaneous and read speech

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Mehta, G.; Cutler, A.

    1988-01-01

    Although spontaneous speech occurs more frequently in most listeners' experience than read speech, laboratory studies of human speech recognition typically use carefully controlled materials read from a script. The phonological and prosodic characteristics of spontaneous and read speech differ

  4. Motivational Projections of Russian Spontaneous Speech

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    Galina M. Shipitsina

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available The article deals with the semantic, pragmatic and structural features of words, phrases, dialogues motivation, in the contemporary Russian popular speech. These structural features are characterized by originality and unconventional use. Language material is the result of authors` direct observation of spontaneous verbal communication between people of different social and age groups. The words and remarks were analyzed in compliance with the communication system of national Russian language and cultural background of popular speech. Studies have discovered that in spoken discourse there are some other ways to increase the expression statement. It is important to note that spontaneous speech identifies lacunae in the nominative language and its vocabulary system. It is proved, prefixation is also effective and regular way of the same action presenting. The most typical forms, ways and means to update language resources as a result of the linguistic creativity of native speakers were identified.

  5. Specific acoustic models for spontaneous and dictated style in indonesian speech recognition

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    Vista, C. B.; Satriawan, C. H.; Lestari, D. P.; Widyantoro, D. H.

    2018-03-01

    The performance of an automatic speech recognition system is affected by differences in speech style between the data the model is originally trained upon and incoming speech to be recognized. In this paper, the usage of GMM-HMM acoustic models for specific speech styles is investigated. We develop two systems for the experiments; the first employs a speech style classifier to predict the speech style of incoming speech, either spontaneous or dictated, then decodes this speech using an acoustic model specifically trained for that speech style. The second system uses both acoustic models to recognise incoming speech and decides upon a final result by calculating a confidence score of decoding. Results show that training specific acoustic models for spontaneous and dictated speech styles confers a slight recognition advantage as compared to a baseline model trained on a mixture of spontaneous and dictated training data. In addition, the speech style classifier approach of the first system produced slightly more accurate results than the confidence scoring employed in the second system.

  6. Multimedia with a speech track: searching spontaneous conversational speech

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    Larson, Martha; Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; de Jong, Franciska M.G.; Kohler, Joachim; Kraaij, Wessel

    After two successful years at SIGIR in 2007 and 2008, the third workshop on Searching Spontaneous Conversational Speech (SSCS 2009) was held conjunction with the ACM Multimedia 2009. The goal of the SSCS series is to serve as a forum that brings together the disciplines that collaborate on spoken

  7. A Comparison between Three Methods of Language Sampling: Freeplay, Narrative Speech and Conversation

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    Yasser Rezapour

    2011-10-01

    Full Text Available Objectives: The spontaneous language sample analysis is an important part of the language assessment protocol. Language samples give us useful information about how children use language in the natural situations of daily life. The purpose of this study was to compare Conversation, Freeplay, and narrative speech in aspects of Mean Length of Utterance (MLU, Type-token ratio (TTR, and the number of utterances. Methods: By cluster sampling method, a total of 30 Semnanian five-year-old boys with normal speech and language development were selected from the active kindergartens in Semnan city. Conversation, Freeplay, and narrative speech were three applied language sample elicitation methods to obtain 15 minutes of children’s spontaneous language samples. Means for MLU, TTR, and the number of utterances are analyzed by dependent ANOVA. Results: The result showed no significant difference in number of elicited utterances among these three language sampling methods. Narrative speech elicited longer MLU than freeplay and conversation, and compared to freeplay and narrative speech, conversation elicited higher TTR. Discussion: Results suggest that in the clinical assessment of the Persian-language children, it is better to use narrative speech to elicit longer MLU and to use conversation to elicit higher TTR.

  8. Automatic recognition of spontaneous emotions in speech using acoustic and lexical features

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Raaijmakers, S.; Truong, K.P.

    2008-01-01

    We developed acoustic and lexical classifiers, based on a boosting algorithm, to assess the separability on arousal and valence dimensions in spontaneous emotional speech. The spontaneous emotional speech data was acquired by inviting subjects to play a first-person shooter video game. Our acoustic

  9. Computer-Assisted Analysis of Spontaneous Speech: Quantification of Basic Parameters in Aphasic and Unimpaired Language

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    Hussmann, Katja; Grande, Marion; Meffert, Elisabeth; Christoph, Swetlana; Piefke, Martina; Willmes, Klaus; Huber, Walter

    2012-01-01

    Although generally accepted as an important part of aphasia assessment, detailed analysis of spontaneous speech is rarely carried out in clinical practice mostly due to time limitations. The Aachener Sprachanalyse (ASPA; Aachen Speech Analysis) is a computer-assisted method for the quantitative analysis of German spontaneous speech that allows for…

  10. Searching Spontaneous Conversational Speech. Proceedings of ACM SIGIR Workshop (SSCS2008)

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Köhler, J.; Larson, M; de Jong, Franciska M.G.; Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; Kraaij, W.

    2008-01-01

    The second workshop on Searching Spontaneous Conversational Speech (SSCS 2008) was held in Singapore on July 24, 2008 in conjunction with the 31st Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference. The goal of the workshop was to bring the speech community and the information retrieval community together.

  11. Age-related changes of the dental aesthetic zone at rest and during spontaneous smiling and speech.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Geld, P.A.A.M. van der; Oosterveld, P.; Kuijpers-Jagtman, A.M.

    2008-01-01

    The aims of this study were to analyse lip line heights and age effects in an adult male population during spontaneous smiling, speech, and tooth display in the natural rest position and to determine whether lip line height follows a consistent pattern during these different functions. The sample

  12. Proceedings of the ACM SIGIR Workshop ''Searching Spontaneous Conversational Speech''

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    de Jong, Franciska M.G.; Oard, Douglas; Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; Raaijmakers, Stephan

    2007-01-01

    The Proceedings contain the contributions to the workshop on Searching Spontaneous Conversational Speech organized in conjunction with the 30th ACM SIGIR, Amsterdam 2007. The papers reflect some of the emerging focus areas and cross-cutting research topics, together addressing evaluation metrics,

  13. Age-related changes of the dental aesthetic zone at rest and during spontaneous smiling and speech.

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    Van der Geld, Pieter; Oosterveld, Paul; Kuijpers-Jagtman, Anne Marie

    2008-08-01

    The aims of this study were to analyse lip line heights and age effects in an adult male population during spontaneous smiling, speech, and tooth display in the natural rest position and to determine whether lip line height follows a consistent pattern during these different functions. The sample consisted of 122 randomly selected male participants from three age cohorts (20-25 years, 35-40 years, and 50-55 years). Lip line heights were measured with a digital videographic method for smile analysis, which had previously been tested and found reliable. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out using correlation analysis, analysis of variance, and Tukey's post hoc tests. Maxillary lip line heights during spontaneous smiling were generally higher in the premolar area than at the anterior teeth. The aesthetic zone in 75 per cent of the participants included all maxillary teeth up to the first molar. Coherence in lip line heights during spontaneous smiling, speech, and tooth display in the natural rest position was confirmed by significant correlations. In older subjects, maxillary lip line heights decreased significantly in all situations. Lip line heights during spontaneous smiling were reduced by approximately 2 mm. In older participants, the mandibular lip line heights also changed significantly and teeth were displayed less during spontaneous smiling. Mandibular tooth display in the rest position increased significantly. Upper lip length increased significantly by almost 4 mm in older subjects, whereas upper lip elevation did not change significantly. The significant increasing lip coverage of the maxillary teeth indicates that the effects of age should be included in orthodontic treatment planning.

  14. Early Recovery of Aphasia through Thrombolysis: The Significance of Spontaneous Speech.

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    Furlanis, Giovanni; Ridolfi, Mariana; Polverino, Paola; Menichelli, Alina; Caruso, Paola; Naccarato, Marcello; Sartori, Arianna; Torelli, Lucio; Pesavento, Valentina; Manganotti, Paolo

    2018-07-01

    Aphasia is one of the most devastating stroke-related consequences for social interaction and daily activities. Aphasia recovery in acute stroke depends on the degree of reperfusion after thrombolysis or thrombectomy. As aphasia assessment tests are often time-consuming for patients with acute stroke, physicians have been developing rapid and simple tests. The aim of our study is to evaluate the improvement of language functions in the earliest stage in patients treated with thrombolysis and in nontreated patients using our rapid screening test. Our study is a single-center prospective observational study conducted at the Stroke Unit of the University Medical Hospital of Trieste (January-December 2016). Patients treated with thrombolysis and nontreated patients underwent 3 aphasia assessments through our rapid screening test (at baseline, 24 hours, and 72 hours). The screening test assesses spontaneous speech, oral comprehension of words, reading aloud and comprehension of written words, oral comprehension of sentences, naming, repetition of words and a sentence, and writing words. The study included 40 patients: 18 patients treated with thrombolysis and 22 nontreated patients. Both groups improved over time. Among all language parameters, spontaneous speech was statistically significant between 24 and 72 hours (P value = .012), and between baseline and 72 hours (P value = .017). Our study demonstrates that patients treated with thrombolysis experience greater improvement in language than the nontreated patients. The difference between the 2 groups is increasingly evident over time. Moreover, spontaneous speech is the parameter marked by the greatest improvement. Copyright © 2018 National Stroke Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  15. Do long-term tongue piercings affect speech quality?

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    Heinen, Esther; Birkholz, Peter; Willmes, Klaus; Neuschaefer-Rube, Christiane

    2017-10-01

    To explore possible effects of tongue piercing on perceived speech quality. Using a quasi-experimental design, we analyzed the effect of tongue piercing on speech in a perception experiment. Samples of spontaneous speech and read speech were recorded from 20 long-term pierced and 20 non-pierced individuals (10 males, 10 females each). The individuals having a tongue piercing were recorded with attached and removed piercing. The audio samples were blindly rated by 26 female and 20 male laypersons and by 5 female speech-language pathologists with regard to perceived speech quality along 5 dimensions: speech clarity, speech rate, prosody, rhythm and fluency. We found no statistically significant differences for any of the speech quality dimensions between the pierced and non-pierced individuals, neither for the read nor for the spontaneous speech. In addition, neither length nor position of piercing had a significant effect on speech quality. The removal of tongue piercings had no effects on speech performance either. Rating differences between laypersons and speech-language pathologists were not dependent on the presence of a tongue piercing. People are able to perfectly adapt their articulation to long-term tongue piercings such that their speech quality is not perceptually affected.

  16. Production planning and coronal stop deletion in spontaneous speech

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    James Tanner

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Many phonological processes can be affected by segmental context spanning word boundaries, which often lead to variable outcomes. This paper tests the idea that some of this variability can be explained by reference to production planning. We examine coronal stop deletion (CSD, a variable process conditioned by preceding and upcoming phonological context, in a corpus of spontaneous British English speech, as a means of investigating a number of variables associated with planning: Prosodic boundary strength, word frequency, conditional probability of the following word, and speech rate. From the perspective of production planning, (1 prosodic boundaries should affect deletion rate independently of following context; (2 given the locality of production planning, the effect of the following context should decrease at stronger prosodic boundaries; and (3 other factors affecting planning scope should modulate the effect of upcoming phonological material above and beyond the modulating effect of prosodic boundaries. We build a statistical model of CSD realization, using pause length as a quantitative proxy for boundary strength, and find support for these predictions. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that the locality of production planning constrains variability in speech production, and have practical implications for work on CSD and other variable processes.

  17. The Prevalence of Speech Disorders among University Students in Jordan

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    Alaraifi, Jehad Ahmad; Amayreh, Mousa Mohammad; Saleh, Mohammad Yusef

    2014-01-01

    Problem: There are no available studies on the prevalence, and distribution of speech disorders among Arabic speaking undergraduate students in Jordan. Method: A convenience sample of 400 undergraduate students at the University of Jordan was screened for speech disorders. Two spontaneous speech samples and an oral reading of a passage were…

  18. Characteristics of Swahili-English bilingual agrammatic spontaneous speech and the consequences for understanding agrammatic aphasia

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    Abuom, Tom O.; Bastiaanse, Roelien

    Most studies on spontaneous speech of individuals with agrammatism have focused almost exclusively on monolingual individuals. There is hardly any previous research on bilinguals, especially of structurally different languages; and none on characterization of agrammatism in Swahili. The current

  19. Speech Analysis of Bengali Speaking Children with Repaired Cleft Lip & Palate

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    Chakrabarty, Madhushree; Kumar, Suman; Chatterjee, Indranil; Maheshwari, Neha

    2012-01-01

    The present study aims at analyzing speech samples of four Bengali speaking children with repaired cleft palates with a view to differentiate between the misarticulations arising out of a deficit in linguistic skills and structural or motoric limitations. Spontaneous speech samples were collected and subjected to a number of linguistic analyses…

  20. Speech entrainment enables patients with Broca’s aphasia to produce fluent speech

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    Hubbard, H. Isabel; Hudspeth, Sarah Grace; Holland, Audrey L.; Bonilha, Leonardo; Fromm, Davida; Rorden, Chris

    2012-01-01

    A distinguishing feature of Broca’s aphasia is non-fluent halting speech typically involving one to three words per utterance. Yet, despite such profound impairments, some patients can mimic audio-visual speech stimuli enabling them to produce fluent speech in real time. We call this effect ‘speech entrainment’ and reveal its neural mechanism as well as explore its usefulness as a treatment for speech production in Broca’s aphasia. In Experiment 1, 13 patients with Broca’s aphasia were tested in three conditions: (i) speech entrainment with audio-visual feedback where they attempted to mimic a speaker whose mouth was seen on an iPod screen; (ii) speech entrainment with audio-only feedback where patients mimicked heard speech; and (iii) spontaneous speech where patients spoke freely about assigned topics. The patients produced a greater variety of words using audio-visual feedback compared with audio-only feedback and spontaneous speech. No difference was found between audio-only feedback and spontaneous speech. In Experiment 2, 10 of the 13 patients included in Experiment 1 and 20 control subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine the neural mechanism that supports speech entrainment. Group results with patients and controls revealed greater bilateral cortical activation for speech produced during speech entrainment compared with spontaneous speech at the junction of the anterior insula and Brodmann area 47, in Brodmann area 37, and unilaterally in the left middle temporal gyrus and the dorsal portion of Broca’s area. Probabilistic white matter tracts constructed for these regions in the normal subjects revealed a structural network connected via the corpus callosum and ventral fibres through the extreme capsule. Unilateral areas were connected via the arcuate fasciculus. In Experiment 3, all patients included in Experiment 1 participated in a 6-week treatment phase using speech entrainment to improve speech production

  1. Particularities of the (not so emotional speech in European Portuguese: Acted and spontaneous data analysis

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    Ana Margarida Belém Nunes

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available The present article is a symbiosis of two previous studies made by the author on European Portuguese Emotional Speech. It is known that nonverbal vocal expressions, such as laughter, vocalizations and, for instance, screams are an important source of emotional cues in social contexts (Lima et al., 2013. In social contexts we get information’s about others emotional states also by facial and corporal expressions, touch and voice cues, (Lima et al., 2013 & Cowie et al, 2003. Nevertheless most of the existent research on emotion is based on simulated emotions that are induced in laboratory and/or produced by professional actors. In this study in particular, it is proposed to explore how much and in which voice related parameters spontaneous and acted speech diverge. On the other hand, this study will help to obtain data on emotional speech and to describe the expression of emotions, by voice alone, for the first time for European Portuguese. Analyses are mainly focused on parameters that are generally accepted as more directly related with voice quality like F0; jitter; shimmer and HNR (Lima et all, 2013; Tiovanen et al, 2006; Drioli et all, 2003. Given the scarcity of studies on voice quality in European Portuguese, it is important to highlight that this work presents original corpora specifically created for the presented research: a small corpus for spontaneous emotional speech and Feeltrace system to provide the necessary annotation and interpretation of emotions; a second corpus for acted emotions produced by a professional actor. It is particularly important to highlight that was found that European Portuguese presents some specificities on the values obtained for neutral expression, sadness and joy, that do not occur in other languages.

  2. Finite Verb Morphology in the Spontaneous Speech of Dutch-Speaking Children With Hearing Loss.

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    Hammer, Annemiek; Coene, Martine

    2016-01-01

    In this study, the acquisition of Dutch finite verb morphology is investigated in children with cochlear implants (CIs) with profound hearing loss and in children with hearing aids (HAs) with moderate to severe hearing loss. Comparing these two groups of children increases our insight into how hearing experience and audibility affect the acquisition of morphosyntax. Spontaneous speech samples were analyzed of 48 children with CIs and 29 children with HAs, ages 4 to 7 years. These language samples were analyzed by means of standardized language analysis involving mean length of utterance, the number of finite verbs produced, and target-like subject-verb agreement. The outcomes were interpreted relative to expectations based on the performance of typically developing peers with normal hearing. Outcomes of all measures were correlated with hearing level in the group of HA users and age at implantation in the group of CI users. For both groups, the number of finite verbs that were produced in 50-utterance sample was on par with mean length of utterance and at the lower bound of the normal distribution. No significant differences were found between children with CIs and HAs on any of the measures under investigation. Yet, both groups produced more subject-verb agreement errors than are to be expected for typically developing hearing peers. No significant correlation was found between the hearing level of the children and the relevant measures of verb morphology, both with respect to the overall number of verbs that were used and the number of errors that children made. Within the group of CI users, the outcomes were significantly correlated with age at implantation. When producing finite verb morphology, profoundly deaf children wearing CIs perform similarly to their peers with moderate-to-severe hearing loss wearing HAs. Hearing loss negatively affects the acquisition of subject-verb agreement regardless of the hearing device (CI or HA) that the child is wearing. The

  3. Speech Entrainment Compensates for Broca's Area Damage

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    Fridriksson, Julius; Basilakos, Alexandra; Hickok, Gregory; Bonilha, Leonardo; Rorden, Chris

    2015-01-01

    Speech entrainment (SE), the online mimicking of an audiovisual speech model, has been shown to increase speech fluency in patients with Broca's aphasia. However, not all individuals with aphasia benefit from SE. The purpose of this study was to identify patterns of cortical damage that predict a positive response SE's fluency-inducing effects. Forty-four chronic patients with left hemisphere stroke (15 female) were included in this study. Participants completed two tasks: 1) spontaneous speech production, and 2) audiovisual SE. Number of different words per minute was calculated as a speech output measure for each task, with the difference between SE and spontaneous speech conditions yielding a measure of fluency improvement. Voxel-wise lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) was used to relate the number of different words per minute for spontaneous speech, SE, and SE-related improvement to patterns of brain damage in order to predict lesion locations associated with the fluency-inducing response to speech entrainment. Individuals with Broca's aphasia demonstrated a significant increase in different words per minute during speech entrainment versus spontaneous speech. A similar pattern of improvement was not seen in patients with other types of aphasia. VLSM analysis revealed damage to the inferior frontal gyrus predicted this response. Results suggest that SE exerts its fluency-inducing effects by providing a surrogate target for speech production via internal monitoring processes. Clinically, these results add further support for the use of speech entrainment to improve speech production and may help select patients for speech entrainment treatment. PMID:25989443

  4. Perceived Liveliness and Speech Comprehensibility in Aphasia: The Effects of Direct Speech in Auditory Narratives

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    Groenewold, Rimke; Bastiaanse, Roelien; Nickels, Lyndsey; Huiskes, Mike

    2014-01-01

    Background: Previous studies have shown that in semi-spontaneous speech, individuals with Broca's and anomic aphasia produce relatively many direct speech constructions. It has been claimed that in "healthy" communication direct speech constructions contribute to the liveliness, and indirectly to the comprehensibility, of speech.…

  5. Perceived liveliness and speech comprehensibility in aphasia : the effects of direct speech in auditory narratives

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Groenewold, Rimke; Bastiaanse, Roelien; Nickels, Lyndsey; Huiskes, Mike

    2014-01-01

    Background: Previous studies have shown that in semi-spontaneous speech, individuals with Broca's and anomic aphasia produce relatively many direct speech constructions. It has been claimed that in 'healthy' communication direct speech constructions contribute to the liveliness, and indirectly to

  6. Developmental profile of speech-language and communicative functions in an individual with the preserved speech variant of Rett syndrome.

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    Marschik, Peter B; Vollmann, Ralf; Bartl-Pokorny, Katrin D; Green, Vanessa A; van der Meer, Larah; Wolin, Thomas; Einspieler, Christa

    2014-08-01

    We assessed various aspects of speech-language and communicative functions of an individual with the preserved speech variant of Rett syndrome (RTT) to describe her developmental profile over a period of 11 years. For this study, we incorporated the following data resources and methods to assess speech-language and communicative functions during pre-, peri- and post-regressional development: retrospective video analyses, medical history data, parental checklists and diaries, standardized tests on vocabulary and grammar, spontaneous speech samples and picture stories to elicit narrative competences. Despite achieving speech-language milestones, atypical behaviours were present at all times. We observed a unique developmental speech-language trajectory (including the RTT typical regression) affecting all linguistic and socio-communicative sub-domains in the receptive as well as the expressive modality. Future research should take into consideration a potentially considerable discordance between formal and functional language use by interpreting communicative acts on a more cautionary note.

  7. Progressive apraxia of speech as a window into the study of speech planning processes.

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    Laganaro, Marina; Croisier, Michèle; Bagou, Odile; Assal, Frédéric

    2012-09-01

    We present a 3-year follow-up study of a patient with progressive apraxia of speech (PAoS), aimed at investigating whether the theoretical organization of phonetic encoding is reflected in the progressive disruption of speech. As decreased speech rate was the most striking pattern of disruption during the first 2 years, durational analyses were carried out longitudinally on syllables excised from spontaneous, repetition and reading speech samples. The crucial result of the present study is the demonstration of an effect of syllable frequency on duration: the progressive disruption of articulation rate did not affect all syllables in the same way, but followed a gradient that was function of the frequency of use of syllable-sized motor programs. The combination of data from this case of PAoS with previous psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic data, points to a frequency organization of syllable-sized speech-motor plans. In this study we also illustrate how studying PAoS can be exploited in theoretical and clinical investigations of phonetic encoding as it represents a unique opportunity to investigate speech while it progressively disrupts. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Srl. All rights reserved.

  8. Consonant and Syllable Structure Patterns in Childhood Apraxia of Speech: Developmental Change in Three Children

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    Jacks, Adam; Marquardt, Thomas P.; Davis, Barbara L.

    2006-01-01

    Changes in consonant and syllable-level error patterns of three children diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) were investigated in a 3-year longitudinal study. Spontaneous speech samples were analyzed to assess the accuracy of consonants and syllables. Consonant accuracy was low overall, with most frequent errors on middle- and…

  9. Dynamics of entanglement between two atomic samples with spontaneous scattering

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Di Lisi, Antonio; De Siena, Silvio; Illuminati, Fabrizio

    2004-01-01

    We investigate the effects of spontaneous scattering on the evolution of entanglement of two atomic samples, probed by phase-shift measurements on optical beams interacting with both samples. We develop a formalism of conditional quantum evolutions and present a wave function analysis implemented in numerical simulations of the state vector dynamics. This method allows us to track the evolution of entanglement and to compare it with the predictions obtained when spontaneous scattering is neglected. We provide numerical evidence that the interferometric scheme to entangle atomic samples is only marginally affected by the presence of spontaneous scattering and should thus be robust even in more realistic situations

  10. [Repetitive phenomenona in the spontaneous speech of aphasic patients: perseveration, stereotypy, echolalia, automatism and recurring utterance].

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    Wallesch, C W; Brunner, R J; Seemüller, E

    1983-12-01

    Repetitive phenomena in spontaneous speech were investigated in 30 patients with chronic infarctions of the left hemisphere which included Broca's and/or Wernicke's area and/or the basal ganglia. Perseverations, stereotypies, and echolalias occurred with all types of brain lesions, automatisms and recurring utterances only with those patients, whose infarctions involved Wernicke's area and basal ganglia. These patients also showed more echolalic responses. The results are discussed in view of the role of the basal ganglia as motor program generators.

  11. Spontaneous speech: Quantifying daily communication in Spanish-speaking individuals with aphasia.

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    Silvia Martínez-Ferreiro

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available Observable disruptions in spontaneous speech are among the most prominent characteristics of aphasia. The potential of language production analyses in discourse contexts to reveal subtle language deficits has been progressively exploited, becoming essential for diagnosing language disorders (Vermeulen et al., 1989; Goodglass et al., 2000; Prins and Bastiaanse, 2004; Jaecks et al., 2012. Based on previous studies, short and/or fragmentary utterances, and consequently a shorter MLU, are expected in the speech of individuals with aphasia, together with a large proportions of incomplete sentences and a limited use of embeddings. Fewer verbs with a lower diversity (lower type/token ratio and fewer internal arguments are also predicted, as well as a low proportion of inflected verbs (Bastiaanse and Jonkers, 1998. However, this profile comes mainly from the study of individuals with prototypical aphasia types, mainly Broca’s aphasia, raising the question of how accurate spontaneous speech is to pinpoint deficits in individuals with less clear diagnoses. To address this question, we present the results of a spontaneous speech analysis of 25 Spanish-speaking subjects: 10 individuals with aphasia (IWAs, 7 male and 3 female (mean age: 64.2 in neural stable condition (> 1 year post-onset who suffered from a single CVA in the left hemisphere (Rosell, 2005, and 15 non-brain-damaged matched speakers (NBDs. In the aphasia group, 7 of the participants were diagnosed as non-fluent (1 motor aphasia, 4 transcortical motor aphasia or motor aphasia with signs of transcorticality, 2 mixed aphasia with motor predominance, and 3 of them as fluent (mixed aphasia with anomic predominance. The protocol for data collection included semi-standardized interviews, in which participants were asked 3 questions evoking past, present, and future events (last job, holidays, and hobbies. 300 words per participant were analyzed. The MLU over the total 300 words revealed a decreased

  12. Prosodic Contrasts in Ironic Speech

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    Bryant, Gregory A.

    2010-01-01

    Prosodic features in spontaneous speech help disambiguate implied meaning not explicit in linguistic surface structure, but little research has examined how these signals manifest themselves in real conversations. Spontaneously produced verbal irony utterances generated between familiar speakers in conversational dyads were acoustically analyzed…

  13. Good and bad in the hands of politicians: spontaneous gestures during positive and negative speech.

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    Daniel Casasanto

    2010-07-01

    Full Text Available According to the body-specificity hypothesis, people with different bodily characteristics should form correspondingly different mental representations, even in highly abstract conceptual domains. In a previous test of this proposal, right- and left-handers were found to associate positive ideas like intelligence, attractiveness, and honesty with their dominant side and negative ideas with their non-dominant side. The goal of the present study was to determine whether 'body-specific' associations of space and valence can be observed beyond the laboratory in spontaneous behavior, and whether these implicit associations have visible consequences.We analyzed speech and gesture (3012 spoken clauses, 1747 gestures from the final debates of the 2004 and 2008 US presidential elections, which involved two right-handers (Kerry, Bush and two left-handers (Obama, McCain. Blind, independent coding of speech and gesture allowed objective hypothesis testing. Right- and left-handed candidates showed contrasting associations between gesture and speech. In both of the left-handed candidates, left-hand gestures were associated more strongly with positive-valence clauses and right-hand gestures with negative-valence clauses; the opposite pattern was found in both right-handed candidates.Speakers associate positive messages more strongly with dominant hand gestures and negative messages with non-dominant hand gestures, revealing a hidden link between action and emotion. This pattern cannot be explained by conventions in language or culture, which associate 'good' with 'right' but not with 'left'; rather, results support and extend the body-specificity hypothesis. Furthermore, results suggest that the hand speakers use to gesture may have unexpected (and probably unintended communicative value, providing the listener with a subtle index of how the speaker feels about the content of the co-occurring speech.

  14. Effects of the Syntactic Complexity on Speech Dysfluency of Stuttering Persian-Speaking Children and Adults in Conversational Speech

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    Behrooz Mahmoodi Bakhtiari

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available Background and Aim: Recently, researchers have increasingly turned to study the relation between stuttering and syntactic complexity. This study investigates the effect of syntactic complexity on theamount of speech dysfluency in stuttering Persian-speaking children and adults in conversational speech. The obtained results can pave the way to a better understanding of stuttering in children andadults, and finding more appropriate treatments.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the participants were 15 stuttering adult Persian-speakers, older than 15 years, and 15 stuttering child Persian-speakers of 4-6 years of age. In this study, first a 30 minute sample of the spontaneous speech of the participants was provided. Then the utterances of each person were studied in respect to the amount of dysfluency and syntactic complexity. The obtained information was analyzed using paired samples t-test.Results: In both groups of stuttering children and adults, there was a significant difference between the amount of dysfluency of simple and complex sentences (p<0.05.Conclusion: The results of this study showed that an increase in syntactic complexity in conversational speech, increased the amount of dysfluency in stuttering children and adults. Moreover,as a result of increase of syntactic complexity, dysfluency had a greater increase in stuttering children than stuttering adults.

  15. Feasibility of automated speech sample collection with stuttering children using interactive voice response (IVR) technology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vogel, Adam P; Block, Susan; Kefalianos, Elaina; Onslow, Mark; Eadie, Patricia; Barth, Ben; Conway, Laura; Mundt, James C; Reilly, Sheena

    2015-04-01

    To investigate the feasibility of adopting automated interactive voice response (IVR) technology for remotely capturing standardized speech samples from stuttering children. Participants were 10 6-year-old stuttering children. Their parents called a toll-free number from their homes and were prompted to elicit speech from their children using a standard protocol involving conversation, picture description and games. The automated IVR system was implemented using an off-the-shelf telephony software program and delivered by a standard desktop computer. The software infrastructure utilizes voice over internet protocol. Speech samples were automatically recorded during the calls. Video recordings were simultaneously acquired in the home at the time of the call to evaluate the fidelity of the telephone collected samples. Key outcome measures included syllables spoken, percentage of syllables stuttered and an overall rating of stuttering severity using a 10-point scale. Data revealed a high level of relative reliability in terms of intra-class correlation between the video and telephone acquired samples on all outcome measures during the conversation task. Findings were less consistent for speech samples during picture description and games. Results suggest that IVR technology can be used successfully to automate remote capture of child speech samples.

  16. Multichannel infinite clipping as a form of sampling of speech signals

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Guidarelli, G.

    1985-01-01

    A remarkable improvement of both intelligibility and naturalness of infinitely clipped speech can be achieved by means of a multichannel system in which the speech signal is splitted into several band-pass channels before the clipping and successively reconstructed by summing up the clipped outputs of each channel. A possible explanation of such an improvement is given, founded on the so-called zero-based representation of band limited signals where the zero-crossings sequence is considered as a set of samples of the signal

  17. Measuring Speech Comprehensibility in Students with Down Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yoder, Paul J.; Woynaroski, Tiffany; Camarata, Stephen

    2016-01-01

    Purpose: There is an ongoing need to develop assessments of spontaneous speech that focus on whether the child's utterances are comprehensible to listeners. This study sought to identify the attributes of a stable ratings-based measure of speech comprehensibility, which enabled examining the criterion-related validity of an orthography-based…

  18. Impact of cognitive function and dysarthria on spoken language and perceived speech severity in multiple sclerosis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feenaughty, Lynda

    Purpose: The current study sought to investigate the separate effects of dysarthria and cognitive status on global speech timing, speech hesitation, and linguistic complexity characteristics and how these speech behaviors impose on listener impressions for three connected speech tasks presumed to differ in cognitive-linguistic demand for four carefully defined speaker groups; 1) MS with cognitive deficits (MSCI), 2) MS with clinically diagnosed dysarthria and intact cognition (MSDYS), 3) MS without dysarthria or cognitive deficits (MS), and 4) healthy talkers (CON). The relationship between neuropsychological test scores and speech-language production and perceptual variables for speakers with cognitive deficits was also explored. Methods: 48 speakers, including 36 individuals reporting a neurological diagnosis of MS and 12 healthy talkers participated. The three MS groups and control group each contained 12 speakers (8 women and 4 men). Cognitive function was quantified using standard clinical tests of memory, information processing speed, and executive function. A standard z-score of ≤ -1.50 indicated deficits in a given cognitive domain. Three certified speech-language pathologists determined the clinical diagnosis of dysarthria for speakers with MS. Experimental speech tasks of interest included audio-recordings of an oral reading of the Grandfather passage and two spontaneous speech samples in the form of Familiar and Unfamiliar descriptive discourse. Various measures of spoken language were of interest. Suprasegmental acoustic measures included speech and articulatory rate. Linguistic speech hesitation measures included pause frequency (i.e., silent and filled pauses), mean silent pause duration, grammatical appropriateness of pauses, and interjection frequency. For the two discourse samples, three standard measures of language complexity were obtained including subordination index, inter-sentence cohesion adequacy, and lexical diversity. Ten listeners

  19. Segmentation cues in conversational speech: Robust semantics and fragile phonotactics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Laurence eWhite

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available Multiple cues influence listeners’ segmentation of connected speech into words, but most previous studies have used stimuli elicited in careful readings rather than natural conversation. Discerning word boundaries in conversational speech may differ from the laboratory setting. In particular, a speaker’s articulatory effort – hyperarticulation vs hypoarticulation (H&H – may vary according to communicative demands, suggesting a compensatory relationship whereby acoustic-phonetic cues are attenuated when other information sources strongly guide segmentation. We examined how listeners’ interpretation of segmentation cues is affected by speech style (spontaneous conversation vs read, using cross-modal identity priming. To elicit spontaneous stimuli, we used a map task in which speakers discussed routes around stylised landmarks. These landmarks were two-word phrases in which the strength of potential segmentation cues – semantic likelihood and cross-boundary diphone phonotactics – was systematically varied. Landmark-carrying utterances were transcribed and later re-recorded as read speech.Independent of speech style, we found an interaction between cue valence (favourable/unfavourable and cue type (phonotactics/semantics. Thus, there was an effect of semantic plausibility, but no effect of cross-boundary phonotactics, indicating that the importance of phonotactic segmentation may have been overstated in studies where lexical information was artificially suppressed. These patterns were unaffected by whether the stimuli were elicited in a spontaneous or read context, even though the difference in speech styles was evident in a main effect. Durational analyses suggested speaker-driven cue trade-offs congruent with an H&H account, but these modulations did not impact on listener behaviour. We conclude that previous research exploiting read speech is reliable in indicating the primacy of lexically-based cues in the segmentation of natural

  20. Características iniciais da comunicação verbal de pré-escolares com Alterações Específicas do Desenvolvimento da Linguagem em fala espontânea Primary characteristics of the verbal communication of preschoolers with Specific Language Impairment in spontaneous speech

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Debora Maria Befi-Lopes

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available OBJETIVO: Verificar desempenho fonológico de pré-escolares com Alterações Específicas do Desenvolvimento da Linguagem (AEDL em fala espontânea. MÉTODOS: Foram sujeitos 27 crianças com AEDL, entre três anos e cinco anos e 11 meses, em tratamento fonoaudiológico. Foram selecionados aqueles que realizaram ao menos 50% da avaliação da fonologia a partir de provas de nomeação e imitação de palavras, ou que apresentaram inteligibilidade de fala passível de análise. Foram coletadas amostras de fala na prova de pragmática e no discurso eliciado por figuras. Foram realizadas análises a partir da utilização de processos fonológicos do desenvolvimento de linguagem (PD e idiossincráticos (PI. RESULTADOS: A estatística descritiva (médias de PD e PI indicou grande variabilidade intra-grupos. Não houve variação em número de processos conforme a idade (PD: p=0,38; PI: p=0,72, porém houve predominância de PD em todas as idades, nas duas provas aplicadas (Z=-6,327; pPURPOSE: To verify the phonological performance of preschoolers with Specific Language Impairment (SLI in spontaneous speech. METHODS: The subjects were 27 children with SLI with ages between three years and five years and 11 months, who attended Speech-Language Pathology therapy. The subjects who carried out at least 50% of the phonological assessment or who had speech intelligibility that allowed analysis were selected. Speech samples were obtained from a pragmatics evaluation and from elicited discourse. Analyses considered the use of developmental (DP and idiossyncratic phonological processes (IP in spontaneous speech. RESULTS: The descriptive statistics (mean DP and IP showed large within-group variability. There was no variation in the number of processes according to age (DP: p=0.38; IP: p=0.72, but there was a prevalence of DP in all ages, in both tests (Z=-6.327; p<0.001. The occurrence of DP and IP was higher in the pragmatics evaluation (p<0.001, situation in

  1. SOFTWARE EFFORT ESTIMATION FRAMEWORK TO IMPROVE ORGANIZATION PRODUCTIVITY USING EMOTION RECOGNITION OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERS IN SPONTANEOUS SPEECH

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    B.V.A.N.S.S. Prabhakar Rao

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available Productivity is a very important part of any organisation in general and software industry in particular. Now a day’s Software Effort estimation is a challenging task. Both Effort and Productivity are inter-related to each other. This can be achieved from the employee’s of the organization. Every organisation requires emotionally stable employees in their firm for seamless and progressive working. Of course, in other industries this may be achieved without man power. But, software project development is labour intensive activity. Each line of code should be delivered from software engineer. Tools and techniques may helpful and act as aid or supplementary. Whatever be the reason software industry has been suffering with success rate. Software industry is facing lot of problems in delivering the project on time and within the estimated budget limit. If we want to estimate the required effort of the project it is significant to know the emotional state of the team member. The responsibility of ensuring emotional contentment falls on the human resource department and the department can deploy a series of systems to carry out its survey. This analysis can be done using a variety of tools, one such, is through study of emotion recognition. The data needed for this is readily available and collectable and can be an excellent source for the feedback systems. The challenge of recognition of emotion in speech is convoluted primarily due to the noisy recording condition, the variations in sentiment in sample space and exhibition of multiple emotions in a single sentence. The ambiguity in the labels of training set also increases the complexity of problem addressed. The existing models using probabilistic models have dominated the study but present a flaw in scalability due to statistical inefficiency. The problem of sentiment prediction in spontaneous speech can thus be addressed using a hybrid system comprising of a Convolution Neural Network and

  2. Can mergers-in-progress be unmerged in speech accommodation?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Babel, Molly; McAuliffe, Michael; Haber, Graham

    2013-01-01

    This study examines spontaneous phonetic accommodation of a dialect with distinct categories by speakers who are in the process of merging those categories. We focus on the merger of the NEAR and SQUARE lexical sets in New Zealand English, presenting New Zealand participants with an unmerged speaker of Australian English. Mergers-in-progress are a uniquely interesting sound change as they showcase the asymmetry between speech perception and production. Yet, we examine mergers using spontaneous phonetic imitation, which is phenomenon that is necessarily a behavior where perceptual input influences speech production. Phonetic imitation is quantified by a perceptual measure and an acoustic calculation of mergedness using a Pillai-Bartlett trace. The results from both analyses indicate spontaneous phonetic imitation is moderated by extra-linguistic factors such as the valence of assigned conditions and social bias. We also find evidence for a decrease in the degree of mergedness in post-exposure productions. Taken together, our results suggest that under the appropriate conditions New Zealanders phonetically accommodate to Australian English and that in the process of speech imitation, mergers-in-progress can, but do not consistently, become less merged.

  3. Can mergers-in-progress be unmerged in speech accommodation?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Molly eBabel

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available This study examines spontaneous phonetic accommodation of a dialect with distinct categories by speakers who are in the process of merging those categories. We focus on the merger of the NEAR and SQUARE lexical sets in New Zealand English, presenting New Zealand participants with an unmerged speaker of Australian English. Mergers-in-progress are a uniquely interesting sound change as they showcase the asymmetry between speech perception and production. Yet, we examine mergers using spontaneous phonetic imitation, which is phenomenon that is necessarily a behavior where perceptual input influences speech production. Phonetic imitation is quantified by a perceptual measure and an acoustic calculation of mergedness using a Pillai-Bartlett trace. The results from both analyses indicate spontaneous phonetic imitation is moderated by extra-linguistic factors such as the valence of assigned conditions and social bias. We also find evidence for a decrease in the degree of mergedness in post-exposure productions. Taken together, our results suggest that under the appropriate conditions New Zealanders phonetically accommodate to Australian English and that in the process of speech imitation, mergers-in-progress can, but do not consistently, become less merged.

  4. Effects of the Utterance length on Fluency of Conversational Speech in Stuttering Persian-Speaker Children and Adults

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tabassom A'zimi

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available Objective: recently, researchers have increasingly turned to study the relation between stuttering and utterance length. This study investigates the effect of utterance length on the amount of speech dysfluency in stuttering Persian-speaking children and adults in conversational speech. The obtained results can pave the way to reach a better understanding of stuttering of child and adults, as well as finding more appropriate treatments. Materials & Methods: in this descriptive- analysis study, the participants were 15 stuttering Persian- speaker adults, upper from 15 years old, and 15 stuttering Persian- speaker children in the age range of 4-6. In this study, first 30 minutes sample of adults and child's spontaneous speech was provided and then utterances of each person studied for the amount of dysfluency and utterance length. The obtained information intered to computer via spss software and analyzed using paired T test. Results: In both groups of stuttering children and adults, with increase of utterance length, there was a significant increase in the amount of dysfluency. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that by increase of utterance length at the spontaneous speech level, stuttering children and adults had more dysfluency amount. Also, by increase of utterance length, dysfluency amount of stuttering children and adults increased samely.

  5. SPEECH EVALUATION WITH AND WITHOUT PALATAL OBTURATOR IN PATIENTS SUBMITTED TO MAXILLECTOMY

    Science.gov (United States)

    de Carvalho-Teles, Viviane; Pegoraro-Krook, Maria Inês; Lauris, José Roberto Pereira

    2006-01-01

    Most patients who have undergone resection of the maxillae due to benign or malignant tumors in the palatomaxillary region present with speech and swallowing disorders. Coupling of the oral and nasal cavities increases nasal resonance, resulting in hypernasality and unintelligible speech. Prosthodontic rehabilitation of maxillary resections with effective separation of the oral and nasal cavities can improve speech and esthetics, and assist the psychosocial adjustment of the patient as well. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of the palatal obturator prosthesis on speech intelligibility and resonance of 23 patients with age ranging from 18 to 83 years (Mean = 49.5 years), who had undergone inframedial-structural maxillectomy. The patients were requested to count from 1 to 20, to repeat 21 words and to spontaneously speak for 15 seconds, once with and again without the prosthesis, for tape recording purposes. The resonance and speech intelligibility were judged by 5 speech language pathologists from the tape recordings samples. The results have shown that the majority of patients (82.6%) significantly improved their speech intelligibility, and 16 patients (69.9%) exhibited a significant hypernasality reduction with the obturator in place. The results of this study indicated that maxillary obturator prosthesis was efficient to improve the speech intelligibility and resonance in patients who had undergone maxillectomy. PMID:19089242

  6. Speech rhythm analysis with decomposition of the amplitude envelope: characterizing rhythmic patterns within and across languages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tilsen, Sam; Arvaniti, Amalia

    2013-07-01

    This study presents a method for analyzing speech rhythm using empirical mode decomposition of the speech amplitude envelope, which allows for extraction and quantification of syllabic- and supra-syllabic time-scale components of the envelope. The method of empirical mode decomposition of a vocalic energy amplitude envelope is illustrated in detail, and several types of rhythm metrics derived from this method are presented. Spontaneous speech extracted from the Buckeye Corpus is used to assess the effect of utterance length on metrics, and it is shown how metrics representing variability in the supra-syllabic time-scale components of the envelope can be used to identify stretches of speech with targeted rhythmic characteristics. Furthermore, the envelope-based metrics are used to characterize cross-linguistic differences in speech rhythm in the UC San Diego Speech Lab corpus of English, German, Greek, Italian, Korean, and Spanish speech elicited in read sentences, read passages, and spontaneous speech. The envelope-based metrics exhibit significant effects of language and elicitation method that argue for a nuanced view of cross-linguistic rhythm patterns.

  7. Does Speech Emerge From Earlier Appearing Oral Motor Behaviors?

    OpenAIRE

    Moore, Christopher A.; Ruark, Jacki L.

    1996-01-01

    This investigation was designed to quantify the coordinative organization of mandibular muscles in toddlers during speech and nonspeech behaviors. Seven 15-month-olds were observed during spontaneous production of chewing, sucking, babbling, and speech. Comparison of mandibular coordination across these behaviors revealed that, even for children in the earliest stages of true word production, coordination was quite different from that observed for other behaviors. Production of true words was...

  8. SSCS'10 : Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Workshop on Searching Spontaneous Conversational Speech

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Larson, Martha; Ordelman, Roeland; Metze, Florian; Kraaij, Wessel; de Jong, Franciska

    2010-01-01

    The spoken word is a valuable source of semantic information. Techniques that exploit the spoken word by making use of speech recognition or spoken audio analysis hold clear potential for improving multimedia search. Nonetheless, speech technology remains underexploited by systems that provide

  9. Automatic Smoker Detection from Telephone Speech Signals

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Poorjam, Amir Hossein; Hesaraki, Soheila; Safavi, Saeid

    2017-01-01

    This paper proposes an automatic smoking habit detection from spontaneous telephone speech signals. In this method, each utterance is modeled using i-vector and non-negative factor analysis (NFA) frameworks, which yield low-dimensional representation of utterances by applying factor analysis...... method is evaluated on telephone speech signals of speakers whose smoking habits are known drawn from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 2008 and 2010 Speaker Recognition Evaluation databases. Experimental results over 1194 utterances show the effectiveness of the proposed approach...... for the automatic smoking habit detection task....

  10. CFD modelling of sampling locations for early detection of spontaneous combustion in long-wall gob areas.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yuan, Liming; Smith, Alex C

    In this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling was conducted to optimize gas sampling locations for the early detection of spontaneous heating in longwall gob areas. Initial simulations were carried out to predict carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations at various regulators in the gob using a bleeder ventilation system. Measured CO concentration values at these regulators were then used to calibrate the CFD model. The calibrated CFD model was used to simulate CO concentrations at eight sampling locations in the gob using a bleederless ventilation system to determine the optimal sampling locations for early detection of spontaneous combustion.

  11. The contrast between alveolar and velar stops with typical speech data: acoustic and articulatory analyses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Melo, Roberta Michelon; Mota, Helena Bolli; Berti, Larissa Cristina

    2017-06-08

    This study used acoustic and articulatory analyses to characterize the contrast between alveolar and velar stops with typical speech data, comparing the parameters (acoustic and articulatory) of adults and children with typical speech development. The sample consisted of 20 adults and 15 children with typical speech development. The analyzed corpus was organized through five repetitions of each target-word (/'kap ə/, /'tapə/, /'galo/ e /'daɾə/). These words were inserted into a carrier phrase and the participant was asked to name them spontaneously. Simultaneous audio and video data were recorded (tongue ultrasound images). The data was submitted to acoustic analyses (voice onset time; spectral peak and burst spectral moments; vowel/consonant transition and relative duration measures) and articulatory analyses (proportion of significant axes of the anterior and posterior tongue regions and description of tongue curves). Acoustic and articulatory parameters were effective to indicate the contrast between alveolar and velar stops, mainly in the adult group. Both speech analyses showed statistically significant differences between the two groups. The acoustic and articulatory parameters provided signals to characterize the phonic contrast of speech. One of the main findings in the comparison between adult and child speech was evidence of articulatory refinement/maturation even after the period of segment acquisition.

  12. Attitudes toward speech disorders: sampling the views of Cantonese-speaking Americans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bebout, L; Arthur, B

    1997-01-01

    Speech-language pathologists who serve clients from cultural backgrounds that are not familiar to them may encounter culturally influenced attitudinal differences. A questionnaire with statements about 4 speech disorders (dysfluency, cleft pallet, speech of the deaf, and misarticulations) was given to a focus group of Chinese Americans and a comparison group of non-Chinese Americans. The focus group was much more likely to believe that persons with speech disorders could improve their own speech by "trying hard," was somewhat more likely to say that people who use deaf speech and people with cleft palates might be "emotionally disturbed," and generally more likely to view deaf speech as a limitation. The comparison group was more pessimistic about stuttering children's acceptance by their peers than was the focus group. The two subject groups agreed about other items, such as the likelihood that older children with articulation problems are "less intelligent" than their peers.

  13. [Spontaneous speech prosody and discourse analysis in schizophrenia and Fronto Temporal Dementia (FTD) patients].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martínez, Angela; Felizzola Donado, Carlos Alberto; Matallana Eslava, Diana Lucía

    2015-01-01

    Patients with schizophrenia and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) in their linguistic variants share some language characteristics such as the lexical access difficulties, disordered speech with disruptions, many pauses, interruptions and reformulations. For the schizophrenia patients it reflects a difficulty of affect expression, while for the FTD patients it reflects a linguistic issue. This study, through an analysis of a series of cases assessed Clinic both in memory and on the Mental Health Unit of HUSI-PUJ (Hospital Universitario San Ignacio), with additional language assessment (analysis speech and acoustic analysis), present distinctive features of the DFT in its linguistic variants and schizophrenia that will guide the specialist in finding early markers of a differential diagnosis. In patients with FTD language variants, in 100% of cases there is a difficulty understanding linguistic structure of complex type; and important speech fluency problems. In patients with schizophrenia, there are significant alterations in the expression of the suprasegmental elements of speech, as well as disruptions in discourse. We present how depth language assessment allows to reassess some of the rules for the speech and prosody analysis of patients with dementia and schizophrenia; we suggest how elements of speech are useful in guiding the diagnosis and correlate functional compromise in everyday psychiatrist's practice. Copyright © 2014 Asociación Colombiana de Psiquiatría. Publicado por Elsevier España. All rights reserved.

  14. Objective voice and speech analysis of persons with chronic hoarseness by prosodic analysis of speech samples.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Haderlein, Tino; Döllinger, Michael; Matoušek, Václav; Nöth, Elmar

    2016-10-01

    Automatic voice assessment is often performed using sustained vowels. In contrast, speech analysis of read-out texts can be applied to voice and speech assessment. Automatic speech recognition and prosodic analysis were used to find regression formulae between automatic and perceptual assessment of four voice and four speech criteria. The regression was trained with 21 men and 62 women (average age 49.2 years) and tested with another set of 24 men and 49 women (48.3 years), all suffering from chronic hoarseness. They read the text 'Der Nordwind und die Sonne' ('The North Wind and the Sun'). Five voice and speech therapists evaluated the data on 5-point Likert scales. Ten prosodic and recognition accuracy measures (features) were identified which describe all the examined criteria. Inter-rater correlation within the expert group was between r = 0.63 for the criterion 'match of breath and sense units' and r = 0.87 for the overall voice quality. Human-machine correlation was between r = 0.40 for the match of breath and sense units and r = 0.82 for intelligibility. The perceptual ratings of different criteria were highly correlated with each other. Likewise, the feature sets modeling the criteria were very similar. The automatic method is suitable for assessing chronic hoarseness in general and for subgroups of functional and organic dysphonia. In its current version, it is almost as reliable as a randomly picked rater from a group of voice and speech therapists.

  15. Investigation of the Reationship between Hand Gestures and Speech in Adults Who Stutter

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ali Barikrou

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available Objective: Gestures of the hands and arms have long been observed to accompany speech in spontaneous conversation. However, the way in which these two modes of expression are related in production is not yet fully understood. So, the present study aims to investigate the spontaneous gestures that accompany speech in adults who stutter in comparison to fluent controls.  Materials & Methods: In this cross-sectional and comparative research, ten adults who stutter were selected randomly from speech and language pathology clinics and compared with ten healthy persons as control group who were matched with stutterers according to sex, age and education. The cartoon story-retelling task used to elicit spontaneous gestures that accompany speech. Participants were asked to watch the animation carefully and then retell the storyline in as much detail as possible to a listener sitting across from him or her and his or her narration was video recorded simultaneously. Then recorded utterances and gestures were analyzed. The statistical methods such as Kolmogorov- Smirnov and Independent t-test were used for data analyzing. Results: The results indicated that stutterers in comparison to controls in average use fewer iconic gestures in their narration (P=0.005. Also, stutterers in comparison to controls in average use fewer iconic gestures per each utterance and word (P=0.019. Furthermore, the execution of gesture production during moments of dysfluency revealed that more than 70% of the gestures produced with stuttering were frozen or abandoned at the moment of dysfluency. Conclusion: It seems gesture and speech have such an intricate and deep association that show similar frequency and timing patterns and move completely parallel to each other in such a way that deficit in speech results in deficiency in hand gesture.

  16. Co-Thought and Co-Speech Gestures Are Generated by the Same Action Generation Process

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chu, Mingyuan; Kita, Sotaro

    2016-01-01

    People spontaneously gesture when they speak (co-speech gestures) and when they solve problems silently (co-thought gestures). In this study, we first explored the relationship between these 2 types of gestures and found that individuals who produced co-thought gestures more frequently also produced co-speech gestures more frequently (Experiments…

  17. Common neural substrates support speech and non-speech vocal tract gestures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, Soo-Eun; Kenney, Mary Kay; Loucks, Torrey M J; Poletto, Christopher J; Ludlow, Christy L

    2009-08-01

    The issue of whether speech is supported by the same neural substrates as non-speech vocal tract gestures has been contentious. In this fMRI study we tested whether producing non-speech vocal tract gestures in humans shares the same functional neuroanatomy as non-sense speech syllables. Production of non-speech vocal tract gestures, devoid of phonological content but similar to speech in that they had familiar acoustic and somatosensory targets, was compared to the production of speech syllables without meaning. Brain activation related to overt production was captured with BOLD fMRI using a sparse sampling design for both conditions. Speech and non-speech were compared using voxel-wise whole brain analyses, and ROI analyses focused on frontal and temporoparietal structures previously reported to support speech production. Results showed substantial activation overlap between speech and non-speech function in regions. Although non-speech gesture production showed greater extent and amplitude of activation in the regions examined, both speech and non-speech showed comparable left laterality in activation for both target perception and production. These findings posit a more general role of the previously proposed "auditory dorsal stream" in the left hemisphere--to support the production of vocal tract gestures that are not limited to speech processing.

  18. Music and Speech Perception in Children Using Sung Speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nie, Yingjiu; Galvin, John J; Morikawa, Michael; André, Victoria; Wheeler, Harley; Fu, Qian-Jie

    2018-01-01

    This study examined music and speech perception in normal-hearing children with some or no musical training. Thirty children (mean age = 11.3 years), 15 with and 15 without formal music training participated in the study. Music perception was measured using a melodic contour identification (MCI) task; stimuli were a piano sample or sung speech with a fixed timbre (same word for each note) or a mixed timbre (different words for each note). Speech perception was measured in quiet and in steady noise using a matrix-styled sentence recognition task; stimuli were naturally intonated speech or sung speech with a fixed pitch (same note for each word) or a mixed pitch (different notes for each word). Significant musician advantages were observed for MCI and speech in noise but not for speech in quiet. MCI performance was significantly poorer with the mixed timbre stimuli. Speech performance in noise was significantly poorer with the fixed or mixed pitch stimuli than with spoken speech. Across all subjects, age at testing and MCI performance were significantly correlated with speech performance in noise. MCI and speech performance in quiet was significantly poorer for children than for adults from a related study using the same stimuli and tasks; speech performance in noise was significantly poorer for young than for older children. Long-term music training appeared to benefit melodic pitch perception and speech understanding in noise in these pediatric listeners.

  19. Dysfluencies in the speech of adults with intellectual disabilities and reported speech difficulties.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coppens-Hofman, Marjolein C; Terband, Hayo R; Maassen, Ben A M; van Schrojenstein Lantman-De Valk, Henny M J; van Zaalen-op't Hof, Yvonne; Snik, Ad F M

    2013-01-01

    In individuals with an intellectual disability, speech dysfluencies are more common than in the general population. In clinical practice, these fluency disorders are generally diagnosed and treated as stuttering rather than cluttering. To characterise the type of dysfluencies in adults with intellectual disabilities and reported speech difficulties with an emphasis on manifestations of stuttering and cluttering, which distinction is to help optimise treatment aimed at improving fluency and intelligibility. The dysfluencies in the spontaneous speech of 28 adults (18-40 years; 16 men) with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities (IQs 40-70), who were characterised as poorly intelligible by their caregivers, were analysed using the speech norms for typically developing adults and children. The speakers were subsequently assigned to different diagnostic categories by relating their resulting dysfluency profiles to mean articulatory rate and articulatory rate variability. Twenty-two (75%) of the participants showed clinically significant dysfluencies, of which 21% were classified as cluttering, 29% as cluttering-stuttering and 25% as clear cluttering at normal articulatory rate. The characteristic pattern of stuttering did not occur. The dysfluencies in the speech of adults with intellectual disabilities and poor intelligibility show patterns that are specific for this population. Together, the results suggest that in this specific group of dysfluent speakers interventions should be aimed at cluttering rather than stuttering. The reader will be able to (1) describe patterns of dysfluencies in the speech of adults with intellectual disabilities that are specific for this group of people, (2) explain that a high rate of dysfluencies in speech is potentially a major determiner of poor intelligibility in adults with ID and (3) describe suggestions for intervention focusing on cluttering rather than stuttering in dysfluent speakers with ID. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc

  20. Tools for the assessment of childhood apraxia of speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gubiani, Marileda Barichello; Pagliarin, Karina Carlesso; Keske-Soares, Marcia

    2015-01-01

    This study systematically reviews the literature on the main tools used to evaluate childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). The search strategy includes Scopus, PubMed, and Embase databases. Empirical studies that used tools for assessing CAS were selected. Articles were selected by two independent researchers. The search retrieved 695 articles, out of which 12 were included in the study. Five tools were identified: Verbal Motor Production Assessment for Children, Dynamic Evaluation of Motor Speech Skill, The Orofacial Praxis Test, Kaufman Speech Praxis Test for Children, and Madison Speech Assessment Protocol. There are few instruments available for CAS assessment and most of them are intended to assess praxis and/or orofacial movements, sequences of orofacial movements, articulation of syllables and phonemes, spontaneous speech, and prosody. There are some tests for assessment and diagnosis of CAS. However, few studies on this topic have been conducted at the national level, as well as protocols to assess and assist in an accurate diagnosis.

  1. Variability and Intelligibility of Clarified Speech to Different Listener Groups

    Science.gov (United States)

    Silber, Ronnie F.

    Two studies examined the modifications that adult speakers make in speech to disadvantaged listeners. Previous research that has focused on speech to the deaf individuals and to young children has shown that adults clarify speech when addressing these two populations. Acoustic measurements suggest that the signal undergoes similar changes for both populations. Perceptual tests corroborate these results for the deaf population, but are nonsystematic in developmental studies. The differences in the findings for these populations and the nonsystematic results in the developmental literature may be due to methodological factors. The present experiments addressed these methodological questions. Studies of speech to hearing impaired listeners have used read, nonsense, sentences, for which speakers received explicit clarification instructions and feedback, while in the child literature, excerpts of real-time conversations were used. Therefore, linguistic samples were not precisely matched. In this study, experiments used various linguistic materials. Experiment 1 used a children's story; experiment 2, nonsense sentences. Four mothers read both types of material in four ways: (1) in "normal" adult speech, (2) in "babytalk," (3) under the clarification instructions used in the "hearing impaired studies" (instructed clear speech) and (4) in (spontaneous) clear speech without instruction. No extra practice or feedback was given. Sentences were presented to 40 normal hearing college students with and without simultaneous masking noise. Results were separately tabulated for content and function words, and analyzed using standard statistical tests. The major finding in the study was individual variation in speaker intelligibility. "Real world" speakers vary in their baseline intelligibility. The four speakers also showed unique patterns of intelligibility as a function of each independent variable. Results were as follows. Nonsense sentences were less intelligible than story

  2. A NOVEL APPROACH TO STUTTERED SPEECH CORRECTION

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alim Sabur Ajibola

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Stuttered speech is a dysfluency rich speech, more prevalent in males than females. It has been associated with insufficient air pressure or poor articulation, even though the root causes are more complex. The primary features include prolonged speech and repetitive speech, while some of its secondary features include, anxiety, fear, and shame. This study used LPC analysis and synthesis algorithms to reconstruct the stuttered speech. The results were evaluated using cepstral distance, Itakura-Saito distance, mean square error, and likelihood ratio. These measures implied perfect speech reconstruction quality. ASR was used for further testing, and the results showed that all the reconstructed speech samples were perfectly recognized while only three samples of the original speech were perfectly recognized.

  3. Filled pause refinement based on the pronunciation probability for lecture speech.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yan-Hua Long

    Full Text Available Nowadays, although automatic speech recognition has become quite proficient in recognizing or transcribing well-prepared fluent speech, the transcription of speech that contains many disfluencies remains problematic, such as spontaneous conversational and lecture speech. Filled pauses (FPs are the most frequently occurring disfluencies in this type of speech. Most recent studies have shown that FPs are widely believed to increase the error rates for state-of-the-art speech transcription, primarily because most FPs are not well annotated or provided in training data transcriptions and because of the similarities in acoustic characteristics between FPs and some common non-content words. To enhance the speech transcription system, we propose a new automatic refinement approach to detect FPs in British English lecture speech transcription. This approach combines the pronunciation probabilities for each word in the dictionary and acoustic language model scores for FP refinement through a modified speech recognition forced-alignment framework. We evaluate the proposed approach on the Reith Lectures speech transcription task, in which only imperfect training transcriptions are available. Successful results are achieved for both the development and evaluation datasets. Acoustic models trained on different styles of speech genres have been investigated with respect to FP refinement. To further validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, speech transcription performance has also been examined using systems built on training data transcriptions with and without FP refinement.

  4. Social and Cognitive Impressions of Adults Who Do and Do Not Stutter Based on Listeners' Perceptions of Read-Speech Samples

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lauren J. Amick

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by frequent and involuntary disruptions during speech production. Adults who stutter are often subject to negative perceptions. The present study examined whether negative social and cognitive impressions are formed when listening to speech, even without any knowledge about the speaker. Two experiments were conducted in which naïve participants were asked to listen to and provide ratings on samples of read speech produced by adults who stutter and typically-speaking adults without knowledge about the individuals who produced the speech. In both experiments, listeners rated speaker cognitive ability, likeability, anxiety, as well as a number of speech characteristics that included fluency, naturalness, intelligibility, the likelihood the speaker had a speech-and-language disorder (Experiment 1 only, rate and volume (both Experiments 1 and 2. The speech of adults who stutter was perceived to be less fluent, natural, intelligible, and to be slower and louder than the speech of typical adults. Adults who stutter were also perceived to have lower cognitive ability, to be less likeable and to be more anxious than the typical adult speakers. Relations between speech characteristics and social and cognitive impressions were found, independent of whether or not the speaker stuttered (i.e., they were found for both adults who stutter and typically-speaking adults and did not depend on being cued that some of the speakers may have had a speech-language impairment.

  5. Cleft Audit Protocol for Speech (CAPS-A): A Comprehensive Training Package for Speech Analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sell, D.; John, A.; Harding-Bell, A.; Sweeney, T.; Hegarty, F.; Freeman, J.

    2009-01-01

    Background: The previous literature has largely focused on speech analysis systems and ignored process issues, such as the nature of adequate speech samples, data acquisition, recording and playback. Although there has been recognition of the need for training on tools used in speech analysis associated with cleft palate, little attention has been…

  6. Automated Speech Rate Measurement in Dysarthria

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martens, Heidi; Dekens, Tomas; Van Nuffelen, Gwen; Latacz, Lukas; Verhelst, Werner; De Bodt, Marc

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: In this study, a new algorithm for automated determination of speech rate (SR) in dysarthric speech is evaluated. We investigated how reliably the algorithm calculates the SR of dysarthric speech samples when compared with calculation performed by speech-language pathologists. Method: The new algorithm was trained and tested using Dutch…

  7. Status Report on Speech Research. A Report on the Status and Progress of Studies on the Nature of Speech, Instrumentation for Its Investigation, and Practical Applications.

    Science.gov (United States)

    1983-09-30

    Iberall, A. S. (1978). Cybernetics offers a (hydrodynamic) thermodynamic view of brain activities. An alternative to reflexology . In F. Brambilla, P. K...spontaneous speech that have the effect of equalizing the number of syllables per foot , and thus making the speaker’s output more isochronous

  8. Epoch-based analysis of speech signals

    Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

    on speech production characteristics, but also helps in accurate analysis of speech. .... include time delay estimation, speech enhancement from single and multi- ...... log. (. E[k]. ∑K−1 l=0. E[l]. ) ,. (7) where K is the number of samples in the ...

  9. Omission of definite and indefinite articles in the spontaneous speech of agrammatic speakers with Broca's aphasia

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Havik, E.; Bastiaanse, Y.R.M.

    2004-01-01

    Background: Cross-linguistic investigation of agrammatic speech in speakers of different languages allows us to tests theoretical accounts of the nature of agrammatism. A significant feature of the speech of many agrammatic speakers is a problem with article production. Mansson and Ahlsen (2001)

  10. 78 FR 49693 - Speech-to-Speech and Internet Protocol (IP) Speech-to-Speech Telecommunications Relay Services...

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-08-15

    ...-Speech Services for Individuals with Hearing and Speech Disabilities, Report and Order (Order), document...] Speech-to-Speech and Internet Protocol (IP) Speech-to-Speech Telecommunications Relay Services; Telecommunications Relay Services and Speech-to-Speech Services for Individuals With Hearing and Speech Disabilities...

  11. Wavelet bidomain sample entropy analysis to predict spontaneous termination of atrial fibrillation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Alcaraz, Raúl; Rieta, José Joaquín

    2008-01-01

    The ability to predict if an atrial fibrillation (AF) episode terminates spontaneously or not through non-invasive techniques is a challenging problem of great clinical interest. This fact could avoid useless therapeutic interventions and minimize the risks for the patient. The present work introduces a robust AF prediction methodology carried out by estimating, through sample entropy (SampEn), the atrial activity (AA) organization increase prior to AF termination from the surface electrocardiogram (ECG). This regularity variation appears as a consequence of the decrease in the number of reentries wandering throughout the atrial tissue. AA was obtained from surface ECG recordings by applying a QRST cancellation technique. Next, a robust and reliable classification process for terminating and non-terminating AF episodes was developed, making use of two different wavelet decomposition strategies. Finally, the AA organization both in time and wavelet domains (bidomain) was estimated via SampEn. The methodology was validated using a training set consisting of 20 AF recordings with known termination properties and a test set of 30 recordings. All the training signals and 93.33% of the test set were correctly classified into terminating and sustained AF, obtaining 93.75% sensitivity and 92.86% specificity. It can be concluded that spontaneous AF termination can be reliably and noninvasively predicted by applying wavelet bidomain sample entropy

  12. Differences between Spontaneous and Elicited Expressive Communication in Children with Autism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiang, Hsu-Min

    2009-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between spontaneous and elicited expressive communication in Australian and Taiwanese children with autism who were nonverbal or had limited speech. Thirty-four children with autism (17 Australian and 17 Taiwanese children) participated in this study. Each participant was observed for 2…

  13. Practising verbal maritime communication with computer dialogue systems using automatic speech recognition (My Practice session)

    OpenAIRE

    John, Peter; Wellmann, J.; Appell, J.E.

    2016-01-01

    This My Practice session presents a novel online tool for practising verbal communication in a maritime setting. It is based on low-fi ChatBot simulation exercises which employ computer-based dialogue systems. The ChatBot exercises are equipped with an automatic speech recognition engine specifically designed for maritime communication. The speech input and output functionality enables learners to communicate with the computer freely and spontaneously. The exercises replicate real communicati...

  14. Speech-to-Speech Relay Service

    Science.gov (United States)

    Consumer Guide Speech to Speech Relay Service Speech-to-Speech (STS) is one form of Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS). TRS is a service that allows persons with hearing and speech disabilities ...

  15. Automated acoustic analysis in detection of spontaneous swallows in Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Golabbakhsh, Marzieh; Rajaei, Ali; Derakhshan, Mahmoud; Sadri, Saeed; Taheri, Masoud; Adibi, Peyman

    2014-10-01

    Acoustic monitoring of swallow frequency has become important as the frequency of spontaneous swallowing can be an index for dysphagia and related complications. In addition, it can be employed as an objective quantification of ingestive behavior. Commonly, swallowing complications are manually detected using videofluoroscopy recordings, which require expensive equipment and exposure to radiation. In this study, a noninvasive automated technique is proposed that uses breath and swallowing recordings obtained via a microphone located over the laryngopharynx. Nonlinear diffusion filters were used in which a scale-space decomposition of recorded sound at different levels extract swallows from breath sounds and artifacts. This technique was compared to manual detection of swallows using acoustic signals on a sample of 34 subjects with Parkinson's disease. A speech language pathologist identified five subjects who showed aspiration during the videofluoroscopic swallowing study. The proposed automated method identified swallows with a sensitivity of 86.67 %, a specificity of 77.50 %, and an accuracy of 82.35 %. These results indicate the validity of automated acoustic recognition of swallowing as a fast and efficient approach to objectively estimate spontaneous swallow frequency.

  16. Dog-directed speech: why do we use it and do dogs pay attention to it?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ben-Aderet, Tobey; Gallego-Abenza, Mario; Reby, David; Mathevon, Nicolas

    2017-01-11

    Pet-directed speech is strikingly similar to infant-directed speech, a peculiar speaking pattern with higher pitch and slower tempo known to engage infants' attention and promote language learning. Here, we report the first investigation of potential factors modulating the use of dog-directed speech, as well as its immediate impact on dogs' behaviour. We recorded adult participants speaking in front of pictures of puppies, adult and old dogs, and analysed the quality of their speech. We then performed playback experiments to assess dogs' reaction to dog-directed speech compared with normal speech. We found that human speakers used dog-directed speech with dogs of all ages and that the acoustic structure of dog-directed speech was mostly independent of dog age, except for sound pitch which was relatively higher when communicating with puppies. Playback demonstrated that, in the absence of other non-auditory cues, puppies were highly reactive to dog-directed speech, and that the pitch was a key factor modulating their behaviour, suggesting that this specific speech register has a functional value in young dogs. Conversely, older dogs did not react differentially to dog-directed speech compared with normal speech. The fact that speakers continue to use dog-directed with older dogs therefore suggests that this speech pattern may mainly be a spontaneous attempt to facilitate interactions with non-verbal listeners. © 2017 The Author(s).

  17. Speaking with a mirror: engagement of mirror neurons via choral speech and its derivatives induces stuttering inhibition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kalinowski, Joseph; Saltuklaroglu, Tim

    2003-04-01

    'Choral speech', 'unison speech', or 'imitation speech' has long been known to immediately induce reflexive, spontaneous, and natural sounding fluency, even the most severe cases of stuttering. Unlike typical post-therapeutic speech, a hallmark characteristic of choral speech is the sense of 'invulnerability' to stuttering, regardless of phonetic context, situational environment, or audience size. We suggest that choral speech immediately inhibits stuttering by engaging mirror systems of neurons, innate primitive neuronal substrates that dominate the initial phases of language development due to their predisposition to reflexively imitate gestural action sequences in a fluent manner. Since mirror systems are primordial in nature, they take precedence over the much later developing stuttering pathology. We suggest that stuttering may best be ameliorated by reengaging mirror neurons via choral speech or one of its derivatives (using digital signal processing technology) to provide gestural mirrors, that are nature's way of immediately overriding the central stuttering block. Copyright 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd.

  18. Perceived Speech Quality Estimation Using DTW Algorithm

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    S. Arsenovski

    2009-06-01

    Full Text Available In this paper a method for speech quality estimation is evaluated by simulating the transfer of speech over packet switched and mobile networks. The proposed system uses Dynamic Time Warping algorithm for test and received speech comparison. Several tests have been made on a test speech sample of a single speaker with simulated packet (frame loss effects on the perceived speech. The achieved results have been compared with measured PESQ values on the used transmission channel and their correlation has been observed.

  19. Language modeling for automatic speech recognition of inflective languages an applications-oriented approach using lexical data

    CERN Document Server

    Donaj, Gregor

    2017-01-01

    This book covers language modeling and automatic speech recognition for inflective languages (e.g. Slavic languages), which represent roughly half of the languages spoken in Europe. These languages do not perform as well as English in speech recognition systems and it is therefore harder to develop an application with sufficient quality for the end user. The authors describe the most important language features for the development of a speech recognition system. This is then presented through the analysis of errors in the system and the development of language models and their inclusion in speech recognition systems, which specifically address the errors that are relevant for targeted applications. The error analysis is done with regard to morphological characteristics of the word in the recognized sentences. The book is oriented towards speech recognition with large vocabularies and continuous and even spontaneous speech. Today such applications work with a rather small number of languages compared to the nu...

  20. Baby Sign but Not Spontaneous Gesture Predicts Later Vocabulary in Children with Down Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Özçaliskan, Seyda; Adamson, Lauren B.; Dimitrova, Nevena; Bailey, Jhonelle; Schmuck, Lauren

    2016-01-01

    Early spontaneous gesture, specifically deictic gesture, predicts subsequent vocabulary development in typically developing (TD) children. Here, we ask whether deictic gesture plays a similar role in predicting later vocabulary size in children with Down Syndrome (DS), who have been shown to have difficulties in speech production, but strengths in…

  1. Lexical Access in Persian Normal Speakers: Picture Naming, Verbal Fluency and Spontaneous Speech

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zahra Sadat Ghoreishi

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available Objectives: Lexical access is the process by which the basic conceptual, syntactical and morpho-phonological information of words are activated. Most studies of lexical access have focused on picture naming. There is hardly any previous research on other parameters of lexical access such as verbal fluency and analysis of connected speech in Persian normal participants. This study investigates the lexical access performance in normal speakers in different issues such as age, sex and education. Methods: The performance of 120 adult Persian speakers in three tasks including picture naming, verbal fluency and connected speech, was examined using "Persian Lexical Access Assessment Package”. The performance of participants between two gender groups (male/female, three education groups (below 5 years, above 12 years, between 5 and 12 years and three age groups (18-35 years, 36-55 years, 56-75 years were compared. Results: According to findings, picture naming increased with increasing education and decreased with increasing age. The performance of participants in phonological and semantic verbal fluency showed improvement with age and education. No significant difference was seen between males and females in verbal fluency task. In the analysis of connected speech there were no significant differences between different age and education groups and just mean length of utterance in males was significantly higher than females. Discussion: The findings could be a primitive scale for comparison between normal subjects and patients in lexical access tasks, furthermore it could be a horizon for planning of treatment goals in patients with word finding problem according to age, gender and education.

  2. Speech-Based Human and Service Robot Interaction: An Application for Mexican Dysarthric People

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Santiago Omar Caballero Morales

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder due to weakness or poor coordination of the speech muscles. This condition can be caused by a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or by a degenerative neurological disease. Commonly, people with this disorder also have muscular dystrophy, which restricts their use of switches or keyboards for communication or control of assistive devices (i.e., an electric wheelchair or a service robot. In this case, speech recognition is an attractive alternative for interaction and control of service robots, despite the difficulty of achieving robust recognition performance. In this paper we present a speech recognition system for human and service robot interaction for Mexican Spanish dysarthric speakers. The core of the system consisted of a Speaker Adaptive (SA recognition system trained with normal-speech. Features such as on-line control of the language model perplexity and the adding of vocabulary, contribute to high recognition performance. Others, such as assessment and text-to-speech (TTS synthesis, contribute to a more complete interaction with a service robot. Live tests were performed with two mild dysarthric speakers, achieving recognition accuracies of 90–95% for spontaneous speech and 95–100% of accomplished simulated service robot tasks.

  3. Autonomic and Emotional Responses of Graduate Student Clinicians in Speech-Language Pathology to Stuttered Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guntupalli, Vijaya K.; Nanjundeswaran, Chayadevie; Dayalu, Vikram N.; Kalinowski, Joseph

    2012-01-01

    Background: Fluent speakers and people who stutter manifest alterations in autonomic and emotional responses as they view stuttered relative to fluent speech samples. These reactions are indicative of an aroused autonomic state and are hypothesized to be triggered by the abrupt breakdown in fluency exemplified in stuttered speech. Furthermore,…

  4. Speech recognition systems on the Cell Broadband Engine

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Liu, Y; Jones, H; Vaidya, S; Perrone, M; Tydlitat, B; Nanda, A

    2007-04-20

    In this paper we describe our design, implementation, and first results of a prototype connected-phoneme-based speech recognition system on the Cell Broadband Engine{trademark} (Cell/B.E.). Automatic speech recognition decodes speech samples into plain text (other representations are possible) and must process samples at real-time rates. Fortunately, the computational tasks involved in this pipeline are highly data-parallel and can receive significant hardware acceleration from vector-streaming architectures such as the Cell/B.E. Identifying and exploiting these parallelism opportunities is challenging, but also critical to improving system performance. We observed, from our initial performance timings, that a single Cell/B.E. processor can recognize speech from thousands of simultaneous voice channels in real time--a channel density that is orders-of-magnitude greater than the capacity of existing software speech recognizers based on CPUs (central processing units). This result emphasizes the potential for Cell/B.E.-based speech recognition and will likely lead to the future development of production speech systems using Cell/B.E. clusters.

  5. An analysis of machine translation and speech synthesis in speech-to-speech translation system

    OpenAIRE

    Hashimoto, K.; Yamagishi, J.; Byrne, W.; King, S.; Tokuda, K.

    2011-01-01

    This paper provides an analysis of the impacts of machine translation and speech synthesis on speech-to-speech translation systems. The speech-to-speech translation system consists of three components: speech recognition, machine translation and speech synthesis. Many techniques for integration of speech recognition and machine translation have been proposed. However, speech synthesis has not yet been considered. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on machine translation and speech synthesis, ...

  6. Silent reading of direct versus indirect speech activates voice-selective areas in the auditory cortex.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yao, Bo; Belin, Pascal; Scheepers, Christoph

    2011-10-01

    In human communication, direct speech (e.g., Mary said: "I'm hungry") is perceived to be more vivid than indirect speech (e.g., Mary said [that] she was hungry). However, for silent reading, the representational consequences of this distinction are still unclear. Although many of us share the intuition of an "inner voice," particularly during silent reading of direct speech statements in text, there has been little direct empirical confirmation of this experience so far. Combining fMRI with eye tracking in human volunteers, we show that silent reading of direct versus indirect speech engenders differential brain activation in voice-selective areas of the auditory cortex. This suggests that readers are indeed more likely to engage in perceptual simulations (or spontaneous imagery) of the reported speaker's voice when reading direct speech as opposed to meaning-equivalent indirect speech statements as part of a more vivid representation of the former. Our results may be interpreted in line with embodied cognition and form a starting point for more sophisticated interdisciplinary research on the nature of auditory mental simulation during reading.

  7. Quantification and Systematic Characterization of Stuttering-Like Disfluencies in Acquired Apraxia of Speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bailey, Dallin J; Blomgren, Michael; DeLong, Catharine; Berggren, Kiera; Wambaugh, Julie L

    2017-06-22

    The purpose of this article is to quantify and describe stuttering-like disfluencies in speakers with acquired apraxia of speech (AOS), utilizing the Lidcombe Behavioural Data Language (LBDL). Additional purposes include measuring test-retest reliability and examining the effect of speech sample type on disfluency rates. Two types of speech samples were elicited from 20 persons with AOS and aphasia: repetition of mono- and multisyllabic words from a protocol for assessing AOS (Duffy, 2013), and connected speech tasks (Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993). Sampling was repeated at 1 and 4 weeks following initial sampling. Stuttering-like disfluencies were coded using the LBDL, which is a taxonomy that focuses on motoric aspects of stuttering. Disfluency rates ranged from 0% to 13.1% for the connected speech task and from 0% to 17% for the word repetition task. There was no significant effect of speech sampling time on disfluency rate in the connected speech task, but there was a significant effect of time for the word repetition task. There was no significant effect of speech sample type. Speakers demonstrated both major types of stuttering-like disfluencies as categorized by the LBDL (fixed postures and repeated movements). Connected speech samples yielded more reliable tallies over repeated measurements. Suggestions are made for modifying the LBDL for use in AOS in order to further add to systematic descriptions of motoric disfluencies in this disorder.

  8. VOCAL DEVELOPMENT AS A MAIN CONDITION IN EARLY SPEECH AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marianne HOLM

    2005-06-01

    Full Text Available The objective of this research is the evident positive vocal development in pre-lingual deaf children, who underwent a Cochlea Implantation in early age. The presented research compares the vocal speech expressions of three hearing impaired children and two children with normal hearing from 10 months to 5 years. Comparisons of the spontaneous vocal expressions were conducted by sonagraphic analyses. The awareness of the own voice as well as the voices of others is essential for the child’s continuous vocal development from crying to speech. Supra-segmental factors, such as rhythm, dynamics and melody play a very important role in this development.

  9. Effects of Length, Complexity, and Grammatical Correctness on Stuttering in Spanish-Speaking Preschool Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Watson, Jennifer B.; Byrd, Courtney T.; Carlo, Edna J.

    2011-01-01

    Purpose: To explore the effects of utterance length, syntactic complexity, and grammatical correctness on stuttering in the spontaneous speech of young, monolingual Spanish-speaking children. Method: Spontaneous speech samples of 11 monolingual Spanish-speaking children who stuttered, ages 35 to 70 months, were examined. Mean number of syllables,…

  10. Spontaneous regression of intracranial malignant lymphoma

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kojo, Nobuto; Tokutomi, Takashi; Eguchi, Gihachirou; Takagi, Shigeyuki; Matsumoto, Tomie; Sasaguri, Yasuyuki; Shigemori, Minoru.

    1988-01-01

    In a 46-year-old female with a 1-month history of gait and speech disturbances, computed tomography (CT) demonstrated mass lesions of slightly high density in the left basal ganglia and left frontal lobe. The lesions were markedly enhanced by contrast medium. The patient received no specific treatment, but her clinical manifestations gradually abated and the lesions decreased in size. Five months after her initial examination, the lesions were absent on CT scans; only a small area of low density remained. Residual clinical symptoms included mild right hemiparesis and aphasia. After 14 months the patient again deteriorated, and a CT scan revealed mass lesions in the right frontal lobe and the pons. However, no enhancement was observed in the previously affected regions. A biopsy revealed malignant lymphoma. Despite treatment with steroids and radiation, the patient's clinical status progressively worsened and she died 27 months after initial presentation. Seven other cases of spontaneous regression of primary malignant lymphoma have been reported. In this case, the mechanism of the spontaneous regression was not clear, but changes in immunologic status may have been involved. (author)

  11. Speech Acquisition and Automatic Speech Recognition for Integrated Spacesuit Audio Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Yiteng; Chen, Jingdong; Chen, Shaoyan

    2010-01-01

    A voice-command human-machine interface system has been developed for spacesuit extravehicular activity (EVA) missions. A multichannel acoustic signal processing method has been created for distant speech acquisition in noisy and reverberant environments. This technology reduces noise by exploiting differences in the statistical nature of signal (i.e., speech) and noise that exists in the spatial and temporal domains. As a result, the automatic speech recognition (ASR) accuracy can be improved to the level at which crewmembers would find the speech interface useful. The developed speech human/machine interface will enable both crewmember usability and operational efficiency. It can enjoy a fast rate of data/text entry, small overall size, and can be lightweight. In addition, this design will free the hands and eyes of a suited crewmember. The system components and steps include beam forming/multi-channel noise reduction, single-channel noise reduction, speech feature extraction, feature transformation and normalization, feature compression, model adaption, ASR HMM (Hidden Markov Model) training, and ASR decoding. A state-of-the-art phoneme recognizer can obtain an accuracy rate of 65 percent when the training and testing data are free of noise. When it is used in spacesuits, the rate drops to about 33 percent. With the developed microphone array speech-processing technologies, the performance is improved and the phoneme recognition accuracy rate rises to 44 percent. The recognizer can be further improved by combining the microphone array and HMM model adaptation techniques and using speech samples collected from inside spacesuits. In addition, arithmetic complexity models for the major HMMbased ASR components were developed. They can help real-time ASR system designers select proper tasks when in the face of constraints in computational resources.

  12. A Technique for Estimating Intensity of Emotional Expressions and Speaking Styles in Speech Based on Multiple-Regression HSMM

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nose, Takashi; Kobayashi, Takao

    In this paper, we propose a technique for estimating the degree or intensity of emotional expressions and speaking styles appearing in speech. The key idea is based on a style control technique for speech synthesis using a multiple regression hidden semi-Markov model (MRHSMM), and the proposed technique can be viewed as the inverse of the style control. In the proposed technique, the acoustic features of spectrum, power, fundamental frequency, and duration are simultaneously modeled using the MRHSMM. We derive an algorithm for estimating explanatory variables of the MRHSMM, each of which represents the degree or intensity of emotional expressions and speaking styles appearing in acoustic features of speech, based on a maximum likelihood criterion. We show experimental results to demonstrate the ability of the proposed technique using two types of speech data, simulated emotional speech and spontaneous speech with different speaking styles. It is found that the estimated values have correlation with human perception.

  13. High-frequency energy in singing and speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Monson, Brian Bruce

    While human speech and the human voice generate acoustical energy up to (and beyond) 20 kHz, the energy above approximately 5 kHz has been largely neglected. Evidence is accruing that this high-frequency energy contains perceptual information relevant to speech and voice, including percepts of quality, localization, and intelligibility. The present research was an initial step in the long-range goal of characterizing high-frequency energy in singing voice and speech, with particular regard for its perceptual role and its potential for modification during voice and speech production. In this study, a database of high-fidelity recordings of talkers was created and used for a broad acoustical analysis and general characterization of high-frequency energy, as well as specific characterization of phoneme category, voice and speech intensity level, and mode of production (speech versus singing) by high-frequency energy content. Directionality of radiation of high-frequency energy from the mouth was also examined. The recordings were used for perceptual experiments wherein listeners were asked to discriminate between speech and voice samples that differed only in high-frequency energy content. Listeners were also subjected to gender discrimination tasks, mode-of-production discrimination tasks, and transcription tasks with samples of speech and singing that contained only high-frequency content. The combination of these experiments has revealed that (1) human listeners are able to detect very subtle level changes in high-frequency energy, and (2) human listeners are able to extract significant perceptual information from high-frequency energy.

  14. [Viewing of horror and violence videos by adolescence. A study of speech samples of video consumers with the Gottschalk-Gleser Speech Content analysis].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hopf, H; Weiss, R H

    1996-01-01

    In 1990 pupils of different schools in Württemberg were interviewed about their television and video consumption. It turned out that a high percentage of mainly male pupils of Hauptschulen (upper division of elementary schools) and special schools excessively and regularly consumed films which were on the index (X-rated) or seized depicting horror and violence. Subsequent to the inquiry through questionnaires and different personality tests, speech samples of 51 test persons were recorded on tape. 5 speech samples had to be excluded from further investigation since they contained less than 70 words. The transcribed and anonymized records were examined according to the Gottschalk-Gleser content analysis of verbal behavior, and two groups of so-called seldom lookers (n = 22) and frequent lookers (n = 24) were compared to each other. The frequent lookers significantly often reported about film contents which presumably means that their imagination is more restricted and less productive than that of the other group. In addition, this group of frequent lookers had significantly higher scores concerning death anxiety and guilt anxiety. With regard to hostility affects, their scores were also significantly raised concerning outward-overt hostility, outward-covert hostility, and ambivalent hostility. Probably the group of frequent lookers comprised more test persons with relationship disorders, with borderline risks, dissocial personality features, and problems to cope with their aggressiveness. So they show on the one hand a raised affinity to watch such films, but simultaneously unconscious and conscious learning processes take place which stimulate further aggressive fantasies (and possibly also actions).

  15. Neural Entrainment to Speech Modulates Speech Intelligibility

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Riecke, Lars; Formisano, Elia; Sorger, Bettina; Baskent, Deniz; Gaudrain, Etienne

    2018-01-01

    Speech is crucial for communication in everyday life. Speech-brain entrainment, the alignment of neural activity to the slow temporal fluctuations (envelope) of acoustic speech input, is a ubiquitous element of current theories of speech processing. Associations between speech-brain entrainment and

  16. Describing Speech Usage in Daily Activities in Typical Adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anderson, Laine; Baylor, Carolyn R; Eadie, Tanya L; Yorkston, Kathryn M

    2016-01-01

    "Speech usage" refers to what people want or need to do with their speech to meet communication demands in life roles. The purpose of this study was to contribute to validation of the Levels of Speech Usage scale by providing descriptive data from a sample of adults without communication disorders, comparing this scale to a published Occupational Voice Demands scale and examining predictors of speech usage levels. This is a survey design. Adults aged ≥25 years without reported communication disorders were recruited nationally to complete an online questionnaire. The questionnaire included the Levels of Speech Usage scale, questions about relevant occupational and nonoccupational activities (eg, socializing, hobbies, childcare, and so forth), and demographic information. Participants were also categorized according to Koufman and Isaacson occupational voice demands scale. A total of 276 participants completed the questionnaires. People who worked for pay tended to report higher levels of speech usage than those who do not work for pay. Regression analyses showed employment to be the major contributor to speech usage; however, considerable variance left unaccounted for suggests that determinants of speech usage and the relationship between speech usage, employment, and other life activities are not yet fully defined. The Levels of Speech Usage may be a viable instrument to systematically rate speech usage because it captures both occupational and nonoccupational speech demands. These data from a sample of typical adults may provide a reference to help in interpreting the impact of communication disorders on speech usage patterns. Copyright © 2016 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Speech Abilities in Preschool Children with Speech Sound Disorder with and without Co-Occurring Language Impairment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Macrae, Toby; Tyler, Ann A.

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: The authors compared preschool children with co-occurring speech sound disorder (SSD) and language impairment (LI) to children with SSD only in their numbers and types of speech sound errors. Method: In this post hoc quasi-experimental study, independent samples t tests were used to compare the groups in the standard score from different…

  18. Preschool speech intelligibility and vocabulary skills predict long-term speech and language outcomes following cochlear implantation in early childhood.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Castellanos, Irina; Kronenberger, William G; Beer, Jessica; Henning, Shirley C; Colson, Bethany G; Pisoni, David B

    2014-07-01

    Speech and language measures during grade school predict adolescent speech-language outcomes in children who receive cochlear implants (CIs), but no research has examined whether speech and language functioning at even younger ages is predictive of long-term outcomes in this population. The purpose of this study was to examine whether early preschool measures of speech and language performance predict speech-language functioning in long-term users of CIs. Early measures of speech intelligibility and receptive vocabulary (obtained during preschool ages of 3-6 years) in a sample of 35 prelingually deaf, early-implanted children predicted speech perception, language, and verbal working memory skills up to 18 years later. Age of onset of deafness and age at implantation added additional variance to preschool speech intelligibility in predicting some long-term outcome scores, but the relationship between preschool speech-language skills and later speech-language outcomes was not significantly attenuated by the addition of these hearing history variables. These findings suggest that speech and language development during the preschool years is predictive of long-term speech and language functioning in early-implanted, prelingually deaf children. As a result, measures of speech-language functioning at preschool ages can be used to identify and adjust interventions for very young CI users who may be at long-term risk for suboptimal speech and language outcomes.

  19. Speaking-related changes in cortical functional connectivity associated with assisted and spontaneous recovery from developmental stuttering.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kell, Christian A; Neumann, Katrin; Behrens, Marion; von Gudenberg, Alexander W; Giraud, Anne-Lise

    2018-03-01

    We previously reported speaking-related activity changes associated with assisted recovery induced by a fluency shaping therapy program and unassisted recovery from developmental stuttering (Kell et al., Brain 2009). While assisted recovery re-lateralized activity to the left hemisphere, unassisted recovery was specifically associated with the activation of the left BA 47/12 in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. These findings suggested plastic changes in speaking-related functional connectivity between left hemispheric speech network nodes. We reanalyzed these data involving 13 stuttering men before and after fluency shaping, 13 men who recovered spontaneously from their stuttering, and 13 male control participants, and examined functional connectivity during overt vs. covert reading by means of psychophysiological interactions computed across left cortical regions involved in articulation control. Persistent stuttering was associated with reduced auditory-motor coupling and enhanced integration of somatosensory feedback between the supramarginal gyrus and the prefrontal cortex. Assisted recovery reduced this hyper-connectivity and increased functional connectivity between the articulatory motor cortex and the auditory feedback processing anterior superior temporal gyrus. In spontaneous recovery, both auditory-motor coupling and integration of somatosensory feedback were normalized. In addition, activity in the left orbitofrontal cortex and superior cerebellum appeared uncoupled from the rest of the speech production network. These data suggest that therapy and spontaneous recovery normalizes the left hemispheric speaking-related activity via an improvement of auditory-motor mapping. By contrast, long-lasting unassisted recovery from stuttering is additionally supported by a functional isolation of the superior cerebellum from the rest of the speech production network, through the pivotal left BA 47/12. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  20. Temporal modulations in speech and music.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ding, Nai; Patel, Aniruddh D; Chen, Lin; Butler, Henry; Luo, Cheng; Poeppel, David

    2017-10-01

    Speech and music have structured rhythms. Here we discuss a major acoustic correlate of spoken and musical rhythms, the slow (0.25-32Hz) temporal modulations in sound intensity and compare the modulation properties of speech and music. We analyze these modulations using over 25h of speech and over 39h of recordings of Western music. We show that the speech modulation spectrum is highly consistent across 9 languages (including languages with typologically different rhythmic characteristics). A different, but similarly consistent modulation spectrum is observed for music, including classical music played by single instruments of different types, symphonic, jazz, and rock. The temporal modulations of speech and music show broad but well-separated peaks around 5 and 2Hz, respectively. These acoustically dominant time scales may be intrinsic features of speech and music, a possibility which should be investigated using more culturally diverse samples in each domain. Distinct modulation timescales for speech and music could facilitate their perceptual analysis and its neural processing. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. The retrieval and inflection of verbs in the spontaneous speech of fluent aphasic speakers

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bastiaanse, Y.R.M.

    Fluent aphasia of the anomic and Wernicke's type is characterized by word retrieval difficulties. However, in fluent aphasic speech, grammatical deviations have been observed as well. There is debate as to whether these grammatical problems are caused by the word retrieval deficit, by an additional

  2. Speech Disorders in Neurofibromatosis Type 1: A Sample Survey

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cosyns, Marjan; Vandeweghe, Lies; Mortier, Geert; Janssens, Sandra; Van Borsel, John

    2010-01-01

    Background: Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) is an autosomal-dominant neurocutaneous disorder with an estimated prevalence of two to three cases per 10 000 population. While the physical characteristics have been well documented, speech disorders have not been fully characterized in NF1 patients. Aims: This study serves as a pilot to identify key…

  3. An investigation of co-speech gesture production during action description in Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cleary, Rebecca A; Poliakoff, Ellen; Galpin, Adam; Dick, Jeremy P R; Holler, Judith

    2011-12-01

    Parkinson's disease (PD) can impact enormously on speech communication. One aspect of non-verbal behaviour closely tied to speech is co-speech gesture production. In healthy people, co-speech gestures can add significant meaning and emphasis to speech. There is, however, little research into how this important channel of communication is affected in PD. The present study provides a systematic analysis of co-speech gestures which spontaneously accompany the description of actions in a group of PD patients (N = 23, Hoehn and Yahr Stage III or less) and age-matched healthy controls (N = 22). The analysis considers different co-speech gesture types, using established classification schemes from the field of gesture research. The analysis focuses on the rate of these gestures as well as on their qualitative nature. In doing so, the analysis attempts to overcome several methodological shortcomings of research in this area. Contrary to expectation, gesture rate was not significantly affected in our patient group, with relatively mild PD. This indicates that co-speech gestures could compensate for speech problems. However, while gesture rate seems unaffected, the qualitative precision of gestures representing actions was significantly reduced. This study demonstrates the feasibility of carrying out fine-grained, detailed analyses of gestures in PD and offers insights into an as yet neglected facet of communication in patients with PD. Based on the present findings, an important next step is the closer investigation of the qualitative changes in gesture (including different communicative situations) and an analysis of the heterogeneity in co-speech gesture production in PD. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  4. Risk and protective factors associated with speech and language impairment in a nationally representative sample of 4- to 5-year-old children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Harrison, Linda J; McLeod, Sharynne

    2010-04-01

    To determine risk and protective factors for speech and language impairment in early childhood. Data are presented for a nationally representative sample of 4,983 children participating in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (described in McLeod & Harrison, 2009). Thirty-one child, parent, family, and community factors previously reported as being predictors of speech and language impairment were tested as predictors of (a) parent-rated expressive speech/language concern and (b) receptive language concern, (c) use of speech-language pathology services, and (d) low receptive vocabulary. Bivariate logistic regression analyses confirmed 29 of the identified factors. However, when tested concurrently with other predictors in multivariate analyses, only 19 remained significant: 9 for 2-4 outcomes and 10 for 1 outcome. Consistent risk factors were being male, having ongoing hearing problems, and having a more reactive temperament. Protective factors were having a more persistent and sociable temperament and higher levels of maternal well-being. Results differed by outcome for having an older sibling, parents speaking a language other than English, and parental support for children's learning at home. Identification of children requiring speech and language assessment requires consideration of the context of family life as well as biological and psychosocial factors intrinsic to the child.

  5. Intelligibility of synthetic speech in the presence of interfering speech

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Eggen, J.H.

    1989-01-01

    Standard articulation tests are not always sensitive enough to discriminate between speech samples which are of high intelligibility. One can increase the sensitivity of such tests by presenting the test materials in noise. In this way, small differences in intelligibility can be magnified into

  6. Inner Speech's Relationship With Overt Speech in Poststroke Aphasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stark, Brielle C; Geva, Sharon; Warburton, Elizabeth A

    2017-09-18

    Relatively preserved inner speech alongside poor overt speech has been documented in some persons with aphasia (PWA), but the relationship of overt speech with inner speech is still largely unclear, as few studies have directly investigated these factors. The present study investigates the relationship of relatively preserved inner speech in aphasia with selected measures of language and cognition. Thirty-eight persons with chronic aphasia (27 men, 11 women; average age 64.53 ± 13.29 years, time since stroke 8-111 months) were classified as having relatively preserved inner and overt speech (n = 21), relatively preserved inner speech with poor overt speech (n = 8), or not classified due to insufficient measurements of inner and/or overt speech (n = 9). Inner speech scores (by group) were correlated with selected measures of language and cognition from the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (Swinburn, Porter, & Al, 2004). The group with poor overt speech showed a significant relationship of inner speech with overt naming (r = .95, p speech and language and cognition factors were not significant for the group with relatively good overt speech. As in previous research, we show that relatively preserved inner speech is found alongside otherwise severe production deficits in PWA. PWA with poor overt speech may rely more on preserved inner speech for overt picture naming (perhaps due to shared resources with verbal working memory) and for written picture description (perhaps due to reliance on inner speech due to perceived task difficulty). Assessments of inner speech may be useful as a standard component of aphasia screening, and therapy focused on improving and using inner speech may prove clinically worthwhile. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5303542.

  7. Impairments of speech fluency in Lewy body spectrum disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ash, Sharon; McMillan, Corey; Gross, Rachel G; Cook, Philip; Gunawardena, Delani; Morgan, Brianna; Boller, Ashley; Siderowf, Andrew; Grossman, Murray

    2012-03-01

    Few studies have examined connected speech in demented and non-demented patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). We assessed the speech production of 35 patients with Lewy body spectrum disorder (LBSD), including non-demented PD patients, patients with PD dementia (PDD), and patients with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), in a semi-structured narrative speech sample in order to characterize impairments of speech fluency and to determine the factors contributing to reduced speech fluency in these patients. Both demented and non-demented PD patients exhibited reduced speech fluency, characterized by reduced overall speech rate and long pauses between sentences. Reduced speech rate in LBSD correlated with measures of between-utterance pauses, executive functioning, and grammatical comprehension. Regression analyses related non-fluent speech, grammatical difficulty, and executive difficulty to atrophy in frontal brain regions. These findings indicate that multiple factors contribute to slowed speech in LBSD, and this is mediated in part by disease in frontal brain regions. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. Musician advantage for speech-on-speech perception

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Başkent, Deniz; Gaudrain, Etienne

    Evidence for transfer of musical training to better perception of speech in noise has been mixed. Unlike speech-in-noise, speech-on-speech perception utilizes many of the skills that musical training improves, such as better pitch perception and stream segregation, as well as use of higher-level

  9. A chimpanzee recognizes synthetic speech with significantly reduced acoustic cues to phonetic content.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heimbauer, Lisa A; Beran, Michael J; Owren, Michael J

    2011-07-26

    A long-standing debate concerns whether humans are specialized for speech perception, which some researchers argue is demonstrated by the ability to understand synthetic speech with significantly reduced acoustic cues to phonetic content. We tested a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) that recognizes 128 spoken words, asking whether she could understand such speech. Three experiments presented 48 individual words, with the animal selecting a corresponding visuographic symbol from among four alternatives. Experiment 1 tested spectrally reduced, noise-vocoded (NV) synthesis, originally developed to simulate input received by human cochlear-implant users. Experiment 2 tested "impossibly unspeechlike" sine-wave (SW) synthesis, which reduces speech to just three moving tones. Although receiving only intermittent and noncontingent reward, the chimpanzee performed well above chance level, including when hearing synthetic versions for the first time. Recognition of SW words was least accurate but improved in experiment 3 when natural words in the same session were rewarded. The chimpanzee was more accurate with NV than SW versions, as were 32 human participants hearing these items. The chimpanzee's ability to spontaneously recognize acoustically reduced synthetic words suggests that experience rather than specialization is critical for speech-perception capabilities that some have suggested are uniquely human. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. Speech Intelligibility in Severe Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bender, Brenda K.; Cannito, Michael P.; Murry, Thomas; Woodson, Gayle E.

    2004-01-01

    This study compared speech intelligibility in nondisabled speakers and speakers with adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD) before and after botulinum toxin (Botox) injection. Standard speech samples were obtained from 10 speakers diagnosed with severe ADSD prior to and 1 month following Botox injection, as well as from 10 age- and gender-matched…

  11. INTEGRATING MACHINE TRANSLATION AND SPEECH SYNTHESIS COMPONENT FOR ENGLISH TO DRAVIDIAN LANGUAGE SPEECH TO SPEECH TRANSLATION SYSTEM

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    J. SANGEETHA

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available This paper provides an interface between the machine translation and speech synthesis system for converting English speech to Tamil text in English to Tamil speech to speech translation system. The speech translation system consists of three modules: automatic speech recognition, machine translation and text to speech synthesis. Many procedures for incorporation of speech recognition and machine translation have been projected. Still speech synthesis system has not yet been measured. In this paper, we focus on integration of machine translation and speech synthesis, and report a subjective evaluation to investigate the impact of speech synthesis, machine translation and the integration of machine translation and speech synthesis components. Here we implement a hybrid machine translation (combination of rule based and statistical machine translation and concatenative syllable based speech synthesis technique. In order to retain the naturalness and intelligibility of synthesized speech Auto Associative Neural Network (AANN prosody prediction is used in this work. The results of this system investigation demonstrate that the naturalness and intelligibility of the synthesized speech are strongly influenced by the fluency and correctness of the translated text.

  12. Sound frequency affects speech emotion perception: results from congenital amusia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lolli, Sydney L; Lewenstein, Ari D; Basurto, Julian; Winnik, Sean; Loui, Psyche

    2015-01-01

    Congenital amusics, or "tone-deaf" individuals, show difficulty in perceiving and producing small pitch differences. While amusia has marked effects on music perception, its impact on speech perception is less clear. Here we test the hypothesis that individual differences in pitch perception affect judgment of emotion in speech, by applying low-pass filters to spoken statements of emotional speech. A norming study was first conducted on Mechanical Turk to ensure that the intended emotions from the Macquarie Battery for Evaluation of Prosody were reliably identifiable by US English speakers. The most reliably identified emotional speech samples were used in Experiment 1, in which subjects performed a psychophysical pitch discrimination task, and an emotion identification task under low-pass and unfiltered speech conditions. Results showed a significant correlation between pitch-discrimination threshold and emotion identification accuracy for low-pass filtered speech, with amusics (defined here as those with a pitch discrimination threshold >16 Hz) performing worse than controls. This relationship with pitch discrimination was not seen in unfiltered speech conditions. Given the dissociation between low-pass filtered and unfiltered speech conditions, we inferred that amusics may be compensating for poorer pitch perception by using speech cues that are filtered out in this manipulation. To assess this potential compensation, Experiment 2 was conducted using high-pass filtered speech samples intended to isolate non-pitch cues. No significant correlation was found between pitch discrimination and emotion identification accuracy for high-pass filtered speech. Results from these experiments suggest an influence of low frequency information in identifying emotional content of speech.

  13. The effect of vowel height on Voice Onset Time in stop consonants in CV sequences in spontaneous Danish

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mortensen, Johannes; Tøndering, John

    2013-01-01

    Voice onset time has been reported to vary with the height of vowels following the stop consonant. This paper investigates the effects of vowel height on VOT in Danish CV sequences with stop consonants in Danish spontaneous speech. A significant effect of vowel height on VOT was found...

  14. Speech versus singing: Infants choose happier sounds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marieve eCorbeil

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available Infants prefer speech to non-vocal sounds and to non-human vocalizations, and they prefer happy-sounding speech to neutral speech. They also exhibit an interest in singing, but there is little knowledge of their relative interest in speech and singing. The present study explored infants’ attention to unfamiliar audio samples of speech and singing. In Experiment 1, infants 4-13 months of age were exposed to happy-sounding infant-directed speech versus hummed lullabies by the same woman. They listened significantly longer to the speech, which had considerably greater acoustic variability and expressiveness, than to the lullabies. In Experiment 2, infants of comparable age who heard the lyrics of a Turkish children’s song spoken versus sung in a joyful/happy manner did not exhibit differential listening. Infants in Experiment 3 heard the happily sung lyrics of the Turkish children’s song versus a version that was spoken in an adult-directed or affectively neutral manner. They listened significantly longer to the sung version. Overall, happy voice quality rather than vocal mode (speech or singing was the principal contributor to infant attention, regardless of age.

  15. Robust signal selection for lineair prediction analysis of voiced speech

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ma, C.; Kamp, Y.; Willems, L.F.

    1993-01-01

    This paper investigates a weighted LPC analysis of voiced speech. In view of the speech production model, the weighting function is either chosen to be the short-time energy function of the preemphasized speech sample sequence with certain delays or is obtained by thresholding the short-time energy

  16. Characterizing Intonation Deficit in Motor Speech Disorders: An Autosegmental-Metrical Analysis of Spontaneous Speech in Hypokinetic Dysarthria, Ataxic Dysarthria, and Foreign Accent Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lowit, Anja; Kuschmann, Anja

    2012-01-01

    Purpose: The autosegmental-metrical (AM) framework represents an established methodology for intonational analysis in unimpaired speaker populations but has found little application in describing intonation in motor speech disorders (MSDs). This study compared the intonation patterns of unimpaired participants (CON) and those with Parkinson's…

  17. Speech endpoint detection with non-language speech sounds for generic speech processing applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    McClain, Matthew; Romanowski, Brian

    2009-05-01

    Non-language speech sounds (NLSS) are sounds produced by humans that do not carry linguistic information. Examples of these sounds are coughs, clicks, breaths, and filled pauses such as "uh" and "um" in English. NLSS are prominent in conversational speech, but can be a significant source of errors in speech processing applications. Traditionally, these sounds are ignored by speech endpoint detection algorithms, where speech regions are identified in the audio signal prior to processing. The ability to filter NLSS as a pre-processing step can significantly enhance the performance of many speech processing applications, such as speaker identification, language identification, and automatic speech recognition. In order to be used in all such applications, NLSS detection must be performed without the use of language models that provide knowledge of the phonology and lexical structure of speech. This is especially relevant to situations where the languages used in the audio are not known apriori. We present the results of preliminary experiments using data from American and British English speakers, in which segments of audio are classified as language speech sounds (LSS) or NLSS using a set of acoustic features designed for language-agnostic NLSS detection and a hidden-Markov model (HMM) to model speech generation. The results of these experiments indicate that the features and model used are capable of detection certain types of NLSS, such as breaths and clicks, while detection of other types of NLSS such as filled pauses will require future research.

  18. Speech and language development in 2-year-old children with cerebral palsy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hustad, Katherine C; Allison, Kristen; McFadd, Emily; Riehle, Katherine

    2014-06-01

    We examined early speech and language development in children who had cerebral palsy. Questions addressed whether children could be classified into early profile groups on the basis of speech and language skills and whether there were differences on selected speech and language measures among groups. Speech and language assessments were completed on 27 children with CP who were between the ages of 24 and 30 months (mean age 27.1 months; SD 1.8). We examined several measures of expressive and receptive language, along with speech intelligibility. Two-step cluster analysis was used to identify homogeneous groups of children based on their performance on the seven dependent variables characterizing speech and language performance. Three groups of children identified were those not yet talking (44% of the sample); those whose talking abilities appeared to be emerging (41% of the sample); and those who were established talkers (15% of the sample). Group differences were evident on all variables except receptive language skills. 85% of 2-year-old children with CP in this study had clinical speech and/or language delays relative to age expectations. Findings suggest that children with CP should receive speech and language assessment and treatment at or before 2 years of age.

  19. Speech rate and fluency in children with phonological disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Novaes, Priscila Maronezi; Nicolielo-Carrilho, Ana Paola; Lopes-Herrera, Simone Aparecida

    2015-01-01

    To identify and describe the speech rate and fluency of children with phonological disorder (PD) with and without speech-language therapy. Thirty children, aged 5-8 years old, both genders, were divided into three groups: experimental group 1 (G1) — 10 children with PD in intervention; experimental group 2 (G2) — 10 children with PD without intervention; and control group (CG) — 10 children with typical development. Speech samples were collected and analyzed according to parameters of specific protocol. The children in CG had higher number of words per minute compared to those in G1, which, in turn, performed better in this aspect compared to children in G2. Regarding the number of syllables per minute, the CG showed the best result. In this aspect, the children in G1 showed better results than those in G2. Comparing children's performance in the assessed groups regarding the tests, those with PD in intervention had higher time of speech sample and adequate speech rate, which may be indicative of greater auditory monitoring of their own speech as a result of the intervention.

  20. SPEECH ACT OF ILTIFAT AND ITS INDONESIAN TRANSLATION PROBLEMS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zaka Al Farisi

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract: Iltifat (shifting speech act is distinctive and considered unique style of Arabic. It has potential errors when it is translated into Indonesian. Therefore, translation of iltifat speech act into another language can be an important issue. The objective of the study is to know translation procedures/techniques and ideology required in dealing with iltifat speech act. This research is directed at translation as a cognitive product of a translator. The data used in the present study were the corpus of Koranic verses that contain iltifat speech act along with their translation. Data analysis typically used descriptive-evaluative method with content analysis model. The data source of this research consisted of the Koran and its translation. The purposive sampling technique was employed, with the sample of the iltifat speech act contained in the Koran. The results showed that more than 60% of iltifat speech act were translated by using literal procedure. The significant number of literal translation of the verses asserts that the Ministry of Religious Affairs tended to use literal method of translation. In other words, the Koran translation made by the Ministry of Religious Affairs tended to be oriented to the source language in dealing with iltifat speech act. The number of the literal procedure used shows a tendency of foreignization ideology. Transitional pronouns contained in the iltifat speech act can be clearly translated when thick translations were used in the form of description in parentheses. In this case, explanation can be a choice in translating iltifat speech act.

  1. Improved Vocabulary Production after Naming Therapy in Aphasia: Can Gains in Picture Naming Generalise to Connected Speech?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Conroy, Paul; Sage, Karen; Ralph, Matt Lambon

    2009-01-01

    Background: Naming accuracy for nouns and verbs in aphasia can vary across different elicitation contexts, for example, simple picture naming, composite picture description, narratives, and conversation. For some people with aphasia, naming may be more accurate to simple pictures as opposed to naming in spontaneous, connected speech; for others,…

  2. The Hypothesis of Apraxia of Speech in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

    OpenAIRE

    Shriberg, Lawrence D.; Paul, Rhea; Black, Lois M.; van Santen, Jan P.

    2011-01-01

    In a sample of 46 children aged 4 to 7 years with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and intelligible speech, there was no statistical support for the hypothesis of concomitant Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). Perceptual and acoustic measures of participants’ speech, prosody, and voice were compared with data from 40 typically-developing children, 13 preschool children with Speech Delay, and 15 participants aged 5 to 49 years with CAS in neurogenetic disorders. Speech Delay and Speech Errors, r...

  3. The Effect of Background Noise on Intelligibility of Dysphonic Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ishikawa, Keiko; Boyce, Suzanne; Kelchner, Lisa; Powell, Maria Golla; Schieve, Heidi; de Alarcon, Alessandro; Khosla, Sid

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: The aim of this study is to determine the effect of background noise on the intelligibility of dysphonic speech and to examine the relationship between intelligibility in noise and an acoustic measure of dysphonia--cepstral peak prominence (CPP). Method: A study of speech perception was conducted using speech samples from 6 adult speakers…

  4. Tapping Into Rate Flexibility: Musical Training Facilitates Synchronization Around Spontaneous Production Rates

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scheurich, Rebecca; Zamm, Anna; Palmer, Caroline

    2018-01-01

    The ability to flexibly adapt one’s behavior is critical for social tasks such as speech and music performance, in which individuals must coordinate the timing of their actions with others. Natural movement frequencies, also called spontaneous rates, constrain synchronization accuracy between partners during duet music performance, whereas musical training enhances synchronization accuracy. We investigated the combined influences of these factors on the flexibility with which individuals can synchronize their actions with sequences at different rates. First, we developed a novel musical task capable of measuring spontaneous rates in both musicians and non-musicians in which participants tapped the rhythm of a familiar melody while hearing the corresponding melody tones. The novel task was validated by similar measures of spontaneous rates generated by piano performance and by the tapping task from the same pianists. We then implemented the novel task with musicians and non-musicians as they synchronized tapping of a familiar melody with a metronome at their spontaneous rates, and at rates proportionally slower and faster than their spontaneous rates. Musicians synchronized more flexibly across rates than non-musicians, indicated by greater synchronization accuracy. Additionally, musicians showed greater engagement of error correction mechanisms than non-musicians. Finally, differences in flexibility were characterized by more recurrent (repetitive) and patterned synchronization in non-musicians, indicative of greater temporal rigidity. PMID:29681872

  5. Tapping Into Rate Flexibility: Musical Training Facilitates Synchronization Around Spontaneous Production Rates

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rebecca Scheurich

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available The ability to flexibly adapt one’s behavior is critical for social tasks such as speech and music performance, in which individuals must coordinate the timing of their actions with others. Natural movement frequencies, also called spontaneous rates, constrain synchronization accuracy between partners during duet music performance, whereas musical training enhances synchronization accuracy. We investigated the combined influences of these factors on the flexibility with which individuals can synchronize their actions with sequences at different rates. First, we developed a novel musical task capable of measuring spontaneous rates in both musicians and non-musicians in which participants tapped the rhythm of a familiar melody while hearing the corresponding melody tones. The novel task was validated by similar measures of spontaneous rates generated by piano performance and by the tapping task from the same pianists. We then implemented the novel task with musicians and non-musicians as they synchronized tapping of a familiar melody with a metronome at their spontaneous rates, and at rates proportionally slower and faster than their spontaneous rates. Musicians synchronized more flexibly across rates than non-musicians, indicated by greater synchronization accuracy. Additionally, musicians showed greater engagement of error correction mechanisms than non-musicians. Finally, differences in flexibility were characterized by more recurrent (repetitive and patterned synchronization in non-musicians, indicative of greater temporal rigidity.

  6. Apraxia of Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... Health Info » Voice, Speech, and Language Apraxia of Speech On this page: What is apraxia of speech? ... about apraxia of speech? What is apraxia of speech? Apraxia of speech (AOS)—also known as acquired ...

  7. Vowel Patterns in Developmental Apraxia of Speech: Three Longitudinal Case Studies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davis, Barbara L.; Jacks, Adam; Marquardt, Thomas P.

    2005-01-01

    Vowel inventories and error patterns for three children with suspected developmental apraxia of speech (DAS) were analysed over a 3-year period using phonetic transcriptions of connected speech samples. The children demonstrated complete English vowel inventories except for rhotics. However, accuracy of vowel targets in connected speech did not…

  8. Speech rhythms and multiplexed oscillatory sensory coding in the human brain.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joachim Gross

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Cortical oscillations are likely candidates for segmentation and coding of continuous speech. Here, we monitored continuous speech processing with magnetoencephalography (MEG to unravel the principles of speech segmentation and coding. We demonstrate that speech entrains the phase of low-frequency (delta, theta and the amplitude of high-frequency (gamma oscillations in the auditory cortex. Phase entrainment is stronger in the right and amplitude entrainment is stronger in the left auditory cortex. Furthermore, edges in the speech envelope phase reset auditory cortex oscillations thereby enhancing their entrainment to speech. This mechanism adapts to the changing physical features of the speech envelope and enables efficient, stimulus-specific speech sampling. Finally, we show that within the auditory cortex, coupling between delta, theta, and gamma oscillations increases following speech edges. Importantly, all couplings (i.e., brain-speech and also within the cortex attenuate for backward-presented speech, suggesting top-down control. We conclude that segmentation and coding of speech relies on a nested hierarchy of entrained cortical oscillations.

  9. Speech Rhythms and Multiplexed Oscillatory Sensory Coding in the Human Brain

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gross, Joachim; Hoogenboom, Nienke; Thut, Gregor; Schyns, Philippe; Panzeri, Stefano; Belin, Pascal; Garrod, Simon

    2013-01-01

    Cortical oscillations are likely candidates for segmentation and coding of continuous speech. Here, we monitored continuous speech processing with magnetoencephalography (MEG) to unravel the principles of speech segmentation and coding. We demonstrate that speech entrains the phase of low-frequency (delta, theta) and the amplitude of high-frequency (gamma) oscillations in the auditory cortex. Phase entrainment is stronger in the right and amplitude entrainment is stronger in the left auditory cortex. Furthermore, edges in the speech envelope phase reset auditory cortex oscillations thereby enhancing their entrainment to speech. This mechanism adapts to the changing physical features of the speech envelope and enables efficient, stimulus-specific speech sampling. Finally, we show that within the auditory cortex, coupling between delta, theta, and gamma oscillations increases following speech edges. Importantly, all couplings (i.e., brain-speech and also within the cortex) attenuate for backward-presented speech, suggesting top-down control. We conclude that segmentation and coding of speech relies on a nested hierarchy of entrained cortical oscillations. PMID:24391472

  10. A characterization of verb use in Turkish agrammatic narrative speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arslan, Seçkin; Bamyacı, Elif; Bastiaanse, Roelien

    2016-01-01

    This study investigates the characteristics of narrative-speech production and the use of verbs in Turkish agrammatic speakers (n = 10) compared to non-brain-damaged controls (n = 10). To elicit narrative-speech samples, personal interviews and storytelling tasks were conducted. Turkish has a large and regular verb inflection paradigm where verbs are inflected for evidentiality (i.e. direct versus indirect evidence available to the speaker). Particularly, we explored the general characteristics of the speech samples (e.g. utterance length) and the uses of lexical, finite and non-finite verbs and direct and indirect evidentials. The results show that speech rate is slow, verbs per utterance are lower than normal and the verb diversity is reduced in the agrammatic speakers. Verb inflection is relatively intact; however, a trade-off pattern between inflection for direct evidentials and verb diversity is found. The implications of the data are discussed in connection with narrative-speech production studies on other languages.

  11. The application of sparse linear prediction dictionary to compressive sensing in speech signals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    YOU Hanxu

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available Appling compressive sensing (CS,which theoretically guarantees that signal sampling and signal compression can be achieved simultaneously,into audio and speech signal processing is one of the most popular research topics in recent years.In this paper,K-SVD algorithm was employed to learn a sparse linear prediction dictionary regarding as the sparse basis of underlying speech signals.Compressed signals was obtained by applying random Gaussian matrix to sample original speech frames.Orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP and compressive sampling matching pursuit (CoSaMP were adopted to recovery original signals from compressed one.Numbers of experiments were carried out to investigate the impact of speech frames length,compression ratios,sparse basis and reconstruction algorithms on CS performance.Results show that sparse linear prediction dictionary can advance the performance of speech signals reconstruction compared with discrete cosine transform (DCT matrix.

  12. The Suitability of Cloud-Based Speech Recognition Engines for Language Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Daniels, Paul; Iwago, Koji

    2017-01-01

    As online automatic speech recognition (ASR) engines become more accurate and more widely implemented with call software, it becomes important to evaluate the effectiveness and the accuracy of these recognition engines using authentic speech samples. This study investigates two of the most prominent cloud-based speech recognition engines--Apple's…

  13. Abnormal speech spectrum and increased pitch variability in young autistic children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yoram S Bonneh

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD who can speak often exhibit abnormal voice quality and speech prosody, but the exact nature and underlying mechanisms of these abnormalities, as well as their diagnostic power are currently unknown. Here we quantified speech abnormalities in terms of the properties of the long-term average spectrum (LTAS and pitch variability in speech samples of 83 children (41 with ASD, 42 controls ages 4-6.5 years, recorded while they named a sequence of daily-life pictures for 60 sec. We found a significant difference in the group’s average spectra, with ASD spectra being shallower and exhibiting less harmonic structure. Contrary to the common impression of monotonic speech in autism, the ASD children had a significantly larger pitch range and variability across time. A measure of this variability, optimally tuned for the sample, yielded 86% success (90% specificity, 80% sensitivity in classifying ASD in the sample. These results indicate that speech abnormalities in ASD are reflected in its spectral content and pitch variability. This variability could imply abnormal processing of auditory feedback or elevated noise and instability in the mechanisms that control pitch. The current results are a first step towards developing speech-spectrum-based bio-markers for early diagnosis of ASD.

  14. Speech Compression

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jerry D. Gibson

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Speech compression is a key technology underlying digital cellular communications, VoIP, voicemail, and voice response systems. We trace the evolution of speech coding based on the linear prediction model, highlight the key milestones in speech coding, and outline the structures of the most important speech coding standards. Current challenges, future research directions, fundamental limits on performance, and the critical open problem of speech coding for emergency first responders are all discussed.

  15. The impact of language co-activation on L1 and L2 speech fluency.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bergmann, Christopher; Sprenger, Simone A; Schmid, Monika S

    2015-10-01

    Fluent speech depends on the availability of well-established linguistic knowledge and routines for speech planning and articulation. A lack of speech fluency in late second-language (L2) learners may point to a deficiency of these representations, due to incomplete acquisition. Experiments on bilingual language processing have shown, however, that there are strong reasons to believe that multilingual speakers experience co-activation of the languages they speak. We have studied to what degree language co-activation affects fluency in the speech of bilinguals, comparing a monolingual German control group with two bilingual groups: 1) first-language (L1) attriters, who have fully acquired German before emigrating to an L2 English environment, and 2) immersed L2 learners of German (L1: English). We have analysed the temporal fluency and the incidence of disfluency markers (pauses, repetitions and self-corrections) in spontaneous film retellings. Our findings show that learners to speak more slowly than controls and attriters. Also, on each count, the speech of at least one of the bilingual groups contains more disfluency markers than the retellings of the control group. Generally speaking, both bilingual groups-learners and attriters-are equally (dis)fluent and significantly more disfluent than the monolingual speakers. Given that the L1 attriters are unaffected by incomplete acquisition, we interpret these findings as evidence for language competition during speech production. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  16. Histogram Equalization to Model Adaptation for Robust Speech Recognition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Suh Youngjoo

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available We propose a new model adaptation method based on the histogram equalization technique for providing robustness in noisy environments. The trained acoustic mean models of a speech recognizer are adapted into environmentally matched conditions by using the histogram equalization algorithm on a single utterance basis. For more robust speech recognition in the heavily noisy conditions, trained acoustic covariance models are efficiently adapted by the signal-to-noise ratio-dependent linear interpolation between trained covariance models and utterance-level sample covariance models. Speech recognition experiments on both the digit-based Aurora2 task and the large vocabulary-based task showed that the proposed model adaptation approach provides significant performance improvements compared to the baseline speech recognizer trained on the clean speech data.

  17. Observed mass distribution of spontaneous fission fragments from samples of lime - an SSNTD study

    CERN Document Server

    Paul, D; Ghose, D; Sastri, R C

    1999-01-01

    SSNTD is one of the most commonly used detectors in the studies involving nuclear phenomena. The ease of registration of the presence of alpha particles and fission fragments has made it particularly suitable in studies where stable long exposures are needed to extract reliable information. Studies on the presence of alpha emitting nuclides in the environment assume importance since they are found to be carcinogenic. Lime samples from Silchar in Assam of Eastern India have shown the presence of spontaneous fission fragments besides alphas. In the present study we look at the ratio of the average mass distribution of these fission fragments, that gives us an indication of the presence of the traces of transuranic elements.

  18. Speech Production and Speech Discrimination by Hearing-Impaired Children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Novelli-Olmstead, Tina; Ling, Daniel

    1984-01-01

    Seven hearing impaired children (five to seven years old) assigned to the Speakers group made highly significant gains in speech production and auditory discrimination of speech, while Listeners made only slight speech production gains and no gains in auditory discrimination. Combined speech and auditory training was more effective than auditory…

  19. Effects of the syntactic complexity on the amount of speech dysfluency of stuttering and nonstuttering Persian-speaker children in conversational speech

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mohammad Kamali

    2010-04-01

    Full Text Available Introduction: Many researches have dealt with the relationship between stuttering and differentlinguistic factors. This study investigates the effect of syntactic complexity on the amount of speechdysfluency in stuttering Persian-speaking children, and comparing them with the non-stuttering ones. Theobtained results can pave the way to obtain a better knowledge of the nature of stuttering, as well asfinding more suitable ways in the process of its treatment.Materials and Methods: The participants were 10 stuttering and 10 non-stuttering Persian-speakingand monolingual children in the age range of 4-6 which were matched by age and gender. First 30minutes sample of child's spontaneous speech was provided and then utterances of each child studied forthe amount of dysfluency and syntactic complexity.Results: In both groups of stuttering and non-stuttering children, there was a significant difference forthe amount of dysfluency between simple and complex sentences.Conclusion: The results of this study show that by increase of syntactic complexity at the spontaneousspeech level, stuttering and non-stuttering children had more dysfluency amount. Also, by increase ofsyntactic complexity, stuttering children had more dysfluency amount than non-stuttering children.

  20. Stuttering Frequency, Speech Rate, Speech Naturalness, and Speech Effort During the Production of Voluntary Stuttering.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davidow, Jason H; Grossman, Heather L; Edge, Robin L

    2018-05-01

    Voluntary stuttering techniques involve persons who stutter purposefully interjecting disfluencies into their speech. Little research has been conducted on the impact of these techniques on the speech pattern of persons who stutter. The present study examined whether changes in the frequency of voluntary stuttering accompanied changes in stuttering frequency, articulation rate, speech naturalness, and speech effort. In total, 12 persons who stutter aged 16-34 years participated. Participants read four 300-syllable passages during a control condition, and three voluntary stuttering conditions that involved attempting to produce purposeful, tension-free repetitions of initial sounds or syllables of a word for two or more repetitions (i.e., bouncing). The three voluntary stuttering conditions included bouncing on 5%, 10%, and 15% of syllables read. Friedman tests and follow-up Wilcoxon signed ranks tests were conducted for the statistical analyses. Stuttering frequency, articulation rate, and speech naturalness were significantly different between the voluntary stuttering conditions. Speech effort did not differ between the voluntary stuttering conditions. Stuttering frequency was significantly lower during the three voluntary stuttering conditions compared to the control condition, and speech effort was significantly lower during two of the three voluntary stuttering conditions compared to the control condition. Due to changes in articulation rate across the voluntary stuttering conditions, it is difficult to conclude, as has been suggested previously, that voluntary stuttering is the reason for stuttering reductions found when using voluntary stuttering techniques. Additionally, future investigations should examine different types of voluntary stuttering over an extended period of time to determine their impact on stuttering frequency, speech rate, speech naturalness, and speech effort.

  1. Comprehension of synthetic speech and digitized natural speech by adults with aphasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hux, Karen; Knollman-Porter, Kelly; Brown, Jessica; Wallace, Sarah E

    2017-09-01

    Using text-to-speech technology to provide simultaneous written and auditory content presentation may help compensate for chronic reading challenges if people with aphasia can understand synthetic speech output; however, inherent auditory comprehension challenges experienced by people with aphasia may make understanding synthetic speech difficult. This study's purpose was to compare the preferences and auditory comprehension accuracy of people with aphasia when listening to sentences generated with digitized natural speech, Alex synthetic speech (i.e., Macintosh platform), or David synthetic speech (i.e., Windows platform). The methodology required each of 20 participants with aphasia to select one of four images corresponding in meaning to each of 60 sentences comprising three stimulus sets. Results revealed significantly better accuracy given digitized natural speech than either synthetic speech option; however, individual participant performance analyses revealed three patterns: (a) comparable accuracy regardless of speech condition for 30% of participants, (b) comparable accuracy between digitized natural speech and one, but not both, synthetic speech option for 45% of participants, and (c) greater accuracy with digitized natural speech than with either synthetic speech option for remaining participants. Ranking and Likert-scale rating data revealed a preference for digitized natural speech and David synthetic speech over Alex synthetic speech. Results suggest many individuals with aphasia can comprehend synthetic speech options available on popular operating systems. Further examination of synthetic speech use to support reading comprehension through text-to-speech technology is thus warranted. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  2. Methods of analysis speech rate: a pilot study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Costa, Luanna Maria Oliveira; Martins-Reis, Vanessa de Oliveira; Celeste, Letícia Côrrea

    2016-01-01

    To describe the performance of fluent adults in different measures of speech rate. The study included 24 fluent adults, of both genders, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, who were born and still living in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, state of Minas Gerais, aged between 18 and 59 years. Participants were grouped by age: G1 (18-29 years), G2 (30-39 years), G3 (40-49 years), and G4 (50-59 years). The speech samples were obtained following the methodology of the Speech Fluency Assessment Protocol. In addition to the measures of speech rate proposed by the protocol (speech rate in words and syllables per minute), the rate of speech into phonemes per second and the articulation rate with and without the disfluencies were calculated. We used the nonparametric Friedman test and the Wilcoxon test for multiple comparisons. Groups were compared using the nonparametric Kruskal Wallis. The significance level was of 5%. There were significant differences between measures of speech rate involving syllables. The multiple comparisons showed that all the three measures were different. There was no effect of age for the studied measures. These findings corroborate previous studies. The inclusion of temporal acoustic measures such as speech rate in phonemes per second and articulation rates with and without disfluencies can be a complementary approach in the evaluation of speech rate.

  3. Common neural substrates support speech and non-speech vocal tract gestures

    OpenAIRE

    Chang, Soo-Eun; Kenney, Mary Kay; Loucks, Torrey M.J.; Poletto, Christopher J.; Ludlow, Christy L.

    2009-01-01

    The issue of whether speech is supported by the same neural substrates as non-speech vocal-tract gestures has been contentious. In this fMRI study we tested whether producing non-speech vocal tract gestures in humans shares the same functional neuroanatomy as non-sense speech syllables. Production of non-speech vocal tract gestures, devoid of phonological content but similar to speech in that they had familiar acoustic and somatosensory targets, were compared to the production of speech sylla...

  4. Conservative treatment of idiopathic spontaneous pneumoperitoneum in a bedridden patient: a case report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tanaka, Ryo; Kameyama, Hitoshi; Nagahashi, Masayuki; Kanda, Tatsuo; Ichikawa, Hiroshi; Hanyu, Takaaki; Ishikawa, Takashi; Kobayashi, Takashi; Sakata, Jun; Kosugi, Shin-Ichi; Wakai, Toshifumi

    2015-01-01

    Idiopathic spontaneous pneumoperitoneum is a rare condition that is characterized by intraperitoneal gas for which no clear etiology has been identified. We report here a case of idiopathic spontaneous pneumoperitoneum, which was successfully managed by conservative treatment. A 77-year-old woman who was bedridden with speech disability as a sequela of brain hemorrhage presented at our hospital with a 1-day history of abdominal distention. On physical examination, she had stable vital signs and slight epigastric tenderness on deep palpation without any other signs of peritonitis. A chest radiograph and computed tomography showed that a large amount of free gas extended into the upper abdominal cavity. Esophagogastroduodenoscopy revealed no perforation of the upper gastrointestinal tract. The patient was diagnosed with idiopathic spontaneous pneumoperitoneum, and conservative treatment was selected. The abdominal distension rapidly disappeared, and the patient resumed oral intake on the 5th hospital day without deterioration of symptoms. Knowledge of this rare disease and accurate diagnosis with findings of clinical imaging might contribute towards refraining from unnecessary laparotomy.

  5. Introductory speeches

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2001-01-01

    This CD is multimedia presentation of programme safety upgrading of Bohunice V1 NPP. This chapter consist of introductory commentary and 4 introductory speeches (video records): (1) Introductory speech of Vincent Pillar, Board chairman and director general of Slovak electric, Plc. (SE); (2) Introductory speech of Stefan Schmidt, director of SE - Bohunice Nuclear power plants; (3) Introductory speech of Jan Korec, Board chairman and director general of VUJE Trnava, Inc. - Engineering, Design and Research Organisation, Trnava; Introductory speech of Dietrich Kuschel, Senior vice-president of FRAMATOME ANP Project and Engineering

  6. Predicting speech intelligibility in conditions with nonlinearly processed noisy speech

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jørgensen, Søren; Dau, Torsten

    2013-01-01

    The speech-based envelope power spectrum model (sEPSM; [1]) was proposed in order to overcome the limitations of the classical speech transmission index (STI) and speech intelligibility index (SII). The sEPSM applies the signal-tonoise ratio in the envelope domain (SNRenv), which was demonstrated...... to successfully predict speech intelligibility in conditions with nonlinearly processed noisy speech, such as processing with spectral subtraction. Moreover, a multiresolution version (mr-sEPSM) was demonstrated to account for speech intelligibility in various conditions with stationary and fluctuating...

  7. Exploring Australian speech-language pathologists' use and perceptions ofnon-speech oral motor exercises.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rumbach, Anna F; Rose, Tanya A; Cheah, Mynn

    2018-01-29

    To explore Australian speech-language pathologists' use of non-speech oral motor exercises, and rationales for using/not using non-speech oral motor exercises in clinical practice. A total of 124 speech-language pathologists practising in Australia, working with paediatric and/or adult clients with speech sound difficulties, completed an online survey. The majority of speech-language pathologists reported that they did not use non-speech oral motor exercises when working with paediatric or adult clients with speech sound difficulties. However, more than half of the speech-language pathologists working with adult clients who have dysarthria reported using non-speech oral motor exercises with this population. The most frequently reported rationale for using non-speech oral motor exercises in speech sound difficulty management was to improve awareness/placement of articulators. The majority of speech-language pathologists agreed there is no clear clinical or research evidence base to support non-speech oral motor exercise use with clients who have speech sound difficulties. This study provides an overview of Australian speech-language pathologists' reported use and perceptions of non-speech oral motor exercises' applicability and efficacy in treating paediatric and adult clients who have speech sound difficulties. The research findings provide speech-language pathologists with insight into how and why non-speech oral motor exercises are currently used, and adds to the knowledge base regarding Australian speech-language pathology practice of non-speech oral motor exercises in the treatment of speech sound difficulties. Implications for Rehabilitation Non-speech oral motor exercises refer to oral motor activities which do not involve speech, but involve the manipulation or stimulation of oral structures including the lips, tongue, jaw, and soft palate. Non-speech oral motor exercises are intended to improve the function (e.g., movement, strength) of oral structures. The

  8. Cross-linguistic perspectives on speech assessment in cleft palate

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Willadsen, Elisabeth; Henningsson, Gunilla

    2012-01-01

    . Finally, the influence of different languages on some aspects of language acquisition in young children with cleft palate is presented and discussed. Until recently, not much has been written about cross linguistic perspectives when dealing with cleft palate speech. Most literature about assessment......This chapter deals with cross linguistic perspectives that need to be taken into account when comparing speech assessment and speech outcome obtained from cleft palate speakers of different languages. Firstly, an overview of consonants and vowels vulnerable to the cleft condition is presented. Then......, consequences for assessment of cleft palate speech by native versus non-native speakers of a language are discussed, as well as the use of phonemic versus phonetic transcription in cross linguistic studies. Specific recommendations for the construction of speech samples in cross linguistic studies are given...

  9. [Improving speech comprehension using a new cochlear implant speech processor].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Müller-Deile, J; Kortmann, T; Hoppe, U; Hessel, H; Morsnowski, A

    2009-06-01

    The aim of this multicenter clinical field study was to assess the benefits of the new Freedom 24 sound processor for cochlear implant (CI) users implanted with the Nucleus 24 cochlear implant system. The study included 48 postlingually profoundly deaf experienced CI users who demonstrated speech comprehension performance with their current speech processor on the Oldenburg sentence test (OLSA) in quiet conditions of at least 80% correct scores and who were able to perform adaptive speech threshold testing using the OLSA in noisy conditions. Following baseline measures of speech comprehension performance with their current speech processor, subjects were upgraded to the Freedom 24 speech processor. After a take-home trial period of at least 2 weeks, subject performance was evaluated by measuring the speech reception threshold with the Freiburg multisyllabic word test and speech intelligibility with the Freiburg monosyllabic word test at 50 dB and 70 dB in the sound field. The results demonstrated highly significant benefits for speech comprehension with the new speech processor. Significant benefits for speech comprehension were also demonstrated with the new speech processor when tested in competing background noise.In contrast, use of the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB) did not prove to be a suitably sensitive assessment tool for comparative subjective self-assessment of hearing benefits with each processor. Use of the preprocessing algorithm known as adaptive dynamic range optimization (ADRO) in the Freedom 24 led to additional improvements over the standard upgrade map for speech comprehension in quiet and showed equivalent performance in noise. Through use of the preprocessing beam-forming algorithm BEAM, subjects demonstrated a highly significant improved signal-to-noise ratio for speech comprehension thresholds (i.e., signal-to-noise ratio for 50% speech comprehension scores) when tested with an adaptive procedure using the Oldenburg

  10. Speech coding

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ravishankar, C., Hughes Network Systems, Germantown, MD

    1998-05-08

    Speech is the predominant means of communication between human beings and since the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, speech services have remained to be the core service in almost all telecommunication systems. Original analog methods of telephony had the disadvantage of speech signal getting corrupted by noise, cross-talk and distortion Long haul transmissions which use repeaters to compensate for the loss in signal strength on transmission links also increase the associated noise and distortion. On the other hand digital transmission is relatively immune to noise, cross-talk and distortion primarily because of the capability to faithfully regenerate digital signal at each repeater purely based on a binary decision. Hence end-to-end performance of the digital link essentially becomes independent of the length and operating frequency bands of the link Hence from a transmission point of view digital transmission has been the preferred approach due to its higher immunity to noise. The need to carry digital speech became extremely important from a service provision point of view as well. Modem requirements have introduced the need for robust, flexible and secure services that can carry a multitude of signal types (such as voice, data and video) without a fundamental change in infrastructure. Such a requirement could not have been easily met without the advent of digital transmission systems, thereby requiring speech to be coded digitally. The term Speech Coding is often referred to techniques that represent or code speech signals either directly as a waveform or as a set of parameters by analyzing the speech signal. In either case, the codes are transmitted to the distant end where speech is reconstructed or synthesized using the received set of codes. A more generic term that is applicable to these techniques that is often interchangeably used with speech coding is the term voice coding. This term is more generic in the sense that the

  11. Relationship between the stuttering severity index and speech rate

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Claudia Regina Furquim de Andrade

    Full Text Available CONTEXT: The speech rate is one of the parameters considered when investigating speech fluency and is an important variable in the assessment of individuals with communication complaints. OBJECTIVE: To correlate the stuttering severity index with one of the indices used for assessing fluency/speech rate. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: Fluency and Fluency Disorders Investigation Laboratory, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo. PARTICIPANTS: Seventy adults with stuttering diagnosis. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: A speech sample from each participant containing at least 200 fluent syllables was videotaped and analyzed according to a stuttering severity index test and speech rate parameters. RESULTS: The results obtained in this study indicate that the stuttering severity and the speech rate present significant variation, i.e., the more severe the stuttering is, the lower the speech rate in words and syllables per minute. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The results suggest that speech rate is an important indicator of fluency levels and should be incorporated in the assessment and treatment of stuttering. This study represents a first attempt to identify the possible subtypes of developmental stuttering. DEFINITION: Objective tests that quantify diseases are important in their diagnosis, treatment and prognosis.

  12. The analysis of speech acts patterns in two Egyptian inaugural speeches

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Imad Hayif Sameer

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available The theory of speech acts, which clarifies what people do when they speak, is not about individual words or sentences that form the basic elements of human communication, but rather about particular speech acts that are performed when uttering words. A speech act is the attempt at doing something purely by speaking. Many things can be done by speaking.  Speech acts are studied under what is called speech act theory, and belong to the domain of pragmatics. In this paper, two Egyptian inaugural speeches from El-Sadat and El-Sisi, belonging to different periods were analyzed to find out whether there were differences within this genre in the same culture or not. The study showed that there was a very small difference between these two speeches which were analyzed according to Searle’s theory of speech acts. In El Sadat’s speech, commissives came to occupy the first place. Meanwhile, in El–Sisi’s speech, assertives occupied the first place. Within the speeches of one culture, we can find that the differences depended on the circumstances that surrounded the elections of the Presidents at the time. Speech acts were tools they used to convey what they wanted and to obtain support from their audiences.

  13. Spontaneous regression of intracranial malignant lymphoma. Case report

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kojo, Nobuto; Tokutomi, Takashi; Eguchi, Gihachirou; Takagi, Shigeyuki; Matsumoto, Tomie; Sasaguri, Yasuyuki; Shigemori, Minoru.

    1988-05-01

    In a 46-year-old female with a 1-month history of gait and speech disturbances, computed tomography (CT) demonstrated mass lesions of slightly high density in the left basal ganglia and left frontal lobe. The lesions were markedly enhanced by contrast medium. The patient received no specific treatment, but her clinical manifestations gradually abated and the lesions decreased in size. Five months after her initial examination, the lesions were absent on CT scans; only a small area of low density remained. Residual clinical symptoms included mild right hemiparesis and aphasia. After 14 months the patient again deteriorated, and a CT scan revealed mass lesions in the right frontal lobe and the pons. However, no enhancement was observed in the previously affected regions. A biopsy revealed malignant lymphoma. Despite treatment with steroids and radiation, the patient's clinical status progressively worsened and she died 27 months after initial presentation. Seven other cases of spontaneous regression of primary malignant lymphoma have been reported. In this case, the mechanism of the spontaneous regression was not clear, but changes in immunologic status may have been involved.

  14. Online crowdsourcing for efficient rating of speech: a validation study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McAllister Byun, Tara; Halpin, Peter F; Szeredi, Daniel

    2015-01-01

    Blinded listener ratings are essential for valid assessment of interventions for speech disorders, but collecting these ratings can be time-intensive and costly. This study evaluated the validity of speech ratings obtained through online crowdsourcing, a potentially more efficient approach. 100 words from children with /r/ misarticulation were electronically presented for binary rating by 35 phonetically trained listeners and 205 naïve listeners recruited through the Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) crowdsourcing platform. Bootstrapping was used to compare different-sized samples of AMT listeners against a "gold standard" (mode across all trained listeners) and an "industry standard" (mode across bootstrapped samples of three trained listeners). There was strong overall agreement between trained and AMT listeners. The "industry standard" level of performance was matched by bootstrapped samples with n = 9 AMT listeners. These results support the hypothesis that valid ratings of speech data can be obtained in an efficient manner through AMT. Researchers in communication disorders could benefit from increased awareness of this method. Readers will be able to (a) discuss advantages and disadvantages of data collection through the crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), (b) describe the results of a validity study comparing samples of AMT listeners versus phonetically trained listeners in a speech-rating task. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  15. Speech Problems

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... Staying Safe Videos for Educators Search English Español Speech Problems KidsHealth / For Teens / Speech Problems What's in ... a person's ability to speak clearly. Some Common Speech and Language Disorders Stuttering is a problem that ...

  16. Speech fluency profile on different tasks for individuals with Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Juste, Fabiola Staróbole; Andrade, Claudia Regina Furquim de

    2017-07-20

    To characterize the speech fluency profile of patients with Parkinson's disease. Study participants were 40 individuals of both genders aged 40 to 80 years divided into 2 groups: Research Group - RG (20 individuals with diagnosis of Parkinson's disease) and Control Group - CG (20 individuals with no communication or neurological disorders). For all of the participants, three speech samples involving different tasks were collected: monologue, individual reading, and automatic speech. The RG presented a significant larger number of speech disruptions, both stuttering-like and typical dysfluencies, and higher percentage of speech discontinuity in the monologue and individual reading tasks compared with the CG. Both groups presented reduced number of speech disruptions (stuttering-like and typical dysfluencies) in the automatic speech task; the groups presented similar performance in this task. Regarding speech rate, individuals in the RG presented lower number of words and syllables per minute compared with those in the CG in all speech tasks. Participants of the RG presented altered parameters of speech fluency compared with those of the CG; however, this change in fluency cannot be considered a stuttering disorder.

  17. Alternative Speech Communication System for Persons with Severe Speech Disorders

    Science.gov (United States)

    Selouani, Sid-Ahmed; Sidi Yakoub, Mohammed; O'Shaughnessy, Douglas

    2009-12-01

    Assistive speech-enabled systems are proposed to help both French and English speaking persons with various speech disorders. The proposed assistive systems use automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speech synthesis in order to enhance the quality of communication. These systems aim at improving the intelligibility of pathologic speech making it as natural as possible and close to the original voice of the speaker. The resynthesized utterances use new basic units, a new concatenating algorithm and a grafting technique to correct the poorly pronounced phonemes. The ASR responses are uttered by the new speech synthesis system in order to convey an intelligible message to listeners. Experiments involving four American speakers with severe dysarthria and two Acadian French speakers with sound substitution disorders (SSDs) are carried out to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methods. An improvement of the Perceptual Evaluation of the Speech Quality (PESQ) value of 5% and more than 20% is achieved by the speech synthesis systems that deal with SSD and dysarthria, respectively.

  18. A characterization of verb use in Turkish agrammatic narrative speech

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Arslan, Seçkin; Bamyacı, Elif; Bastiaanse, Roelien

    2016-01-01

    This study investigates the characteristics of narrative-speech production and the use of verbs in Turkish agrammatic speakers (n = 10) compared to non-brain-damaged controls (n = 10). To elicit narrative-speech samples, personal interviews and storytelling tasks were conducted. Turkish has a large

  19. A Danish open-set speech corpus for competing-speech studies

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Jens Bo; Dau, Torsten; Neher, Tobias

    2014-01-01

    Studies investigating speech-on-speech masking effects commonly use closed-set speech materials such as the coordinate response measure [Bolia et al. (2000). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 107, 1065-1066]. However, these studies typically result in very low (i.e., negative) speech recognition thresholds (SRTs......) when the competing speech signals are spatially separated. To achieve higher SRTs that correspond more closely to natural communication situations, an open-set, low-context, multi-talker speech corpus was developed. Three sets of 268 unique Danish sentences were created, and each set was recorded...... with one of three professional female talkers. The intelligibility of each sentence in the presence of speech-shaped noise was measured. For each talker, 200 approximately equally intelligible sentences were then selected and systematically distributed into 10 test lists. Test list homogeneity was assessed...

  20. The Hypothesis of Apraxia of Speech in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shriberg, Lawrence D.; Paul, Rhea; Black, Lois M.; van Santen, Jan P.

    2011-01-01

    In a sample of 46 children aged 4-7 years with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and intelligible speech, there was no statistical support for the hypothesis of concomitant Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). Perceptual and acoustic measures of participants' speech, prosody, and voice were compared with data from 40 typically-developing children, 13…

  1. Digitized Ethnic Hate Speech: Understanding Effects of Digital Media Hate Speech on Citizen Journalism in Kenya

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stephen Gichuhi Kimotho

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Ethnicity in Kenya permeates all spheres of life. However, it is in politics that ethnicity is most visible. Election time in Kenya often leads to ethnic competition and hatred, often expressed through various media. Ethnic hate speech characterized the 2007 general elections in party rallies and through text messages, emails, posters and leaflets. This resulted in widespread skirmishes that left over 1200 people dead, and many displaced (KNHRC, 2008. In 2013, however, the new battle zone was the war of words on social media platform. More than any other time in Kenyan history, Kenyans poured vitriolic ethnic hate speech through digital media like Facebook, tweeter and blogs. Although scholars have studied the role and effects of the mainstream media like television and radio in proliferating the ethnic hate speech in Kenya (Michael Chege, 2008; Goldstein & Rotich, 2008a; Ismail & Deane, 2008; Jacqueline Klopp & Prisca Kamungi, 2007, little has been done in regard to social media.  This paper investigated the nature of digitized hate speech by: describing the forms of ethnic hate speech on social media in Kenya; the effects of ethnic hate speech on Kenyan’s perception of ethnic entities; ethnic conflict and ethics of citizen journalism. This study adopted a descriptive interpretive design, and utilized Austin’s Speech Act Theory, which explains use of language to achieve desired purposes and direct behaviour (Tarhom & Miracle, 2013. Content published between January and April 2013 from six purposefully identified blogs was analysed. Questionnaires were used to collect data from university students as they form a good sample of Kenyan population, are most active on social media and are drawn from all parts of the country. Qualitative data were analysed using NVIVO 10 software, while responses from the questionnaire were analysed using IBM SPSS version 21. The findings indicated that Facebook and Twitter were the main platforms used to

  2. Strength Is in Numbers: Can Concordant Artificial Listeners Improve Prediction of Emotion from Speech?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martinelli, Eugenio; Mencattini, Arianna; Daprati, Elena; Di Natale, Corrado

    2016-01-01

    Humans can communicate their emotions by modulating facial expressions or the tone of their voice. Albeit numerous applications exist that enable machines to read facial emotions and recognize the content of verbal messages, methods for speech emotion recognition are still in their infancy. Yet, fast and reliable applications for emotion recognition are the obvious advancement of present 'intelligent personal assistants', and may have countless applications in diagnostics, rehabilitation and research. Taking inspiration from the dynamics of human group decision-making, we devised a novel speech emotion recognition system that applies, for the first time, a semi-supervised prediction model based on consensus. Three tests were carried out to compare this algorithm with traditional approaches. Labeling performances relative to a public database of spontaneous speeches are reported. The novel system appears to be fast, robust and less computationally demanding than traditional methods, allowing for easier implementation in portable voice-analyzers (as used in rehabilitation, research, industry, etc.) and for applications in the research domain (such as real-time pairing of stimuli to participants' emotional state, selective/differential data collection based on emotional content, etc.).

  3. Oral motor deficits in speech-impaired children with autism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Belmonte, Matthew K.; Saxena-Chandhok, Tanushree; Cherian, Ruth; Muneer, Reema; George, Lisa; Karanth, Prathibha

    2013-01-01

    Absence of communicative speech in autism has been presumed to reflect a fundamental deficit in the use of language, but at least in a subpopulation may instead stem from motor and oral motor issues. Clinical reports of disparity between receptive vs. expressive speech/language abilities reinforce this hypothesis. Our early-intervention clinic develops skills prerequisite to learning and communication, including sitting, attending, and pointing or reference, in children below 6 years of age. In a cohort of 31 children, gross and fine motor skills and activities of daily living as well as receptive and expressive speech were assessed at intake and after 6 and 10 months of intervention. Oral motor skills were evaluated separately within the first 5 months of the child's enrolment in the intervention programme and again at 10 months of intervention. Assessment used a clinician-rated structured report, normed against samples of 360 (for motor and speech skills) and 90 (for oral motor skills) typically developing children matched for age, cultural environment and socio-economic status. In the full sample, oral and other motor skills correlated with receptive and expressive language both in terms of pre-intervention measures and in terms of learning rates during the intervention. A motor-impaired group comprising a third of the sample was discriminated by an uneven profile of skills with oral motor and expressive language deficits out of proportion to the receptive language deficit. This group learnt language more slowly, and ended intervention lagging in oral motor skills. In individuals incapable of the degree of motor sequencing and timing necessary for speech movements, receptive language may outstrip expressive speech. Our data suggest that autistic motor difficulties could range from more basic skills such as pointing to more refined skills such as articulation, and need to be assessed and addressed across this entire range in each individual. PMID:23847480

  4. Oral Motor Deficits in Speech-Impaired Children with Autism

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthew K Belmonte

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available Absence of communicative speech in autism has been presumed to reflect a fundamental deficit in the use of language, but at least in a subpopulation may instead stem from motor and oral motor issues. Clinical reports of disparity between receptive versus expressive speech / language abilities reinforce this hypothesis. Our early-intervention clinic develops skills prerequisite to learning and communication, including sitting, attending, and pointing or reference, in children below 6 years of age. In a cohort of 31 children, gross and fine motor skills and activities of daily living as well as receptive and expressive speech were assessed at intake and after 6 and 10 months of intervention. Oral motor skills were evaluated separately within the first 5 months of the child's enrolment in the intervention programme and again at 10 months of intervention. Assessment used a clinician-rated structured report, normed against samples of 360 (for motor and speech skills and 90 (for oral motor skills typically developing children matched for age, cultural environment and socio-economic status. In the full sample, oral and other motor skills correlated with receptive and expressive language both in terms of pre-intervention measures and in terms of learning rates during the intervention. A motor-impaired group comprising a third of the sample was discriminated by an uneven profile of skills with oral motor and expressive language deficits out of proportion to the receptive language deficit. This group learnt language more slowly, and ended intervention lagging in oral motor skills. In individuals incapable of the degree of motor sequencing and timing necessary for speech movements, receptive language may outstrip expressive speech. Our data suggest that autistic motor difficulties could range from more basic skills such as pointing to more refined skills such as articulation, and need to be assessed and addressed across this entire range in each individual.

  5. Multimodal Speech Capture System for Speech Rehabilitation and Learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sebkhi, Nordine; Desai, Dhyey; Islam, Mohammad; Lu, Jun; Wilson, Kimberly; Ghovanloo, Maysam

    2017-11-01

    Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are trained to correct articulation of people diagnosed with motor speech disorders by analyzing articulators' motion and assessing speech outcome while patients speak. To assist SLPs in this task, we are presenting the multimodal speech capture system (MSCS) that records and displays kinematics of key speech articulators, the tongue and lips, along with voice, using unobtrusive methods. Collected speech modalities, tongue motion, lips gestures, and voice are visualized not only in real-time to provide patients with instant feedback but also offline to allow SLPs to perform post-analysis of articulators' motion, particularly the tongue, with its prominent but hardly visible role in articulation. We describe the MSCS hardware and software components, and demonstrate its basic visualization capabilities by a healthy individual repeating the words "Hello World." A proof-of-concept prototype has been successfully developed for this purpose, and will be used in future clinical studies to evaluate its potential impact on accelerating speech rehabilitation by enabling patients to speak naturally. Pattern matching algorithms to be applied to the collected data can provide patients with quantitative and objective feedback on their speech performance, unlike current methods that are mostly subjective, and may vary from one SLP to another.

  6. Speech Motor Control in Fluent and Dysfluent Speech Production of an Individual with Apraxia of Speech and Broca's Aphasia

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Lieshout, Pascal H. H. M.; Bose, Arpita; Square, Paula A.; Steele, Catriona M.

    2007-01-01

    Apraxia of speech (AOS) is typically described as a motor-speech disorder with clinically well-defined symptoms, but without a clear understanding of the underlying problems in motor control. A number of studies have compared the speech of subjects with AOS to the fluent speech of controls, but only a few have included speech movement data and if…

  7. Vowels in infant-directed speech: More breathy and more variable, but not clearer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Miyazawa, Kouki; Shinya, Takahito; Martin, Andrew; Kikuchi, Hideaki; Mazuka, Reiko

    2017-09-01

    Infant-directed speech (IDS) is known to differ from adult-directed speech (ADS) in a number of ways, and it has often been argued that some of these IDS properties facilitate infants' acquisition of language. An influential study in support of this view is Kuhl et al. (1997), which found that vowels in IDS are produced with expanded first and second formants (F1/F2) on average, indicating that the vowels are acoustically further apart in IDS than in ADS. These results have been interpreted to mean that the way vowels are produced in IDS makes infants' task of learning vowel categories easier. The present paper revisits this interpretation by means of a thorough analysis of IDS vowels using a large-scale corpus of Japanese natural utterances. We will show that the expansion of F1/F2 values does occur in spontaneous IDS even when the vowels' prosodic position, lexical pitch accent, and lexical bias are accounted for. When IDS vowels are compared to carefully read speech (CS) by the same mothers, however, larger variability among IDS vowel tokens means that the acoustic distances among vowels are farther apart only in CS, but not in IDS when compared to ADS. Finally, we will show that IDS vowels are significantly more breathy than ADS or CS vowels. Taken together, our results demonstrate that even though expansion of formant values occurs in spontaneous IDS, this expansion cannot be interpreted as an indication that the acoustic distances among vowels are farther apart, as is the case in CS. Instead, we found that IDS vowels are characterized by breathy voice, which has been associated with the communication of emotional affect. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  8. Analysis and removing noise from speech using wavelet transform

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tomala, Karel; Voznak, Miroslav; Partila, Pavol; Rezac, Filip; Safarik, Jakub

    2013-05-01

    The paper discusses the use of Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT) wavelet in removing noise from voice samples and evaluation of its impact on speech quality. One significant part of Quality of Service (QoS) in communication technology is the speech quality assessment. However, this part is seriously overlooked as telecommunication providers often focus on increasing network capacity, expansion of services offered and their enforcement in the market. Among the fundamental factors affecting the transmission properties of the communication chain is noise, either at the transmitter or the receiver side. A wavelet transform (WT) is a modern tool for signal processing. One of the most significant areas in which wavelet transforms are used is applications designed to suppress noise in signals. To remove noise from the voice sample in our experiment, we used the reference segment of the voice which was distorted by Gaussian white noise. An evaluation of the impact on speech quality was carried out by an intrusive objective algorithm Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ). DWT and SWT transformation was applied to voice samples that were devalued by Gaussian white noise. Afterwards, we determined the effectiveness of DWT and SWT by means of objective algorithm PESQ. The decisive criterion for determining the quality of a voice sample once the noise had been removed was Mean Opinion Score (MOS) which we obtained in PESQ. The contribution of this work lies in the evaluation of efficiency of wavelet transformation to suppress noise in voice samples.

  9. Improving the teaching of children with severe speech-language difficulties by introducing an Authoring Concept Mapping Kit

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kicken, Ria; Ernes, Elise; Hoogenberg-Engbers, Ilja

    2016-01-01

    The paper reports on case studies in which an Authoring Concept Mapping Kit was incorporated as a didactic tool in the teaching of children with severe speech-language difficulties. The Kit was introduced to replace methods such as topic webs, or complement others such as conversation exchange......’ practice has been transformed and improved. The children’s perspective on the topic comes through in the teachers’ opinions. Concept mapping turned out to enhance meaning negotiation, active inquiry and collaboration during teaching interactive learning language. Teachers reported that it had great impact...... on children’s language development, vocabulary and spontaneous speech, while it had minimal impact on the way activities were performed in everyday classes....

  10. Communicative performance of adolescents with severe speech impairment: influence of context.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dalton, B M; Bedrosian, J L

    1989-08-01

    The communicative performance of 4 preoperational-level adolescents, using limited speech, gestures, and communication board techniques, was examined in a two-part investigation. In Part 1, each subject participated in an academic interaction with a teacher in a therapy room. Data were transcribed and coded for communication mode, function, and role. Two subjects were found to predominantly use the speech mode, while the remaining 2 predominantly used board and one other mode. The majority of productions consisted of responses to requests, and the initiator role was infrequently occupied. These findings were similar to those reported in previous investigations conducted in classroom settings. In Part 2, another examination of the communicative performance of these subjects was conducted in spontaneous interactions involving speaking and nonspeaking peers in a therapy room. Using the same data analysis procedures, gesture and speech modes predominated for 3 of the subjects in the nonspeaking peer interactions. The remaining subject exhibited minimal interaction. No consistent pattern of mode usage was exhibited across the speaking peer interactions. In the nonspeaking peer interactions, request predominated. In contrast, a variety of communication functions was exhibited in the speaking peer interactions. Both the initiator and the maintainer roles were occupied in the majority of interactions. Pertinent variables and clinical implications are discussed.

  11. Prevalence of Speech Disorders in Arak Primary School Students, 2014-2015

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Abdoreza Yavari

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background: The speech disorders may produce irreparable damage to childs speech and language development in the psychosocial view. The voice, speech sound production and fluency disorders are speech disorders, that may result from delay or impairment in speech motor control mechanism, central neuron system disorders, improper language stimulation or voice abuse. Materials and Methods: This study examined the prevalence of speech disorders in 1393 Arakian students at 1 to 6th grades of primary school. After collecting continuous speech samples, picture description, passage reading and phonetic test, we recorded the pathological signs of stuttering, articulation disorder and voice disorders in a special sheet. Results: The prevalence of articulation, voice and stuttering disorders was 8%, 3.5% and%1 and the prevalence of speech disorders was 11.9%. The prevalence of speech disorders was decreasing with increasing of student’s grade. 12.2% of boy students and 11.7% of girl students of primary school in Arak had speech disorders. Conclusion: The prevalence of speech disorders of primary school students in Arak is similar to the prevalence of speech disorders in Kermanshah, but the prevalence of speech disorders in this research is smaller than many similar researches in Iran. It seems that racial and cultural diversity has some effect on increasing the prevalence of speech disorders in Arak city.

  12. CASRA+: A Colloquial Arabic Speech Recognition Application

    OpenAIRE

    Ramzi A. Haraty; Omar El Ariss

    2007-01-01

    The research proposed here was for an Arabic speech recognition application, concentrating on the Lebanese dialect. The system starts by sampling the speech, which was the process of transforming the sound from analog to digital and then extracts the features by using the Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC). The extracted features are then compared with the system's stored model; in this case the stored model chosen was a phoneme-based model. This reference model differs from the direc...

  13. Indonesian Text-To-Speech System Using Diphone Concatenative Synthesis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sutarman

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we describe the design and develop a database of Indonesian diphone synthesis using speech segment of recorded voice to be converted from text to speech and save it as audio file like WAV or MP3. In designing and develop a database of Indonesian diphone there are several steps to follow; First, developed Diphone database includes: create a list of sample of words consisting of diphones organized by prioritizing looking diphone located in the middle of a word if not at the beginning or end; recording the samples of words by segmentation. ;create diphones made with a tool Diphone Studio 1.3. Second, develop system using Microsoft Visual Delphi 6.0, includes: the conversion system from the input of numbers, acronyms, words, and sentences into representations diphone. There are two kinds of conversion (process alleged in analyzing the Indonesian text-to-speech system. One is to convert the text to be sounded to phonem and two, to convert the phonem to speech. Method used in this research is called Diphone Concatenative synthesis, in which recorded sound segments are collected. Every segment consists of a diphone (2 phonems. This synthesizer may produce voice with high level of naturalness. The Indonesian Text to Speech system can differentiate special phonemes like in ‘Beda’ and ‘Bedak’ but sample of other spesific words is necessary to put into the system. This Indonesia TTS system can handle texts with abbreviation, there is the facility to add such words.

  14. Does brain injury impair speech and gesture differently?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tilbe Göksun

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available People often use spontaneous gestures when talking about space, such as when giving directions. In a recent study from our lab, we examined whether focal brain-injured individuals’ naming motion event components of manner and path (represented in English by verbs and prepositions, respectively are impaired selectively, and whether gestures compensate for impairment in speech. Left or right hemisphere damaged patients and elderly control participants were asked to describe motion events (e.g., walking around depicted in brief videos. Results suggest that producing verbs and prepositions can be separately impaired in the left hemisphere and gesture production compensates for naming impairments when damage involves specific areas in the left temporal cortex.

  15. Out-of-synchrony speech entrainment in developmental dyslexia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Molinaro, Nicola; Lizarazu, Mikel; Lallier, Marie; Bourguignon, Mathieu; Carreiras, Manuel

    2016-08-01

    Developmental dyslexia is a reading disorder often characterized by reduced awareness of speech units. Whether the neural source of this phonological disorder in dyslexic readers results from the malfunctioning of the primary auditory system or damaged feedback communication between higher-order phonological regions (i.e., left inferior frontal regions) and the auditory cortex is still under dispute. Here we recorded magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals from 20 dyslexic readers and 20 age-matched controls while they were listening to ∼10-s-long spoken sentences. Compared to controls, dyslexic readers had (1) an impaired neural entrainment to speech in the delta band (0.5-1 Hz); (2) a reduced delta synchronization in both the right auditory cortex and the left inferior frontal gyrus; and (3) an impaired feedforward functional coupling between neural oscillations in the right auditory cortex and the left inferior frontal regions. This shows that during speech listening, individuals with developmental dyslexia present reduced neural synchrony to low-frequency speech oscillations in primary auditory regions that hinders higher-order speech processing steps. The present findings, thus, strengthen proposals assuming that improper low-frequency acoustic entrainment affects speech sampling. This low speech-brain synchronization has the strong potential to cause severe consequences for both phonological and reading skills. Interestingly, the reduced speech-brain synchronization in dyslexic readers compared to normal readers (and its higher-order consequences across the speech processing network) appears preserved through the development from childhood to adulthood. Thus, the evaluation of speech-brain synchronization could possibly serve as a diagnostic tool for early detection of children at risk of dyslexia. Hum Brain Mapp 37:2767-2783, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  16. Automatic initial and final segmentation in cleft palate speech of Mandarin speakers.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ling He

    Full Text Available The speech unit segmentation is an important pre-processing step in the analysis of cleft palate speech. In Mandarin, one syllable is composed of two parts: initial and final. In cleft palate speech, the resonance disorders occur at the finals and the voiced initials, while the articulation disorders occur at the unvoiced initials. Thus, the initials and finals are the minimum speech units, which could reflect the characteristics of cleft palate speech disorders. In this work, an automatic initial/final segmentation method is proposed. It is an important preprocessing step in cleft palate speech signal processing. The tested cleft palate speech utterances are collected from the Cleft Palate Speech Treatment Center in the Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, which has the largest cleft palate patients in China. The cleft palate speech data includes 824 speech segments, and the control samples contain 228 speech segments. The syllables are extracted from the speech utterances firstly. The proposed syllable extraction method avoids the training stage, and achieves a good performance for both voiced and unvoiced speech. Then, the syllables are classified into with "quasi-unvoiced" or with "quasi-voiced" initials. Respective initial/final segmentation methods are proposed to these two types of syllables. Moreover, a two-step segmentation method is proposed. The rough locations of syllable and initial/final boundaries are refined in the second segmentation step, in order to improve the robustness of segmentation accuracy. The experiments show that the initial/final segmentation accuracies for syllables with quasi-unvoiced initials are higher than quasi-voiced initials. For the cleft palate speech, the mean time error is 4.4ms for syllables with quasi-unvoiced initials, and 25.7ms for syllables with quasi-voiced initials, and the correct segmentation accuracy P30 for all the syllables is 91.69%. For the control samples, P30 for all the

  17. A tale of two hands: Children's early gesture use in narrative production predicts later narrative structure in speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demir, Özlem Ece; Levine, Susan C.; Goldin-Meadow, Susan

    2014-01-01

    Speakers of all ages spontaneously gesture as they talk. These gestures predict children's milestones in vocabulary and sentence structure. We ask whether gesture serves a similar role in the development of narrative skill. Children were asked to retell a story conveyed in a wordless cartoon at age 5 and then again at 6, 7, and 8. Children's narrative structure in speech improved across these ages. At age 5, many of the children expressed a character's viewpoint in gesture, and these children were more likely to tell better-structured stories at the later ages than children who did not produce character-viewpoint gestures at age 5. In contrast, framing narratives from a character's perspective in speech at age 5 did not predict later narrative structure in speech. Gesture thus continues to act as a harbinger of change even as it assumes new roles in relation to discourse. PMID:25088361

  18. Enhancement of speech signals - with a focus on voiced speech models

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nørholm, Sidsel Marie

    This thesis deals with speech enhancement, i.e., noise reduction in speech signals. This has applications in, e.g., hearing aids and teleconference systems. We consider a signal-driven approach to speech enhancement where a model of the speech is assumed and filters are generated based...... on this model. The basic model used in this thesis is the harmonic model which is a commonly used model for describing the voiced part of the speech signal. We show that it can be beneficial to extend the model to take inharmonicities or the non-stationarity of speech into account. Extending the model...

  19. Speech emotion recognition based on statistical pitch model

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    WANG Zhiping; ZHAO Li; ZOU Cairong

    2006-01-01

    A modified Parzen-window method, which keep high resolution in low frequencies and keep smoothness in high frequencies, is proposed to obtain statistical model. Then, a gender classification method utilizing the statistical model is proposed, which have a 98% accuracy of gender classification while long sentence is dealt with. By separation the male voice and female voice, the mean and standard deviation of speech training samples with different emotion are used to create the corresponding emotion models. Then the Bhattacharyya distance between the test sample and statistical models of pitch, are utilized for emotion recognition in speech.The normalization of pitch for the male voice and female voice are also considered, in order to illustrate them into a uniform space. Finally, the speech emotion recognition experiment based on K Nearest Neighbor shows that, the correct rate of 81% is achieved, where it is only 73.85%if the traditional parameters are utilized.

  20. Intelligibility for Binaural Speech with Discarded Low-SNR Speech Components.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schoenmaker, Esther; van de Par, Steven

    2016-01-01

    Speech intelligibility in multitalker settings improves when the target speaker is spatially separated from the interfering speakers. A factor that may contribute to this improvement is the improved detectability of target-speech components due to binaural interaction in analogy to the Binaural Masking Level Difference (BMLD). This would allow listeners to hear target speech components within specific time-frequency intervals that have a negative SNR, similar to the improvement in the detectability of a tone in noise when these contain disparate interaural difference cues. To investigate whether these negative-SNR target-speech components indeed contribute to speech intelligibility, a stimulus manipulation was performed where all target components were removed when local SNRs were smaller than a certain criterion value. It can be expected that for sufficiently high criterion values target speech components will be removed that do contribute to speech intelligibility. For spatially separated speakers, assuming that a BMLD-like detection advantage contributes to intelligibility, degradation in intelligibility is expected already at criterion values below 0 dB SNR. However, for collocated speakers it is expected that higher criterion values can be applied without impairing speech intelligibility. Results show that degradation of intelligibility for separated speakers is only seen for criterion values of 0 dB and above, indicating a negligible contribution of a BMLD-like detection advantage in multitalker settings. These results show that the spatial benefit is related to a spatial separation of speech components at positive local SNRs rather than to a BMLD-like detection improvement for speech components at negative local SNRs.

  1. An experimental Dutch keyboard-to-speech system for the speech impaired

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Deliege, R.J.H.

    1989-01-01

    An experimental Dutch keyboard-to-speech system has been developed to explor the possibilities and limitations of Dutch speech synthesis in a communication aid for the speech impaired. The system uses diphones and a formant synthesizer chip for speech synthesis. Input to the system is in

  2. Speech Function and Speech Role in Carl Fredricksen's Dialogue on Up Movie

    OpenAIRE

    Rehana, Ridha; Silitonga, Sortha

    2013-01-01

    One aim of this article is to show through a concrete example how speech function and speech role used in movie. The illustrative example is taken from the dialogue of Up movie. Central to the analysis proper form of dialogue on Up movie that contain of speech function and speech role; i.e. statement, offer, question, command, giving, and demanding. 269 dialogue were interpreted by actor, and it was found that the use of speech function and speech role.

  3. Recovering With Acquired Apraxia of Speech: The First 2 Years.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Haley, Katarina L; Shafer, Jennifer N; Harmon, Tyson G; Jacks, Adam

    2016-12-01

    This study was intended to document speech recovery for 1 person with acquired apraxia of speech quantitatively and on the basis of her lived experience. The second author sustained a traumatic brain injury that resulted in acquired apraxia of speech. Over a 2-year period, she documented her recovery through 22 video-recorded monologues. We analyzed these monologues using a combination of auditory perceptual, acoustic, and qualitative methods. Recovery was evident for all quantitative variables examined. For speech sound production, the recovery was most prominent during the first 3 months, but slower improvement was evident for many months. Measures of speaking rate, fluency, and prosody changed more gradually throughout the entire period. A qualitative analysis of topics addressed in the monologues was consistent with the quantitative speech recovery and indicated a subjective dynamic relationship between accuracy and rate, an observation that several factors made speech sound production variable, and a persisting need for cognitive effort while speaking. Speech features improved over an extended time, but the recovery trajectories differed, indicating dynamic reorganization of the underlying speech production system. The relationship among speech dimensions should be examined in other cases and in population samples. The combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis methods offers advantages for understanding clinically relevant aspects of recovery.

  4. Sound frequency affects speech emotion perception: Results from congenital amusia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sydney eLolli

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Congenital amusics, or tone-deaf individuals, show difficulty in perceiving and producing small pitch differences. While amusia has marked effects on music perception, its impact on speech perception is less clear. Here we test the hypothesis that individual differences in pitch perception affect judgment of emotion in speech, by applying band-pass filters to spoken statements of emotional speech. A norming study was first conducted on Mechanical Turk to ensure that the intended emotions from the Macquarie Battery for Evaluation of Prosody (MBEP were reliably identifiable by US English speakers. The most reliably identified emotional speech samples were used in in Experiment 1, in which subjects performed a psychophysical pitch discrimination task, and an emotion identification task under band-pass and unfiltered speech conditions. Results showed a significant correlation between pitch discrimination threshold and emotion identification accuracy for band-pass filtered speech, with amusics (defined here as those with a pitch discrimination threshold > 16 Hz performing worse than controls. This relationship with pitch discrimination was not seen in unfiltered speech conditions. Given the dissociation between band-pass filtered and unfiltered speech conditions, we inferred that amusics may be compensating for poorer pitch perception by using speech cues that are filtered out in this manipulation.

  5. Acoustic-Emergent Phonology in the Amplitude Envelope of Child-Directed Speech.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Victoria Leong

    Full Text Available When acquiring language, young children may use acoustic spectro-temporal patterns in speech to derive phonological units in spoken language (e.g., prosodic stress patterns, syllables, phonemes. Children appear to learn acoustic-phonological mappings rapidly, without direct instruction, yet the underlying developmental mechanisms remain unclear. Across different languages, a relationship between amplitude envelope sensitivity and phonological development has been found, suggesting that children may make use of amplitude modulation (AM patterns within the envelope to develop a phonological system. Here we present the Spectral Amplitude Modulation Phase Hierarchy (S-AMPH model, a set of algorithms for deriving the dominant AM patterns in child-directed speech (CDS. Using Principal Components Analysis, we show that rhythmic CDS contains an AM hierarchy comprising 3 core modulation timescales. These timescales correspond to key phonological units: prosodic stress (Stress AM, ~2 Hz, syllables (Syllable AM, ~5 Hz and onset-rime units (Phoneme AM, ~20 Hz. We argue that these AM patterns could in principle be used by naïve listeners to compute acoustic-phonological mappings without lexical knowledge. We then demonstrate that the modulation statistics within this AM hierarchy indeed parse the speech signal into a primitive hierarchically-organised phonological system comprising stress feet (proto-words, syllables and onset-rime units. We apply the S-AMPH model to two other CDS corpora, one spontaneous and one deliberately-timed. The model accurately identified 72-82% (freely-read CDS and 90-98% (rhythmically-regular CDS stress patterns, syllables and onset-rime units. This in-principle demonstration that primitive phonology can be extracted from speech AMs is termed Acoustic-Emergent Phonology (AEP theory. AEP theory provides a set of methods for examining how early phonological development is shaped by the temporal modulation structure of speech across

  6. Experimental comparison between speech transmission index, rapid speech transmission index, and speech intelligibility index.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Larm, Petra; Hongisto, Valtteri

    2006-02-01

    During the acoustical design of, e.g., auditoria or open-plan offices, it is important to know how speech can be perceived in various parts of the room. Different objective methods have been developed to measure and predict speech intelligibility, and these have been extensively used in various spaces. In this study, two such methods were compared, the speech transmission index (STI) and the speech intelligibility index (SII). Also the simplification of the STI, the room acoustics speech transmission index (RASTI), was considered. These quantities are all based on determining an apparent speech-to-noise ratio on selected frequency bands and summing them using a specific weighting. For comparison, some data were needed on the possible differences of these methods resulting from the calculation scheme and also measuring equipment. Their prediction accuracy was also of interest. Measurements were made in a laboratory having adjustable noise level and absorption, and in a real auditorium. It was found that the measurement equipment, especially the selection of the loudspeaker, can greatly affect the accuracy of the results. The prediction accuracy of the RASTI was found acceptable, if the input values for the prediction are accurately known, even though the studied space was not ideally diffuse.

  7. Robust Speech/Non-Speech Classification in Heterogeneous Multimedia Content

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Huijbregts, M.A.H.; de Jong, Franciska M.G.

    In this paper we present a speech/non-speech classification method that allows high quality classification without the need to know in advance what kinds of audible non-speech events are present in an audio recording and that does not require a single parameter to be tuned on in-domain data. Because

  8. Intelligibility of speech of children with speech and sound disorders

    OpenAIRE

    Ivetac, Tina

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to examine speech intelligibility of children with primary speech and sound disorders aged 3 to 6 years in everyday life. The research problem is based on the degree to which parents or guardians, immediate family members (sister, brother, grandparents), extended family members (aunt, uncle, cousin), child's friends, other acquaintances, child's teachers and strangers understand the speech of children with speech sound disorders. We examined whether the level ...

  9. Speech Emotion Recognition Based on Power Normalized Cepstral Coefficients in Noisy Conditions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. Bashirpour

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Automatic recognition of speech emotional states in noisy conditions has become an important research topic in the emotional speech recognition area, in recent years. This paper considers the recognition of emotional states via speech in real environments. For this task, we employ the power normalized cepstral coefficients (PNCC in a speech emotion recognition system. We investigate its performance in emotion recognition using clean and noisy speech materials and compare it with the performances of the well-known MFCC, LPCC, RASTA-PLP, and also TEMFCC features. Speech samples are extracted from the Berlin emotional speech database (Emo DB and Persian emotional speech database (Persian ESD which are corrupted with 4 different noise types under various SNR levels. The experiments are conducted in clean train/noisy test scenarios to simulate practical conditions with noise sources. Simulation results show that higher recognition rates are achieved for PNCC as compared with the conventional features under noisy conditions.

  10. The minor third communicates sadness in speech, mirroring its use in music.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Curtis, Meagan E; Bharucha, Jamshed J

    2010-06-01

    There is a long history of attempts to explain why music is perceived as expressing emotion. The relationship between pitches serves as an important cue for conveying emotion in music. The musical interval referred to as the minor third is generally thought to convey sadness. We reveal that the minor third also occurs in the pitch contour of speech conveying sadness. Bisyllabic speech samples conveying four emotions were recorded by 9 actresses. Acoustic analyses revealed that the relationship between the 2 salient pitches of the sad speech samples tended to approximate a minor third. Participants rated the speech samples for perceived emotion, and the use of numerous acoustic parameters as cues for emotional identification was modeled using regression analysis. The minor third was the most reliable cue for identifying sadness. Additional participants rated musical intervals for emotion, and their ratings verified the historical association between the musical minor third and sadness. These findings support the theory that human vocal expressions and music share an acoustic code for communicating sadness.

  11. Longitudinal decline in speech production in Parkinson's disease spectrum disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ash, Sharon; Jester, Charles; York, Collin; Kofman, Olga L; Langey, Rachel; Halpin, Amy; Firn, Kim; Dominguez Perez, Sophia; Chahine, Lama; Spindler, Meredith; Dahodwala, Nabila; Irwin, David J; McMillan, Corey; Weintraub, Daniel; Grossman, Murray

    2017-08-01

    We examined narrative speech production longitudinally in non-demented (n=15) and mildly demented (n=8) patients with Parkinson's disease spectrum disorder (PDSD), and we related increasing impairment to structural brain changes in specific language and motor regions. Patients provided semi-structured speech samples, describing a standardized picture at two time points (mean±SD interval=38±24months). The recorded speech samples were analyzed for fluency, grammar, and informativeness. PDSD patients with dementia exhibited significant decline in their speech, unrelated to changes in overall cognitive or motor functioning. Regression analysis in a subset of patients with MRI scans (n=11) revealed that impaired language performance at Time 2 was associated with reduced gray matter (GM) volume at Time 1 in regions of interest important for language functioning but not with reduced GM volume in motor brain areas. These results dissociate language and motor systems and highlight the importance of non-motor brain regions for declining language in PDSD. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  12. Listeners' Perceptions of Speech and Language Disorders

    Science.gov (United States)

    Allard, Emily R.; Williams, Dale F.

    2008-01-01

    Using semantic differential scales with nine trait pairs, 445 adults rated five audio-taped speech samples, one depicting an individual without a disorder and four portraying communication disorders. Statistical analyses indicated that the no disorder sample was rated higher with respect to the trait of employability than were the articulation,…

  13. Speech disorders - children

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... disorder; Voice disorders; Vocal disorders; Disfluency; Communication disorder - speech disorder; Speech disorder - stuttering ... evaluation tools that can help identify and diagnose speech disorders: Denver Articulation Screening Examination Goldman-Fristoe Test of ...

  14. Neurophysiology of speech differences in childhood apraxia of speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Preston, Jonathan L; Molfese, Peter J; Gumkowski, Nina; Sorcinelli, Andrea; Harwood, Vanessa; Irwin, Julia R; Landi, Nicole

    2014-01-01

    Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a picture naming task of simple and complex words in children with typical speech and with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Results reveal reduced amplitude prior to speaking complex (multisyllabic) words relative to simple (monosyllabic) words for the CAS group over the right hemisphere during a time window thought to reflect phonological encoding of word forms. Group differences were also observed prior to production of spoken tokens regardless of word complexity during a time window just prior to speech onset (thought to reflect motor planning/programming). Results suggest differences in pre-speech neurolinguistic processes.

  15. Developing spontaneity and well-being in women victims of domestic violence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ines Testoni

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available In this paper we present the results of the last stage of the research project Empower Daphne that involved the participation of six countries belonging to the EU in two phases: I validation of the theoretical model on which basis rests the construct of well-being and spontaneity; II analysis of Morenian psychodrama intervention efficacy. 407 university students were part of the non-clinical sample in the first phase and 136 women victims of domestic violence made up the clinical sample for the second phase. During the six month the women took part in psychodramatic sessions, together with individual interviews. At the beginning and the end of the six month, a questionnaire was administered consisting of a well-being and a spontaneity scales. In the article we present the results that compare well-being and spontaneity between clinical and non-clinical samples, and between the clinical cut-off scores highlighted in the literature and the scores of clinical sample. The findings demonstrate interesting differences between two sample: observed lower levels of spontaneity and well-being in women victims of domestic violence, both before and after the psychodramatic intervention.

  16. Strength Is in Numbers: Can Concordant Artificial Listeners Improve Prediction of Emotion from Speech?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eugenio Martinelli

    Full Text Available Humans can communicate their emotions by modulating facial expressions or the tone of their voice. Albeit numerous applications exist that enable machines to read facial emotions and recognize the content of verbal messages, methods for speech emotion recognition are still in their infancy. Yet, fast and reliable applications for emotion recognition are the obvious advancement of present 'intelligent personal assistants', and may have countless applications in diagnostics, rehabilitation and research. Taking inspiration from the dynamics of human group decision-making, we devised a novel speech emotion recognition system that applies, for the first time, a semi-supervised prediction model based on consensus. Three tests were carried out to compare this algorithm with traditional approaches. Labeling performances relative to a public database of spontaneous speeches are reported. The novel system appears to be fast, robust and less computationally demanding than traditional methods, allowing for easier implementation in portable voice-analyzers (as used in rehabilitation, research, industry, etc. and for applications in the research domain (such as real-time pairing of stimuli to participants' emotional state, selective/differential data collection based on emotional content, etc..

  17. The development of co-speech gesture and its semantic integration with speech in 6- to 12-year-old children with autism spectrum disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    So, Wing-Chee; Wong, Miranda Kit-Yi; Lui, Ming; Yip, Virginia

    2015-11-01

    Previous work leaves open the question of whether children with autism spectrum disorders aged 6-12 years have delay in producing gestures compared to their typically developing peers. This study examined gestural production among school-aged children in a naturalistic context and how their gestures are semantically related to the accompanying speech. Delay in gestural production was found in children with autism spectrum disorders through their middle to late childhood. Compared to their typically developing counterparts, children with autism spectrum disorders gestured less often and used fewer types of gestures, in particular markers, which carry culture-specific meaning. Typically developing children's gestural production was related to language and cognitive skills, but among children with autism spectrum disorders, gestural production was more strongly related to the severity of socio-communicative impairment. Gesture impairment also included the failure to integrate speech with gesture: in particular, supplementary gestures are absent in children with autism spectrum disorders. The findings extend our understanding of gestural production in school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders during spontaneous interaction. The results can help guide new therapies for gestural production for children with autism spectrum disorders in middle and late childhood. © The Author(s) 2014.

  18. Effects of Time-Compressed Speech Training on Multiple Functional and Structural Neural Mechanisms Involving the Left Superior Temporal Gyrus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maruyama, Tsukasa; Takeuchi, Hikaru; Taki, Yasuyuki; Motoki, Kosuke; Jeong, Hyeonjeong; Kotozaki, Yuka; Nakagawa, Seishu; Nouchi, Rui; Iizuka, Kunio; Yokoyama, Ryoichi; Yamamoto, Yuki; Hanawa, Sugiko; Araki, Tsuyoshi; Sakaki, Kohei; Sasaki, Yukako; Magistro, Daniele; Kawashima, Ryuta

    2018-01-01

    Time-compressed speech is an artificial form of rapidly presented speech. Training with time-compressed speech (TCSSL) in a second language leads to adaptation toward TCSSL. Here, we newly investigated the effects of 4 weeks of training with TCSSL on diverse cognitive functions and neural systems using the fractional amplitude of spontaneous low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF), resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) with the left superior temporal gyrus (STG), fractional anisotropy (FA), and regional gray matter volume (rGMV) of young adults by magnetic resonance imaging. There were no significant differences in change of performance of measures of cognitive functions or second language skills after training with TCSSL compared with that of the active control group. However, compared with the active control group, training with TCSSL was associated with increased fALFF, RSFC, and FA and decreased rGMV involving areas in the left STG. These results lacked evidence of a far transfer effect of time-compressed speech training on a wide range of cognitive functions and second language skills in young adults. However, these results demonstrated effects of time-compressed speech training on gray and white matter structures as well as on resting-state intrinsic activity and connectivity involving the left STG, which plays a key role in listening comprehension.

  19. Listeners Experience Linguistic Masking Release in Noise-Vocoded Speech-in-Speech Recognition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Viswanathan, Navin; Kokkinakis, Kostas; Williams, Brittany T.

    2018-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether listeners with normal hearing perceiving noise-vocoded speech-in-speech demonstrate better intelligibility of target speech when the background speech was mismatched in language (linguistic release from masking [LRM]) and/or location (spatial release from masking [SRM]) relative to the…

  20. Speech Perception and Short-Term Memory Deficits in Persistent Developmental Speech Disorder

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kenney, Mary Kay; Barac-Cikoja, Dragana; Finnegan, Kimberly; Jeffries, Neal; Ludlow, Christy L.

    2006-01-01

    Children with developmental speech disorders may have additional deficits in speech perception and/or short-term memory. To determine whether these are only transient developmental delays that can accompany the disorder in childhood or persist as part of the speech disorder, adults with a persistent familial speech disorder were tested on speech…

  1. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) based approach for speech therapy of aphasic patients: A review

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jamal, Norezmi; Shanta, Shahnoor; Mahmud, Farhanahani; Sha'abani, MNAH

    2017-09-01

    This paper reviews the state-of-the-art an automatic speech recognition (ASR) based approach for speech therapy of aphasic patients. Aphasia is a condition in which the affected person suffers from speech and language disorder resulting from a stroke or brain injury. Since there is a growing body of evidence indicating the possibility of improving the symptoms at an early stage, ASR based solutions are increasingly being researched for speech and language therapy. ASR is a technology that transfers human speech into transcript text by matching with the system's library. This is particularly useful in speech rehabilitation therapies as they provide accurate, real-time evaluation for speech input from an individual with speech disorder. ASR based approaches for speech therapy recognize the speech input from the aphasic patient and provide real-time feedback response to their mistakes. However, the accuracy of ASR is dependent on many factors such as, phoneme recognition, speech continuity, speaker and environmental differences as well as our depth of knowledge on human language understanding. Hence, the review examines recent development of ASR technologies and its performance for individuals with speech and language disorders.

  2. The Relationship Between Apraxia of Speech and Oral Apraxia: Association or Dissociation?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Whiteside, Sandra P; Dyson, Lucy; Cowell, Patricia E; Varley, Rosemary A

    2015-11-01

    Acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder that affects the implementation of articulatory gestures and the fluency and intelligibility of speech. Oral apraxia (OA) is an impairment of nonspeech volitional movement. Although many speakers with AOS also display difficulties with volitional nonspeech oral movements, the relationship between the 2 conditions is unclear. This study explored the relationship between speech and volitional nonspeech oral movement impairment in a sample of 50 participants with AOS. We examined levels of association and dissociation between speech and OA using a battery of nonspeech oromotor, speech, and auditory/aphasia tasks. There was evidence of a moderate positive association between the 2 impairments across participants. However, individual profiles revealed patterns of dissociation between the 2 in a few cases, with evidence of double dissociation of speech and oral apraxic impairment. We discuss the implications of these relationships for models of oral motor and speech control. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  3. Speech and Language Delay

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... OTC Relief for Diarrhea Home Diseases and Conditions Speech and Language Delay Condition Speech and Language Delay Share Print Table of Contents1. ... Treatment6. Everyday Life7. Questions8. Resources What is a speech and language delay? A speech and language delay ...

  4. Plasticity in the Human Speech Motor System Drives Changes in Speech Perception

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lametti, Daniel R.; Rochet-Capellan, Amélie; Neufeld, Emily; Shiller, Douglas M.

    2014-01-01

    Recent studies of human speech motor learning suggest that learning is accompanied by changes in auditory perception. But what drives the perceptual change? Is it a consequence of changes in the motor system? Or is it a result of sensory inflow during learning? Here, subjects participated in a speech motor-learning task involving adaptation to altered auditory feedback and they were subsequently tested for perceptual change. In two separate experiments, involving two different auditory perceptual continua, we show that changes in the speech motor system that accompany learning drive changes in auditory speech perception. Specifically, we obtained changes in speech perception when adaptation to altered auditory feedback led to speech production that fell into the phonetic range of the speech perceptual tests. However, a similar change in perception was not observed when the auditory feedback that subjects' received during learning fell into the phonetic range of the perceptual tests. This indicates that the central motor outflow associated with vocal sensorimotor adaptation drives changes to the perceptual classification of speech sounds. PMID:25080594

  5. Improvement of spontaneous language in stroke patients with chronic aphasia treated with music therapy: a randomized controlled trial.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Raglio, Alfredo; Oasi, Osmano; Gianotti, Marta; Rossi, Agnese; Goulene, Karine; Stramba-Badiale, Marco

    2016-01-01

    The aim of this research is to evaluate the effects of active music therapy (MT) based on free-improvisation (relational approach) in addition to speech language therapy (SLT) compared with SLT alone (communicative-pragmatic approach: Promoting Aphasic's Communicative Effectiveness) in stroke patients with chronic aphasia. The experimental group (n = 10) was randomized to 30 MT individual sessions over 15 weeks in addition to 30 SLT individual sessions while the control group (n = 10) was randomized to only 30 SLT sessions during the same period. Psychological and speech language assessment were made before (T0) and after (T1) the treatments. The study shows a significant improvement in spontaneous speech in the experimental group (Aachener Aphasie subtest: p = 0.020; Cohen's d = 0.35); the 50% of the experimental group showed also an improvement in vitality scores of Short Form Health Survey (chi-square test = 4.114; p = 0.043). The current trial highlights the possibility that the combined use of MT and SLT can lead to a better result in the rehabilitation of patients with aphasia than SLT alone.

  6. Childhood apraxia of speech: A survey of praxis and typical speech characteristics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Malmenholt, Ann; Lohmander, Anette; McAllister, Anita

    2017-07-01

    The purpose of this study was to investigate current knowledge of the diagnosis childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) in Sweden and compare speech characteristics and symptoms to those of earlier survey findings in mainly English-speakers. In a web-based questionnaire 178 Swedish speech-language pathologists (SLPs) anonymously answered questions about their perception of typical speech characteristics for CAS. They graded own assessment skills and estimated clinical occurrence. The seven top speech characteristics reported as typical for children with CAS were: inconsistent speech production (85%), sequencing difficulties (71%), oro-motor deficits (63%), vowel errors (62%), voicing errors (61%), consonant cluster deletions (54%), and prosodic disturbance (53%). Motor-programming deficits described as lack of automatization of speech movements were perceived by 82%. All listed characteristics were consistent with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) consensus-based features, Strand's 10-point checklist, and the diagnostic model proposed by Ozanne. The mode for clinical occurrence was 5%. Number of suspected cases of CAS in the clinical caseload was approximately one new patient/year and SLP. The results support and add to findings from studies of CAS in English-speaking children with similar speech characteristics regarded as typical. Possibly, these findings could contribute to cross-linguistic consensus on CAS characteristics.

  7. Psychoacoustic cues to emotion in speech prosody and music.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coutinho, Eduardo; Dibben, Nicola

    2013-01-01

    There is strong evidence of shared acoustic profiles common to the expression of emotions in music and speech, yet relatively limited understanding of the specific psychoacoustic features involved. This study combined a controlled experiment and computational modelling to investigate the perceptual codes associated with the expression of emotion in the acoustic domain. The empirical stage of the study provided continuous human ratings of emotions perceived in excerpts of film music and natural speech samples. The computational stage created a computer model that retrieves the relevant information from the acoustic stimuli and makes predictions about the emotional expressiveness of speech and music close to the responses of human subjects. We show that a significant part of the listeners' second-by-second reported emotions to music and speech prosody can be predicted from a set of seven psychoacoustic features: loudness, tempo/speech rate, melody/prosody contour, spectral centroid, spectral flux, sharpness, and roughness. The implications of these results are discussed in the context of cross-modal similarities in the communication of emotion in the acoustic domain.

  8. Speech-specific audiovisual perception affects identification but not detection of speech

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Eskelund, Kasper; Andersen, Tobias

    Speech perception is audiovisual as evidenced by the McGurk effect in which watching incongruent articulatory mouth movements can change the phonetic auditory speech percept. This type of audiovisual integration may be specific to speech or be applied to all stimuli in general. To investigate...... of audiovisual integration specific to speech perception. However, the results of Tuomainen et al. might have been influenced by another effect. When observers were naïve, they had little motivation to look at the face. When informed, they knew that the face was relevant for the task and this could increase...... visual detection task. In our first experiment, observers presented with congruent and incongruent audiovisual sine-wave speech stimuli did only show a McGurk effect when informed of the speech nature of the stimulus. Performance on the secondary visual task was very good, thus supporting the finding...

  9. Speech-Language Therapy (For Parents)

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... Staying Safe Videos for Educators Search English Español Speech-Language Therapy KidsHealth / For Parents / Speech-Language Therapy ... most kids with speech and/or language disorders. Speech Disorders, Language Disorders, and Feeding Disorders A speech ...

  10. Digital speech processing using Matlab

    CERN Document Server

    Gopi, E S

    2014-01-01

    Digital Speech Processing Using Matlab deals with digital speech pattern recognition, speech production model, speech feature extraction, and speech compression. The book is written in a manner that is suitable for beginners pursuing basic research in digital speech processing. Matlab illustrations are provided for most topics to enable better understanding of concepts. This book also deals with the basic pattern recognition techniques (illustrated with speech signals using Matlab) such as PCA, LDA, ICA, SVM, HMM, GMM, BPN, and KSOM.

  11. Developmental apraxia of speech in children. Quantitive assessment of speech characteristics

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Thoonen, G.H.J.

    1998-01-01

    Developmental apraxia of speech (DAS) in children is a speech disorder, supposed to have a neurological origin, which is commonly considered to result from particular deficits in speech processing (i.e., phonological planning, motor programming). However, the label DAS has often been used as

  12. The natural statistics of audiovisual speech.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chandramouli Chandrasekaran

    2009-07-01

    Full Text Available Humans, like other animals, are exposed to a continuous stream of signals, which are dynamic, multimodal, extended, and time varying in nature. This complex input space must be transduced and sampled by our sensory systems and transmitted to the brain where it can guide the selection of appropriate actions. To simplify this process, it's been suggested that the brain exploits statistical regularities in the stimulus space. Tests of this idea have largely been confined to unimodal signals and natural scenes. One important class of multisensory signals for which a quantitative input space characterization is unavailable is human speech. We do not understand what signals our brain has to actively piece together from an audiovisual speech stream to arrive at a percept versus what is already embedded in the signal structure of the stream itself. In essence, we do not have a clear understanding of the natural statistics of audiovisual speech. In the present study, we identified the following major statistical features of audiovisual speech. First, we observed robust correlations and close temporal correspondence between the area of the mouth opening and the acoustic envelope. Second, we found the strongest correlation between the area of the mouth opening and vocal tract resonances. Third, we observed that both area of the mouth opening and the voice envelope are temporally modulated in the 2-7 Hz frequency range. Finally, we show that the timing of mouth movements relative to the onset of the voice is consistently between 100 and 300 ms. We interpret these data in the context of recent neural theories of speech which suggest that speech communication is a reciprocally coupled, multisensory event, whereby the outputs of the signaler are matched to the neural processes of the receiver.

  13. Presbycusis Disrupts Spontaneous Activity Revealed by Resting-State Functional MRI

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yu-Chen Chen

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available Purpose: Presbycusis, age-related hearing loss, is believed to involve neural changes in the central nervous system, which is associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment. The goal of this study was to determine if presbycusis disrupted spontaneous neural activity in specific brain areas involved in auditory processing, attention and cognitive function using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI approach.Methods: Hearing and resting-state fMRI measurements were obtained from 22 presbycusis patients and 23 age-, sex- and education-matched healthy controls. To identify changes in spontaneous neural activity associated with age-related hearing loss, we compared the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF and regional homogeneity (ReHo of fMRI signals in presbycusis patients vs. controls and then determined if these changes were linked to clinical measures of presbycusis.Results: Compared with healthy controls, presbycusis patients manifested decreased spontaneous activity mainly in the superior temporal gyrus (STG, parahippocampal gyrus (PHG, precuneus and inferior parietal lobule (IPL as well as increased neural activity in the middle frontal gyrus (MFG, cuneus and postcentral gyrus (PoCG. A significant negative correlation was observed between ALFF/ReHo activity in the STG and average hearing thresholds in presbycusis patients. Increased ALFF/ReHo activity in the MFG was positively correlated with impaired Trail-Making Test B (TMT-B scores, indicative of impaired cognitive function involving the frontal lobe.Conclusions: Presbycusis patients have disrupted spontaneous neural activity reflected by ALFF and ReHo measurements in several brain regions; these changes are associated with specific cognitive performance and speech/language processing. These findings mainly emphasize the crucial role of aberrant resting-state ALFF/ReHo patterns in presbycusis patients and will lead to a better understanding of the

  14. Presbycusis Disrupts Spontaneous Activity Revealed by Resting-State Functional MRI.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Yu-Chen; Chen, Huiyou; Jiang, Liang; Bo, Fan; Xu, Jin-Jing; Mao, Cun-Nan; Salvi, Richard; Yin, Xindao; Lu, Guangming; Gu, Jian-Ping

    2018-01-01

    Purpose : Presbycusis, age-related hearing loss, is believed to involve neural changes in the central nervous system, which is associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment. The goal of this study was to determine if presbycusis disrupted spontaneous neural activity in specific brain areas involved in auditory processing, attention and cognitive function using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach. Methods : Hearing and resting-state fMRI measurements were obtained from 22 presbycusis patients and 23 age-, sex- and education-matched healthy controls. To identify changes in spontaneous neural activity associated with age-related hearing loss, we compared the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) and regional homogeneity (ReHo) of fMRI signals in presbycusis patients vs. controls and then determined if these changes were linked to clinical measures of presbycusis. Results : Compared with healthy controls, presbycusis patients manifested decreased spontaneous activity mainly in the superior temporal gyrus (STG), parahippocampal gyrus (PHG), precuneus and inferior parietal lobule (IPL) as well as increased neural activity in the middle frontal gyrus (MFG), cuneus and postcentral gyrus (PoCG). A significant negative correlation was observed between ALFF/ReHo activity in the STG and average hearing thresholds in presbycusis patients. Increased ALFF/ReHo activity in the MFG was positively correlated with impaired Trail-Making Test B (TMT-B) scores, indicative of impaired cognitive function involving the frontal lobe. Conclusions : Presbycusis patients have disrupted spontaneous neural activity reflected by ALFF and ReHo measurements in several brain regions; these changes are associated with specific cognitive performance and speech/language processing. These findings mainly emphasize the crucial role of aberrant resting-state ALFF/ReHo patterns in presbycusis patients and will lead to a better understanding of the

  15. Perception of synthetic speech produced automatically by rule: Intelligibility of eight text-to-speech systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Greene, Beth G; Logan, John S; Pisoni, David B

    1986-03-01

    We present the results of studies designed to measure the segmental intelligibility of eight text-to-speech systems and a natural speech control, using the Modified Rhyme Test (MRT). Results indicated that the voices tested could be grouped into four categories: natural speech, high-quality synthetic speech, moderate-quality synthetic speech, and low-quality synthetic speech. The overall performance of the best synthesis system, DECtalk-Paul, was equivalent to natural speech only in terms of performance on initial consonants. The findings are discussed in terms of recent work investigating the perception of synthetic speech under more severe conditions. Suggestions for future research on improving the quality of synthetic speech are also considered.

  16. Perception of synthetic speech produced automatically by rule: Intelligibility of eight text-to-speech systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    GREENE, BETH G.; LOGAN, JOHN S.; PISONI, DAVID B.

    2012-01-01

    We present the results of studies designed to measure the segmental intelligibility of eight text-to-speech systems and a natural speech control, using the Modified Rhyme Test (MRT). Results indicated that the voices tested could be grouped into four categories: natural speech, high-quality synthetic speech, moderate-quality synthetic speech, and low-quality synthetic speech. The overall performance of the best synthesis system, DECtalk-Paul, was equivalent to natural speech only in terms of performance on initial consonants. The findings are discussed in terms of recent work investigating the perception of synthetic speech under more severe conditions. Suggestions for future research on improving the quality of synthetic speech are also considered. PMID:23225916

  17. The speech perception skills of children with and without speech sound disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hearnshaw, Stephanie; Baker, Elise; Munro, Natalie

    To investigate whether Australian-English speaking children with and without speech sound disorder (SSD) differ in their overall speech perception accuracy. Additionally, to investigate differences in the perception of specific phonemes and the association between speech perception and speech production skills. Twenty-five Australian-English speaking children aged 48-60 months participated in this study. The SSD group included 12 children and the typically developing (TD) group included 13 children. Children completed routine speech and language assessments in addition to an experimental Australian-English lexical and phonetic judgement task based on Rvachew's Speech Assessment and Interactive Learning System (SAILS) program (Rvachew, 2009). This task included eight words across four word-initial phonemes-/k, ɹ, ʃ, s/. Children with SSD showed significantly poorer perceptual accuracy on the lexical and phonetic judgement task compared with TD peers. The phonemes /ɹ/ and /s/ were most frequently perceived in error across both groups. Additionally, the phoneme /ɹ/ was most commonly produced in error. There was also a positive correlation between overall speech perception and speech production scores. Children with SSD perceived speech less accurately than their typically developing peers. The findings suggest that an Australian-English variation of a lexical and phonetic judgement task similar to the SAILS program is promising and worthy of a larger scale study. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Dorsomedial prefontal cortex supports spontaneous thinking per se.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Raij, T T; Riekki, T J J

    2017-06-01

    Spontaneous thinking, an action to produce, consider, integrate, and reason through mental representations, is central to our daily experience and has been suggested to serve crucial adaptive purposes. Such thinking occurs among other experiences during mind wandering that is associated with activation of the default mode network among other brain circuitries. Whether and how such brain activation is linked to the experience of spontaneous thinking per se remains poorly known. We studied 51 healthy subjects using a comprehensive experience-sampling paradigm during 3T functional magnetic resonance imaging. In comparison with fixation, the experiences of spontaneous thinking and spontaneous perception were related to activation of wide-spread brain circuitries, including the cortical midline structures, the anterior cingulate cortex and the visual cortex. In direct comparison of the spontaneous thinking versus spontaneous perception, activation was observed in the anterior dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Modality congruence of spontaneous-experience-related brain activation was suggested by several findings, including association of the lingual gyrus with visual in comparison with non-verbal-non-visual thinking. In the context of current literature, these findings suggest that the cortical midline structures are involved in the integrative core substrate of spontaneous thinking that is coupled with other brain systems depending on the characteristics of thinking. Furthermore, involvement of the anterior dorsomedial prefrontal cortex suggests the control of high-order abstract functions to characterize spontaneous thinking per se. Hum Brain Mapp 38:3277-3288, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  19. Speech Matters

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hasse Jørgensen, Stina

    2011-01-01

    About Speech Matters - Katarina Gregos, the Greek curator's exhibition at the Danish Pavillion, the Venice Biannual 2011.......About Speech Matters - Katarina Gregos, the Greek curator's exhibition at the Danish Pavillion, the Venice Biannual 2011....

  20. Hate speech

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anne Birgitta Nilsen

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The manifesto of the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik is based on the “Eurabia” conspiracy theory. This theory is a key starting point for hate speech amongst many right-wing extremists in Europe, but also has ramifications beyond these environments. In brief, proponents of the Eurabia theory claim that Muslims are occupying Europe and destroying Western culture, with the assistance of the EU and European governments. By contrast, members of Al-Qaeda and other extreme Islamists promote the conspiracy theory “the Crusade” in their hate speech directed against the West. Proponents of the latter theory argue that the West is leading a crusade to eradicate Islam and Muslims, a crusade that is similarly facilitated by their governments. This article presents analyses of texts written by right-wing extremists and Muslim extremists in an effort to shed light on how hate speech promulgates conspiracy theories in order to spread hatred and intolerance.The aim of the article is to contribute to a more thorough understanding of hate speech’s nature by applying rhetorical analysis. Rhetorical analysis is chosen because it offers a means of understanding the persuasive power of speech. It is thus a suitable tool to describe how hate speech works to convince and persuade. The concepts from rhetorical theory used in this article are ethos, logos and pathos. The concept of ethos is used to pinpoint factors that contributed to Osama bin Laden's impact, namely factors that lent credibility to his promotion of the conspiracy theory of the Crusade. In particular, Bin Laden projected common sense, good morals and good will towards his audience. He seemed to have coherent and relevant arguments; he appeared to possess moral credibility; and his use of language demonstrated that he wanted the best for his audience.The concept of pathos is used to define hate speech, since hate speech targets its audience's emotions. In hate speech it is the

  1. Rhythmic patterning in Malaysian and Singapore English.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tan, Rachel Siew Kuang; Low, Ee-Ling

    2014-06-01

    Previous work on the rhythm of Malaysian English has been based on impressionistic observations. This paper utilizes acoustic analysis to measure the rhythmic patterns of Malaysian English. Recordings of the read speech and spontaneous speech of 10 Malaysian English speakers were analyzed and compared with recordings of an equivalent sample of Singaporean English speakers. Analysis was done using two rhythmic indexes, the PVI and VarcoV. It was found that although the rhythm of read speech of the Singaporean speakers was syllable-based as described by previous studies, the rhythm of the Malaysian speakers was even more syllable-based. Analysis of the syllables in specific utterances showed that Malaysian speakers did not reduce vowels as much as Singaporean speakers in cases of syllables in utterances. Results of the spontaneous speech confirmed the findings for the read speech; that is, the same rhythmic patterning was found which normally triggers vowel reductions.

  2. Speech-To-Text Conversion STT System Using Hidden Markov Model HMM

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Su Myat Mon

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Speech is an easiest way to communicate with each other. Speech processing is widely used in many applications like security devices household appliances cellular phones ATM machines and computers. The human computer interface has been developed to communicate or interact conveniently for one who is suffering from some kind of disabilities. Speech-to-Text Conversion STT systems have a lot of benefits for the deaf or dumb people and find their applications in our daily lives. In the same way the aim of the system is to convert the input speech signals into the text output for the deaf or dumb students in the educational fields. This paper presents an approach to extract features by using Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients MFCC from the speech signals of isolated spoken words. And Hidden Markov Model HMM method is applied to train and test the audio files to get the recognized spoken word. The speech database is created by using MATLAB.Then the original speech signals are preprocessed and these speech samples are extracted to the feature vectors which are used as the observation sequences of the Hidden Markov Model HMM recognizer. The feature vectors are analyzed in the HMM depending on the number of states.

  3. Speech Inconsistency in Children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech, Language Impairment, and Speech Delay: Depends on the Stimuli

    Science.gov (United States)

    Iuzzini-Seigel, Jenya; Hogan, Tiffany P.; Green, Jordan R.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: The current research sought to determine (a) if speech inconsistency is a core feature of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) or if it is driven by comorbid language impairment that affects a large subset of children with CAS and (b) if speech inconsistency is a sensitive and specific diagnostic marker that can differentiate between CAS and…

  4. Speech comprehension difficulties in chronic tinnitus and its relation to hyperacusis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Veronika Vielsmeier

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available AbstractObjectiveMany tinnitus patients complain about difficulties regarding speech comprehension. In spite of the high clinical relevance little is known about underlying mechanisms and predisposing factors. Here, we performed an exploratory investigation in a large sample of tinnitus patients to (1 estimate the prevalence of speech comprehension difficulties among tinnitus patients, to (2 compare subjective reports of speech comprehension difficulties with objective measurements in a standardized speech comprehension test and to (3 explore underlying mechanisms by analyzing the relationship between speech comprehension difficulties and peripheral hearing function (pure tone audiogram, as well as with co-morbid hyperacusis as a central auditory processing disorder. Subjects and MethodsSpeech comprehension was assessed in 361 tinnitus patients presenting between 07/2012 and 08/2014 at the Interdisciplinary Tinnitus Clinic at the University of Regensburg. The assessment included standard audiological assessment (pure tone audiometry, tinnitus pitch and loudness matching, the Goettingen sentence test (in quiet for speech audiometric evaluation, two questions about hyperacusis, and two questions about speech comprehension in quiet and noisy environments (How would you rate your ability to understand speech?; How would you rate your ability to follow a conversation when multiple people are speaking simultaneously?. Results Subjectively reported speech comprehension deficits are frequent among tinnitus patients, especially in noisy environments (cocktail party situation. 74.2% of all investigated patients showed disturbed speech comprehension (indicated by values above 21.5 dB SPL in the Goettingen sentence test. Subjective speech comprehension complaints (both in general and in noisy environment were correlated with hearing level and with audiologically-assessed speech comprehension ability. In contrast, co-morbid hyperacusis was only correlated

  5. Measurement of speech levels in the presence of time varying background noise

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pearsons, K. S.; Horonjeff, R.

    1982-01-01

    Short-term speech level measurements which could be used to note changes in vocal effort in a time varying noise environment were studied. Knowing the changes in speech level would in turn allow prediction of intelligibility in the presence of aircraft flyover noise. Tests indicated that it is possible to use two second samples of speech to estimate long term root mean square speech levels. Other tests were also performed in which people read out loud during aircraft flyover noise. Results of these tests indicate that people do indeed raise their voice during flyovers at a rate of about 3-1/2 dB for each 10 dB increase in background level. This finding is in agreement with other tests of speech levels in the presence of steady state background noise.

  6. Production Variability and Single Word Intelligibility in Aphasia and Apraxia of Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Haley, Katarina L.; Martin, Gwenyth

    2011-01-01

    This study was designed to estimate test-retest reliability of orthographic speech intelligibility testing in speakers with aphasia and AOS and to examine its relationship to the consistency of speaker and listener responses. Monosyllabic single word speech samples were recorded from 13 speakers with coexisting aphasia and AOS. These words were…

  7. Spontaneous mutation by mutagenic repair of spontaneous lesions in DNA

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hastings, P.J.; Quah, S.-K.; Borstel, R.C. von

    1976-01-01

    It is stated that strains of yeast carrying mutations in many of the steps in pathways repairing radiation-induced damage to DNA have enhanced spontaneous mutation rates. Most strains isolated because they have enhanced spontaneous mutation carry mutations in DNA repair systems. This suggests that much spontaneous mutation arises by mutagenic repair of spontaneous lesions. (author)

  8. Clear Speech - Mere Speech? How segmental and prosodic speech reduction shape the impression that speakers create on listeners

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Niebuhr, Oliver

    2017-01-01

    of reduction levels and perceived speaker attributes in which moderate reduction can make a better impression on listeners than no reduction. In addition to its relevance in reduction models and theories, this interplay is instructive for various fields of speech application from social robotics to charisma...... whether variation in the degree of reduction also has a systematic effect on the attributes we ascribe to the speaker who produces the speech signal. A perception experiment was carried out for German in which 46 listeners judged whether or not speakers showing 3 different combinations of segmental...... and prosodic reduction levels (unreduced, moderately reduced, strongly reduced) are appropriately described by 13 physical, social, and cognitive attributes. The experiment shows that clear speech is not mere speech, and less clear speech is not just reduced either. Rather, results revealed a complex interplay...

  9. Audiovisual Temporal Recalibration for Speech in Synchrony Perception and Speech Identification

    Science.gov (United States)

    Asakawa, Kaori; Tanaka, Akihiro; Imai, Hisato

    We investigated whether audiovisual synchrony perception for speech could change after observation of the audiovisual temporal mismatch. Previous studies have revealed that audiovisual synchrony perception is re-calibrated after exposure to a constant timing difference between auditory and visual signals in non-speech. In the present study, we examined whether this audiovisual temporal recalibration occurs at the perceptual level even for speech (monosyllables). In Experiment 1, participants performed an audiovisual simultaneity judgment task (i.e., a direct measurement of the audiovisual synchrony perception) in terms of the speech signal after observation of the speech stimuli which had a constant audiovisual lag. The results showed that the “simultaneous” responses (i.e., proportion of responses for which participants judged the auditory and visual stimuli to be synchronous) at least partly depended on exposure lag. In Experiment 2, we adopted the McGurk identification task (i.e., an indirect measurement of the audiovisual synchrony perception) to exclude the possibility that this modulation of synchrony perception was solely attributable to the response strategy using stimuli identical to those of Experiment 1. The characteristics of the McGurk effect reported by participants depended on exposure lag. Thus, it was shown that audiovisual synchrony perception for speech could be modulated following exposure to constant lag both in direct and indirect measurement. Our results suggest that temporal recalibration occurs not only in non-speech signals but also in monosyllabic speech at the perceptual level.

  10. White noise speech illusion and psychosis expression: An experimental investigation of psychosis liability.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pries, Lotta-Katrin; Guloksuz, Sinan; Menne-Lothmann, Claudia; Decoster, Jeroen; van Winkel, Ruud; Collip, Dina; Delespaul, Philippe; De Hert, Marc; Derom, Catherine; Thiery, Evert; Jacobs, Nele; Wichers, Marieke; Simons, Claudia J P; Rutten, Bart P F; van Os, Jim

    2017-01-01

    An association between white noise speech illusion and psychotic symptoms has been reported in patients and their relatives. This supports the theory that bottom-up and top-down perceptual processes are involved in the mechanisms underlying perceptual abnormalities. However, findings in nonclinical populations have been conflicting. The aim of this study was to examine the association between white noise speech illusion and subclinical expression of psychotic symptoms in a nonclinical sample. Findings were compared to previous results to investigate potential methodology dependent differences. In a general population adolescent and young adult twin sample (n = 704), the association between white noise speech illusion and subclinical psychotic experiences, using the Structured Interview for Schizotypy-Revised (SIS-R) and the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (CAPE), was analyzed using multilevel logistic regression analyses. Perception of any white noise speech illusion was not associated with either positive or negative schizotypy in the general population twin sample, using the method by Galdos et al. (2011) (positive: ORadjusted: 0.82, 95% CI: 0.6-1.12, p = 0.217; negative: ORadjusted: 0.75, 95% CI: 0.56-1.02, p = 0.065) and the method by Catalan et al. (2014) (positive: ORadjusted: 1.11, 95% CI: 0.79-1.57, p = 0.557). No association was found between CAPE scores and speech illusion (ORadjusted: 1.25, 95% CI: 0.88-1.79, p = 0.220). For the Catalan et al. (2014) but not the Galdos et al. (2011) method, a negative association was apparent between positive schizotypy and speech illusion with positive or negative affective valence (ORadjusted: 0.44, 95% CI: 0.24-0.81, p = 0.008). Contrary to findings in clinical populations, white noise speech illusion may not be associated with psychosis proneness in nonclinical populations.

  11. Speech Recognition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adrian Morariu

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a method of speech recognition by pattern recognition techniques. Learning consists in determining the unique characteristics of a word (cepstral coefficients by eliminating those characteristics that are different from one word to another. For learning and recognition, the system will build a dictionary of words by determining the characteristics of each word to be used in the recognition. Determining the characteristics of an audio signal consists in the following steps: noise removal, sampling it, applying Hamming window, switching to frequency domain through Fourier transform, calculating the magnitude spectrum, filtering data, determining cepstral coefficients.

  12. Improved vocabulary production after naming therapy in aphasia: can gains in picture naming generalize to connected speech?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Conroy, Paul; Sage, Karen; Ralph, Matt Lambon

    2009-01-01

    Naming accuracy for nouns and verbs in aphasia can vary across different elicitation contexts, for example, simple picture naming, composite picture description, narratives, and conversation. For some people with aphasia, naming may be more accurate to simple pictures as opposed to naming in spontaneous, connected speech; for others, the opposite pattern may be evident. These differences have, in some instances, been related to word class (for example, noun or verb) as well as aphasia subtype. Given that the aim of picture-naming therapies is to improve word-finding in general, these differences in naming accuracy across contexts may have important implications for the potential functional benefits of picture-naming therapies. This study aimed to explore single-word therapy for both nouns and verbs, and to answer the following questions. (1) To what extent does an increase in naming accuracy after picture-naming therapy (for both nouns and verbs) predict accurate naming of the same items in less constrained spontaneous connected speech tasks such as composite picture description and retelling of a narrative? (2) Does the word class targeted in therapy (verb or noun) dictate whether there is 'carry-over' of the therapy item to connected speech tasks? (3) Does the speed at which the picture is named after therapy predict whether it will also be used appropriately in connected speech tasks? Seven participants with aphasia of varying degrees of severity and subtype took part in ten therapy sessions over five weeks. A set of potentially useful items was collected from control participant accounts of the Cookie Theft Picture Description and the Cinderella Story from the Quantitative Production Analysis. Twenty-four of these words (twelve verbs and twelve nouns) were collated for each participant, on the basis that they had failed to name them in either simple picture naming or connected speech tasks (picture-supported narrative and unsupported retelling of a narrative

  13. Under-resourced speech recognition based on the speech manifold

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Sahraeian, R

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Conventional acoustic modeling involves estimating many parameters to effectively model feature distributions. The sparseness of speech and text data, however, degrades the reliability of the estimation process and makes speech recognition a...

  14. PRACTICING SPEECH THERAPY INTERVENTION FOR SOCIAL INTEGRATION OF CHILDREN WITH SPEECH DISORDERS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Martin Ofelia POPESCU

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available The article presents a concise speech correction intervention program in of dyslalia in conjunction with capacity development of intra, interpersonal and social integration of children with speech disorders. The program main objectives represent: the potential increasing of individual social integration by correcting speech disorders in conjunction with intra- and interpersonal capacity, the potential growth of children and community groups for social integration by optimizing the socio-relational context of children with speech disorder. In the program were included 60 children / students with dyslalia speech disorders (monomorphic and polymorphic dyslalia, from 11 educational institutions - 6 kindergartens and 5 schools / secondary schools, joined with inter-school logopedic centre (CLI from Targu Jiu city and areas of Gorj district. The program was implemented under the assumption that therapeutic-formative intervention to correct speech disorders and facilitate the social integration will lead, in combination with correct pronunciation disorders, to social integration optimization of children with speech disorders. The results conirm the hypothesis and gives facts about the intervention program eficiency.

  15. Spontaneous cooperation for prosocials, but not for proselfs: Social value orientation moderates spontaneous cooperation behavior

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mischkowski, Dorothee; Glöckner, Andreas

    2016-01-01

    Cooperation is essential for the success of societies and there is an ongoing debate whether individuals have therefore developed a general spontaneous tendency to cooperate or not. Findings that cooperative behavior is related to shorter decision times provide support for the spontaneous cooperation effect, although contrary results have also been reported. We show that cooperative behavior is better described as person × situation interaction, in that there is a spontaneous cooperation effect for prosocial but not for proself persons. In three studies, one involving population representative samples from the US and Germany, we found that cooperation in a public good game is dependent on an interaction between individuals’ social value orientation and decision time. Increasing deliberation about the dilemma situation does not affect persons that are selfish to begin with, but it is related to decreasing cooperation for prosocial persons that gain positive utility from outcomes of others and score high on the related general personality trait honesty/humility. Our results demonstrate that the spontaneous cooperation hypothesis has to be qualified in that it is limited to persons with a specific personality and social values. Furthermore, they allow reconciling conflicting previous findings by identifying an important moderator for the effect. PMID:26876773

  16. Schizophrenia alters intra-network functional connectivity in the caudate for detecting speech under informational speech masking conditions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zheng, Yingjun; Wu, Chao; Li, Juanhua; Li, Ruikeng; Peng, Hongjun; She, Shenglin; Ning, Yuping; Li, Liang

    2018-04-04

    Speech recognition under noisy "cocktail-party" environments involves multiple perceptual/cognitive processes, including target detection, selective attention, irrelevant signal inhibition, sensory/working memory, and speech production. Compared to health listeners, people with schizophrenia are more vulnerable to masking stimuli and perform worse in speech recognition under speech-on-speech masking conditions. Although the schizophrenia-related speech-recognition impairment under "cocktail-party" conditions is associated with deficits of various perceptual/cognitive processes, it is crucial to know whether the brain substrates critically underlying speech detection against informational speech masking are impaired in people with schizophrenia. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study investigated differences between people with schizophrenia (n = 19, mean age = 33 ± 10 years) and their matched healthy controls (n = 15, mean age = 30 ± 9 years) in intra-network functional connectivity (FC) specifically associated with target-speech detection under speech-on-speech-masking conditions. The target-speech detection performance under the speech-on-speech-masking condition in participants with schizophrenia was significantly worse than that in matched healthy participants (healthy controls). Moreover, in healthy controls, but not participants with schizophrenia, the strength of intra-network FC within the bilateral caudate was positively correlated with the speech-detection performance under the speech-masking conditions. Compared to controls, patients showed altered spatial activity pattern and decreased intra-network FC in the caudate. In people with schizophrenia, the declined speech-detection performance under speech-on-speech masking conditions is associated with reduced intra-caudate functional connectivity, which normally contributes to detecting target speech against speech masking via its functions of suppressing masking-speech signals.

  17. Spontaneous burp phenomenon: analysis of experimental data and approach to theoretical interpretation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Shabalin, E.

    2004-01-01

    Cases of spontaneous release of energy (''burp'') were observed numerously in solid methane, water ice and other hydrogeneous compounds irradiated in fast neutron fields with absorbed dose 2-10 MGy. Nature of this phenomenon is that accumulation of radicals and thermal instability of a sample under due concentration of radicals culminate to autocatalytic reaction of their recombination. The most odious feature of this phenomenon is that irradiation time, before a burp occurs, varies significantly even in identical irradiation condition. Respectively, amount of released energy varies as well. For example, in URAM-2 experiments with water ice, irradiation time before appearance of spontaneous burp varied from 5 hours to 11 hours for equal samples and up to 20 hours for the smallest sample. Another feature of the phenomenon is that regularities for occurrence of spontaneous release of energy (that is, dependence on temperature, size of sample, absorbed dose) can't be extracted explicitly from experimental data, if applying known relations for critical concentration of radicals, namely: Semenov's and Frank-Kamenetski's conditions of thermal instability of a sample, Jackson's relation for chain process of recombination of uniformly distributed radicals, critical condition based on accounting for acceleration of a process of recombination in the regions of micro-cracks, and, finally, critical condition for irregular distribution of radicals proposed by the author of this article. Not one of these theories predicts casual character of a burp on macro-scale basis. So that, notwithstanding fair amount of experimental data on spontaneous burps, it is still impossible to derive well-balanced theory of this phenomenon. One attempt to understand a reason for the strange behavior of spontaneous burping is a probabilistic, cluster model of spontaneous release of energy, developed in the chapter 4 of this paper. Spontaneous burps observed during URAM-2 project and in solid methane

  18. Speech disorder prevention

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Miladis Fornaris-Méndez

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available Language therapy has trafficked from a medical focus until a preventive focus. However, difficulties are evidenced in the development of this last task, because he is devoted bigger space to the correction of the disorders of the language. Because the speech disorders is the dysfunction with more frequently appearance, acquires special importance the preventive work that is developed to avoid its appearance. Speech education since early age of the childhood makes work easier for prevent the appearance of speech disorders in the children. The present work has as objective to offer different activities for the prevention of the speech disorders.

  19. Apraxia of Speech: Perceptual Analysis of Trisyllabic Word Productions across Repeated Sampling Occasions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mauszycki, Shannon C.; Wambaugh, Julie L.; Cameron, Rosalea M.

    2012-01-01

    Purpose: Early apraxia of speech (AOS) research has characterized errors as being variable, resulting in a number of different error types being produced on repeated productions of the same stimuli. Conversely, recent research has uncovered greater consistency in errors, but there are limited data examining sound errors over time (more than one…

  20. Presence of Bacteria in Spontaneous Achilles Tendon Ruptures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rolf, Christer G; Fu, Sai-Chuen; Hopkins, Chelsea; Luan, Ju; Ip, Margaret; Yung, Shu-Hang; Friman, Göran; Qin, Ling; Chan, Kai-Ming

    2017-07-01

    The structural pathology of Achilles tendon (AT) ruptures resembles tendinopathy, but the causes remain unknown. Recently, a number of diseases were found to be attributed to bacterial infections, resulting in low-grade inflammation and progressive matrix disturbance. The authors speculate that spontaneous AT ruptures may also be influenced by the presence of bacteria. Bacteria are present in ruptured ATs but not in healthy tendons. Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3. Patients with spontaneous AT ruptures and patients undergoing anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction were recruited for this study. During AT surgical repair, excised tendinopathic tissue was collected, and healthy tendon samples were obtained as controls from hamstring tendon grafts used in ACL reconstruction. Half of every sample was reserved for DNA extraction and the other half for histology. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was conducted using 16S rRNA gene universal primers, and the PCR products were sequenced for the identification of bacterial species. A histological examination was performed to compare tendinopathic changes in the case and control samples. Five of 20 AT rupture samples were positive for the presence of bacterial DNA, while none of the 23 hamstring tendon samples were positive. Sterile operating and experimental conditions and tests on samples, controlling for harvesting and processing procedures, ruled out the chance of postoperative bacterial contamination. The species identified predominantly belonged to the Staphylococcus genus. AT rupture samples exhibited histopathological features characteristic of tendinopathy, and most healthy hamstring tendon samples displayed normal tendon features. There were no apparent differences in histopathology between the bacterial DNA-positive and bacterial DNA-negative AT rupture samples. The authors have demonstrated the presence of bacterial DNA in ruptured AT samples. It may suggest the potential involvement of bacteria

  1. Speech and Speech-Related Quality of Life After Late Palate Repair: A Patient's Perspective.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schönmeyr, Björn; Wendby, Lisa; Sharma, Mitali; Jacobson, Lia; Restrepo, Carolina; Campbell, Alex

    2015-07-01

    Many patients with cleft palate deformities worldwide receive treatment at a later age than is recommended for normal speech to develop. The outcomes after late palate repairs in terms of speech and quality of life (QOL) still remain largely unstudied. In the current study, questionnaires were used to assess the patients' perception of speech and QOL before and after primary palate repair. All of the patients were operated at a cleft center in northeast India and had a cleft palate with a normal lip or with a cleft lip that had been previously repaired. A total of 134 patients (7-35 years) were interviewed preoperatively and 46 patients (7-32 years) were assessed in the postoperative survey. The survey showed that scores based on the speech handicap index, concerning speech and speech-related QOL, did not improve postoperatively. In fact, the questionnaires indicated that the speech became more unpredictable (P reported that their self-confidence had improved after the operation. Thus, the majority of interviewed patients who underwent late primary palate repair were satisfied with the surgery. At the same time, speech and speech-related QOL did not improve according to the speech handicap index-based survey. Speech predictability may even become worse and nasal regurgitation may increase after late palate repair, according to these results.

  2. Visual Speech Fills in Both Discrimination and Identification of Non-Intact Auditory Speech in Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jerger, Susan; Damian, Markus F.; McAlpine, Rachel P.; Abdi, Herve

    2018-01-01

    To communicate, children must discriminate and identify speech sounds. Because visual speech plays an important role in this process, we explored how visual speech influences phoneme discrimination and identification by children. Critical items had intact visual speech (e.g. baez) coupled to non-intact (excised onsets) auditory speech (signified…

  3. Tackling the complexity in speech

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    section includes four carefully selected chapters. They deal with facets of speech production, speech acoustics, and/or speech perception or recognition, place them in an integrated phonetic-phonological perspective, and relate them in more or less explicit ways to aspects of speech technology. Therefore......, we hope that this volume can help speech scientists with traditional training in phonetics and phonology to keep up with the latest developments in speech technology. In the opposite direction, speech researchers starting from a technological perspective will hopefully get inspired by reading about...... the questions, phenomena, and communicative functions that are currently addressed in phonetics and phonology. Either way, the future of speech research lies in international, interdisciplinary collaborations, and our volume is meant to reflect and facilitate such collaborations...

  4. Speech in spinocerebellar ataxia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schalling, Ellika; Hartelius, Lena

    2013-12-01

    Spinocerebellar ataxias (SCAs) are a heterogeneous group of autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxias clinically characterized by progressive ataxia, dysarthria and a range of other concomitant neurological symptoms. Only a few studies include detailed characterization of speech symptoms in SCA. Speech symptoms in SCA resemble ataxic dysarthria but symptoms related to phonation may be more prominent. One study to date has shown an association between differences in speech and voice symptoms related to genotype. More studies of speech and voice phenotypes are motivated, to possibly aid in clinical diagnosis. In addition, instrumental speech analysis has been demonstrated to be a reliable measure that may be used to monitor disease progression or therapy outcomes in possible future pharmacological treatments. Intervention by speech and language pathologists should go beyond assessment. Clinical guidelines for management of speech, communication and swallowing need to be developed for individuals with progressive cerebellar ataxia. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. Audiovisual integration in children listening to spectrally degraded speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maidment, David W; Kang, Hi Jee; Stewart, Hannah J; Amitay, Sygal

    2015-02-01

    The study explored whether visual information improves speech identification in typically developing children with normal hearing when the auditory signal is spectrally degraded. Children (n=69) and adults (n=15) were presented with noise-vocoded sentences from the Children's Co-ordinate Response Measure (Rosen, 2011) in auditory-only or audiovisual conditions. The number of bands was adaptively varied to modulate the degradation of the auditory signal, with the number of bands required for approximately 79% correct identification calculated as the threshold. The youngest children (4- to 5-year-olds) did not benefit from accompanying visual information, in comparison to 6- to 11-year-old children and adults. Audiovisual gain also increased with age in the child sample. The current data suggest that children younger than 6 years of age do not fully utilize visual speech cues to enhance speech perception when the auditory signal is degraded. This evidence not only has implications for understanding the development of speech perception skills in children with normal hearing but may also inform the development of new treatment and intervention strategies that aim to remediate speech perception difficulties in pediatric cochlear implant users.

  6. Methodology for Speech Assessment in the Scandcleft Project-An International Randomized Clinical Trial on Palatal Surgery

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Willadsen, Elisabeth

    2009-01-01

    Objective: To present the methodology for speech assessment in the Scandcleft project and discuss issues from a pilot study. Design: Description of methodology and blinded test for speech assessment. Speech samples and instructions for data collection and analysis for comparisons of speech outcomes...... across five included languages were developed and tested. Participants and Materials: Randomly selected video recordings of 10 5-year-old children from each language (n = 50) were included in the project. Speech material consisted of test consonants in single words, connected speech, and syllable chains......-sum and the overall rating of VPC was 78%. Conclusions: Pooling data of speakers of different languages in the same trial and comparing speech outcome across trials seems possible if the assessment of speech concerns consonants and is confined to speech units that are phonetically similar across languages. Agreed...

  7. The Prevalence of Speech and Language Disorders in French-Speaking Preschool Children From Yaoundé (Cameroon).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tchoungui Oyono, Lilly; Pascoe, Michelle; Singh, Shajila

    2018-05-17

    The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of speech and language disorders in French-speaking preschool-age children in Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon. A total of 460 participants aged 3-5 years were recruited from the 7 communes of Yaoundé using a 2-stage cluster sampling method. Speech and language assessment was undertaken using a standardized speech and language test, the Evaluation du Langage Oral (Khomsi, 2001), which was purposefully renormed on the sample. A predetermined cutoff of 2 SDs below the normative mean was applied to identify articulation, expressive language, and receptive language disorders. Fluency and voice disorders were identified using clinical judgment by a speech-language pathologist. Overall prevalence was calculated as follows: speech disorders, 14.7%; language disorders, 4.3%; and speech and language disorders, 17.1%. In terms of disorders, prevalence findings were as follows: articulation disorders, 3.6%; expressive language disorders, 1.3%; receptive language disorders, 3%; fluency disorders, 8.4%; and voice disorders, 3.6%. Prevalence figures are higher than those reported for other countries and emphasize the urgent need to develop speech and language services for the Cameroonian population.

  8. Music training improves the ability to understand speech-in-noise in older adults

    OpenAIRE

    Belleville, Sylvie; Zendel, Benjamin; West, Greg; Peretz, Isabelle

    2017-01-01

    It is well known that hearing abilities decline with age, and one of the most commonly reported hearing difficulties reported in older adults is a reduced ability to understand speech in noisy environments. Older musicians have an enhanced ability to understand speech in noise, and this has been associated with enhanced brain responses related to both speech processing and the deployment of attention, however the causal impact of music lessons in older adults is poorly understood. A sample of...

  9. Predicting Speech Intelligibility with a Multiple Speech Subsystems Approach in Children with Cerebral Palsy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Jimin; Hustad, Katherine C.; Weismer, Gary

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: Speech acoustic characteristics of children with cerebral palsy (CP) were examined with a multiple speech subsystems approach; speech intelligibility was evaluated using a prediction model in which acoustic measures were selected to represent three speech subsystems. Method: Nine acoustic variables reflecting different subsystems, and…

  10. A causal test of the motor theory of speech perception: a case of impaired speech production and spared speech perception.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stasenko, Alena; Bonn, Cory; Teghipco, Alex; Garcea, Frank E; Sweet, Catherine; Dombovy, Mary; McDonough, Joyce; Mahon, Bradford Z

    2015-01-01

    The debate about the causal role of the motor system in speech perception has been reignited by demonstrations that motor processes are engaged during the processing of speech sounds. Here, we evaluate which aspects of auditory speech processing are affected, and which are not, in a stroke patient with dysfunction of the speech motor system. We found that the patient showed a normal phonemic categorical boundary when discriminating two non-words that differ by a minimal pair (e.g., ADA-AGA). However, using the same stimuli, the patient was unable to identify or label the non-word stimuli (using a button-press response). A control task showed that he could identify speech sounds by speaker gender, ruling out a general labelling impairment. These data suggest that while the motor system is not causally involved in perception of the speech signal, it may be used when other cues (e.g., meaning, context) are not available.

  11. Motor speech signature of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia: Refining the phenotype.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vogel, Adam P; Poole, Matthew L; Pemberton, Hugh; Caverlé, Marja W J; Boonstra, Frederique M C; Low, Essie; Darby, David; Brodtmann, Amy

    2017-08-22

    To provide a comprehensive description of motor speech function in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). Forty-eight individuals (24 bvFTD and 24 age- and sex-matched healthy controls) provided speech samples. These varied in complexity and thus cognitive demand. Their language was assessed using the Progressive Aphasia Language Scale and verbal fluency tasks. Speech was analyzed perceptually to describe the nature of deficits and acoustically to quantify differences between patients with bvFTD and healthy controls. Cortical thickness and subcortical volume derived from MRI scans were correlated with speech outcomes in patients with bvFTD. Speech of affected individuals was significantly different from that of healthy controls. The speech signature of patients with bvFTD is characterized by a reduced rate (75%) and accuracy (65%) on alternating syllable production tasks, and prosodic deficits including reduced speech rate (45%), prolonged intervals (54%), and use of short phrases (41%). Groups differed on acoustic measures derived from the reading, unprepared monologue, and diadochokinetic tasks but not the days of the week or sustained vowel tasks. Variability of silence length was associated with cortical thickness of the inferior frontal gyrus and insula and speech rate with the precentral gyrus. One in 8 patients presented with moderate speech timing deficits with a further two-thirds rated as mild or subclinical. Subtle but measurable deficits in prosody are common in bvFTD and should be considered during disease management. Language function correlated with speech timing measures derived from the unprepared monologue only. © 2017 American Academy of Neurology.

  12. The Relationship between Speech Production and Speech Perception Deficits in Parkinson's Disease

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Keyser, Kim; Santens, Patrick; Bockstael, Annelies; Botteldooren, Dick; Talsma, Durk; De Vos, Stefanie; Van Cauwenberghe, Mieke; Verheugen, Femke; Corthals, Paul; De Letter, Miet

    2016-01-01

    Purpose: This study investigated the possible relationship between hypokinetic speech production and speech intensity perception in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Method: Participants included 14 patients with idiopathic PD and 14 matched healthy controls (HCs) with normal hearing and cognition. First, speech production was objectified…

  13. Visual speech information: a help or hindrance in perceptual processing of dysarthric speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Borrie, Stephanie A

    2015-03-01

    This study investigated the influence of visual speech information on perceptual processing of neurologically degraded speech. Fifty listeners identified spastic dysarthric speech under both audio (A) and audiovisual (AV) conditions. Condition comparisons revealed that the addition of visual speech information enhanced processing of the neurologically degraded input in terms of (a) acuity (percent phonemes correct) of vowels and consonants and (b) recognition (percent words correct) of predictive and nonpredictive phrases. Listeners exploited stress-based segmentation strategies more readily in AV conditions, suggesting that the perceptual benefit associated with adding visual speech information to the auditory signal-the AV advantage-has both segmental and suprasegmental origins. Results also revealed that the magnitude of the AV advantage can be predicted, to some degree, by the extent to which an individual utilizes syllabic stress cues to inform word recognition in AV conditions. Findings inform the development of a listener-specific model of speech perception that applies to processing of dysarthric speech in everyday communication contexts.

  14. The treatment of apraxia of speech : Speech and music therapy, an innovative joint effort

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hurkmans, Josephus Johannes Stephanus

    2016-01-01

    Apraxia of Speech (AoS) is a neurogenic speech disorder. A wide variety of behavioural methods have been developed to treat AoS. Various therapy programmes use musical elements to improve speech production. A unique therapy programme combining elements of speech therapy and music therapy is called

  15. An Investigation of effective factors on nurses\\' speech errors

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maryam Tafaroji yeganeh

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Background : Speech errors are a branch of psycholinguistic science. Speech error or slip of tongue is a natural process that happens to everyone. The importance of this research is because of sensitivity and importance of nursing in which the speech errors may be interfere in the treatment of patients, but unfortunately no research has been done yet in this field.This research has been done to study the factors (personality, stress, fatigue and insomnia which cause speech errors happen to nurses of Ilam province. Materials and Methods: The sample of this correlation-descriptive research consists of 50 nurses working in Mustafa Khomeini Hospital of Ilam province who were selected randomly. Our data were collected using The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, NEO-Five Factor Inventory and Expanded Nursing Stress Scale, and were analyzed using SPSS version 20, descriptive, inferential and multivariate linear regression or two-variable statistical methods (with significant level: p≤0. 05. Results: 30 (60% of nurses participating in the study were female and 19 (38% were male. In this study, all three factors (type of personality, stress and fatigue have significant effects on nurses' speech errors Conclusion: 30 (60% of nurses participating in the study were female and 19 (38% were male. In this study, all three factors (type of personality, stress and fatigue have significant effects on nurses' speech errors.

  16. Practical speech user interface design

    CERN Document Server

    Lewis, James R

    2010-01-01

    Although speech is the most natural form of communication between humans, most people find using speech to communicate with machines anything but natural. Drawing from psychology, human-computer interaction, linguistics, and communication theory, Practical Speech User Interface Design provides a comprehensive yet concise survey of practical speech user interface (SUI) design. It offers practice-based and research-based guidance on how to design effective, efficient, and pleasant speech applications that people can really use. Focusing on the design of speech user interfaces for IVR application

  17. Motor Speech Phenotypes of Frontotemporal Dementia, Primary Progressive Aphasia, and Progressive Apraxia of Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poole, Matthew L.; Brodtmann, Amy; Darby, David; Vogel, Adam P.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: Our purpose was to create a comprehensive review of speech impairment in frontotemporal dementia (FTD), primary progressive aphasia (PPA), and progressive apraxia of speech in order to identify the most effective measures for diagnosis and monitoring, and to elucidate associations between speech and neuroimaging. Method: Speech and…

  18. A predictive model for diagnosing stroke-related apraxia of speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ballard, Kirrie J; Azizi, Lamiae; Duffy, Joseph R; McNeil, Malcolm R; Halaki, Mark; O'Dwyer, Nicholas; Layfield, Claire; Scholl, Dominique I; Vogel, Adam P; Robin, Donald A

    2016-01-29

    Diagnosis of the speech motor planning/programming disorder, apraxia of speech (AOS), has proven challenging, largely due to its common co-occurrence with the language-based impairment of aphasia. Currently, diagnosis is based on perceptually identifying and rating the severity of several speech features. It is not known whether all, or a subset of the features, are required for a positive diagnosis. The purpose of this study was to assess predictor variables for the presence of AOS after left-hemisphere stroke, with the goal of increasing diagnostic objectivity and efficiency. This population-based case-control study involved a sample of 72 cases, using the outcome measure of expert judgment on presence of AOS and including a large number of independently collected candidate predictors representing behavioral measures of linguistic, cognitive, nonspeech oral motor, and speech motor ability. We constructed a predictive model using multiple imputation to deal with missing data; the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (Lasso) technique for variable selection to define the most relevant predictors, and bootstrapping to check the model stability and quantify the optimism of the developed model. Two measures were sufficient to distinguish between participants with AOS plus aphasia and those with aphasia alone, (1) a measure of speech errors with words of increasing length and (2) a measure of relative vowel duration in three-syllable words with weak-strong stress pattern (e.g., banana, potato). The model has high discriminative ability to distinguish between cases with and without AOS (c-index=0.93) and good agreement between observed and predicted probabilities (calibration slope=0.94). Some caution is warranted, given the relatively small sample specific to left-hemisphere stroke, and the limitations of imputing missing data. These two speech measures are straightforward to collect and analyse, facilitating use in research and clinical settings. Copyright

  19. An analysis of the masking of speech by competing speech using self-report data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Agus, Trevor R; Akeroyd, Michael A; Noble, William; Bhullar, Navjot

    2009-01-01

    Many of the items in the "Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing" scale questionnaire [S. Gatehouse and W. Noble, Int. J. Audiol. 43, 85-99 (2004)] are concerned with speech understanding in a variety of backgrounds, both speech and nonspeech. To study if this self-report data reflected informational masking, previously collected data on 414 people were analyzed. The lowest scores (greatest difficulties) were found for the two items in which there were two speech targets, with successively higher scores for competing speech (six items), energetic masking (one item), and no masking (three items). The results suggest significant masking by competing speech in everyday listening situations.

  20. Perception of co-speech gestures in aphasic patients: a visual exploration study during the observation of dyadic conversations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Preisig, Basil C; Eggenberger, Noëmi; Zito, Giuseppe; Vanbellingen, Tim; Schumacher, Rahel; Hopfner, Simone; Nyffeler, Thomas; Gutbrod, Klemens; Annoni, Jean-Marie; Bohlhalter, Stephan; Müri, René M

    2015-03-01

    Co-speech gestures are part of nonverbal communication during conversations. They either support the verbal message or provide the interlocutor with additional information. Furthermore, they prompt as nonverbal cues the cooperative process of turn taking. In the present study, we investigated the influence of co-speech gestures on the perception of dyadic dialogue in aphasic patients. In particular, we analysed the impact of co-speech gestures on gaze direction (towards speaker or listener) and fixation of body parts. We hypothesized that aphasic patients, who are restricted in verbal comprehension, adapt their visual exploration strategies. Sixteen aphasic patients and 23 healthy control subjects participated in the study. Visual exploration behaviour was measured by means of a contact-free infrared eye-tracker while subjects were watching videos depicting spontaneous dialogues between two individuals. Cumulative fixation duration and mean fixation duration were calculated for the factors co-speech gesture (present and absent), gaze direction (to the speaker or to the listener), and region of interest (ROI), including hands, face, and body. Both aphasic patients and healthy controls mainly fixated the speaker's face. We found a significant co-speech gesture × ROI interaction, indicating that the presence of a co-speech gesture encouraged subjects to look at the speaker. Further, there was a significant gaze direction × ROI × group interaction revealing that aphasic patients showed reduced cumulative fixation duration on the speaker's face compared to healthy controls. Co-speech gestures guide the observer's attention towards the speaker, the source of semantic input. It is discussed whether an underlying semantic processing deficit or a deficit to integrate audio-visual information may cause aphasic patients to explore less the speaker's face. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Neural pathways for visual speech perception

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lynne E Bernstein

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper examines the questions, what levels of speech can be perceived visually, and how is visual speech represented by the brain? Review of the literature leads to the conclusions that every level of psycholinguistic speech structure (i.e., phonetic features, phonemes, syllables, words, and prosody can be perceived visually, although individuals differ in their abilities to do so; and that there are visual modality-specific representations of speech qua speech in higher-level vision brain areas. That is, the visual system represents the modal patterns of visual speech. The suggestion that the auditory speech pathway receives and represents visual speech is examined in light of neuroimaging evidence on the auditory speech pathways. We outline the generally agreed-upon organization of the visual ventral and dorsal pathways and examine several types of visual processing that might be related to speech through those pathways, specifically, face and body, orthography, and sign language processing. In this context, we examine the visual speech processing literature, which reveals widespread diverse patterns activity in posterior temporal cortices in response to visual speech stimuli. We outline a model of the visual and auditory speech pathways and make several suggestions: (1 The visual perception of speech relies on visual pathway representations of speech qua speech. (2 A proposed site of these representations, the temporal visual speech area (TVSA has been demonstrated in posterior temporal cortex, ventral and posterior to multisensory posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS. (3 Given that visual speech has dynamic and configural features, its representations in feedforward visual pathways are expected to integrate these features, possibly in TVSA.

  2. Relative Contributions of the Dorsal vs. Ventral Speech Streams to Speech Perception are Context Dependent: a lesion study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Corianne Rogalsky

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available The neural basis of speech perception has been debated for over a century. While it is generally agreed that the superior temporal lobes are critical for the perceptual analysis of speech, a major current topic is whether the motor system contributes to speech perception, with several conflicting findings attested. In a dorsal-ventral speech stream framework (Hickok & Poeppel 2007, this debate is essentially about the roles of the dorsal versus ventral speech processing streams. A major roadblock in characterizing the neuroanatomy of speech perception is task-specific effects. For example, much of the evidence for dorsal stream involvement comes from syllable discrimination type tasks, which have been found to behaviorally doubly dissociate from auditory comprehension tasks (Baker et al. 1981. Discrimination task deficits could be a result of difficulty perceiving the sounds themselves, which is the typical assumption, or it could be a result of failures in temporary maintenance of the sensory traces, or the comparison and/or the decision process. Similar complications arise in perceiving sentences: the extent of inferior frontal (i.e. dorsal stream activation during listening to sentences increases as a function of increased task demands (Love et al. 2006. Another complication is the stimulus: much evidence for dorsal stream involvement uses speech samples lacking semantic context (CVs, non-words. The present study addresses these issues in a large-scale lesion-symptom mapping study. 158 patients with focal cerebral lesions from the Mutli-site Aphasia Research Consortium underwent a structural MRI or CT scan, as well as an extensive psycholinguistic battery. Voxel-based lesion symptom mapping was used to compare the neuroanatomy involved in the following speech perception tasks with varying phonological, semantic, and task loads: (i two discrimination tasks of syllables (non-words and words, respectively, (ii two auditory comprehension tasks

  3. SPEECH DISORDERS IN PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS OF ISFAHAN (1998-9

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    B SHAFIEI

    2002-06-01

    Full Text Available Introduction. The aim of this study was to describe frequency of speech disorders in primary school students.
    Methods. In a cross-sectional study 300 first and second grade primary school students were examined for speech disorders.
    Results. From 300 subjects, 280 were normal (without speech disorders, 15 had articulation disorders, 2 had voice disorders, 3 had resonance disorders and no one had fluency disorders.
    Discussion. The findings of this study are supported by fomer study in other countries, except frequency of fluency disorders which may due to low sample size of present study.

  4. Digitised evaluation of speech intelligibility using vowels in maxillectomy patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sumita, Y I; Hattori, M; Murase, M; Elbashti, M E; Taniguchi, H

    2018-03-01

    Among the functional disabilities that patients face following maxillectomy, speech impairment is a major factor influencing quality of life. Proper rehabilitation of speech, which may include prosthodontic and surgical treatments and speech therapy, requires accurate evaluation of speech intelligibility (SI). A simple, less time-consuming yet accurate evaluation is desirable both for maxillectomy patients and the various clinicians providing maxillofacial treatment. This study sought to determine the utility of digital acoustic analysis of vowels for the prediction of SI in maxillectomy patients, based on a comprehensive understanding of speech production in the vocal tract of maxillectomy patients and its perception. Speech samples were collected from 33 male maxillectomy patients (mean age 57.4 years) in two conditions, without and with a maxillofacial prosthesis, and formant data for the vowels /a/,/e/,/i/,/o/, and /u/ were calculated based on linear predictive coding. The frequency range of formant 2 (F2) was determined by differences between the minimum and maximum frequency. An SI test was also conducted to reveal the relationship between SI score and F2 range. Statistical analyses were applied. F2 range and SI score were significantly different between the two conditions without and with a prosthesis (both P maxillectomy. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  5. Part-of-speech effects on text-to-speech synthesis

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Schlunz, GI

    2010-11-01

    Full Text Available One of the goals of text-to-speech (TTS) systems is to produce natural-sounding synthesised speech. Towards this end various natural language processing (NLP) tasks are performed to model the prosodic aspects of the TTS voice. One of the fundamental...

  6. Crows spontaneously exhibit analogical reasoning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smirnova, Anna; Zorina, Zoya; Obozova, Tanya; Wasserman, Edward

    2015-01-19

    Analogical reasoning is vital to advanced cognition and behavioral adaptation. Many theorists deem analogical thinking to be uniquely human and to be foundational to categorization, creative problem solving, and scientific discovery. Comparative psychologists have long been interested in the species generality of analogical reasoning, but they initially found it difficult to obtain empirical support for such thinking in nonhuman animals (for pioneering efforts, see [2, 3]). Researchers have since mustered considerable evidence and argument that relational matching-to-sample (RMTS) effectively captures the essence of analogy, in which the relevant logical arguments are presented visually. In RMTS, choice of test pair BB would be correct if the sample pair were AA, whereas choice of test pair EF would be correct if the sample pair were CD. Critically, no items in the correct test pair physically match items in the sample pair, thus demanding that only relational sameness or differentness is available to support accurate choice responding. Initial evidence suggested that only humans and apes can successfully learn RMTS with pairs of sample and test items; however, monkeys have subsequently done so. Here, we report that crows too exhibit relational matching behavior. Even more importantly, crows spontaneously display relational responding without ever having been trained on RMTS; they had only been trained on identity matching-to-sample (IMTS). Such robust and uninstructed relational matching behavior represents the most convincing evidence yet of analogical reasoning in a nonprimate species, as apes alone have spontaneously exhibited RMTS behavior after only IMTS training. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. 75 FR 26701 - Telecommunications Relay Services and Speech-to-Speech Services for Individuals With Hearing and...

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-05-12

    ...] Telecommunications Relay Services and Speech-to-Speech Services for Individuals With Hearing and Speech Disabilities... proposed compensation rates for Interstate TRS, Speech-to-Speech Services (STS), Captioned Telephone... costs reported in the data submitted to NECA by VRS providers. In this regard, document DA 10-761 also...

  8. Everyday listeners' impressions of speech produced by individuals with adductor spasmodic dysphonia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nagle, Kathleen F; Eadie, Tanya L; Yorkston, Kathryn M

    2015-01-01

    Individuals with adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD) have reported that unfamiliar communication partners appear to judge them as sneaky, nervous or not intelligent, apparently based on the quality of their speech; however, there is minimal research into the actual everyday perspective of listening to ADSD speech. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impressions of listeners hearing ADSD speech for the first time using a mixed-methods design. Everyday listeners were interviewed following sessions in which they made ratings of ADSD speech. A semi-structured interview approach was used and data were analyzed using thematic content analysis. Three major themes emerged: (1) everyday listeners make judgments about speakers with ADSD; (2) ADSD speech does not sound normal to everyday listeners; and (3) rating overall severity is difficult for everyday listeners. Participants described ADSD speech similarly to existing literature; however, some listeners inaccurately extrapolated speaker attributes based solely on speech samples. Listeners may draw erroneous conclusions about individuals with ADSD and these biases may affect the communicative success of these individuals. Results have implications for counseling individuals with ADSD, as well as the need for education and awareness about ADSD. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. Predicting automatic speech recognition performance over communication channels from instrumental speech quality and intelligibility scores

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gallardo, L.F.; Möller, S.; Beerends, J.

    2017-01-01

    The performance of automatic speech recognition based on coded-decoded speech heavily depends on the quality of the transmitted signals, determined by channel impairments. This paper examines relationships between speech recognition performance and measurements of speech quality and intelligibility

  10. [Non-speech oral motor treatment efficacy for children with developmental speech sound disorders].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ygual-Fernandez, A; Cervera-Merida, J F

    2016-01-01

    In the treatment of speech disorders by means of speech therapy two antagonistic methodological approaches are applied: non-verbal ones, based on oral motor exercises (OME), and verbal ones, which are based on speech processing tasks with syllables, phonemes and words. In Spain, OME programmes are called 'programas de praxias', and are widely used and valued by speech therapists. To review the studies conducted on the effectiveness of OME-based treatments applied to children with speech disorders and the theoretical arguments that could justify, or not, their usefulness. Over the last few decades evidence has been gathered about the lack of efficacy of this approach to treat developmental speech disorders and pronunciation problems in populations without any neurological alteration of motor functioning. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has advised against its use taking into account the principles of evidence-based practice. The knowledge gathered to date on motor control shows that the pattern of mobility and its corresponding organisation in the brain are different in speech and other non-verbal functions linked to nutrition and breathing. Neither the studies on their effectiveness nor the arguments based on motor control studies recommend the use of OME-based programmes for the treatment of pronunciation problems in children with developmental language disorders.

  11. Comparison of speech performance in labial and lingual orthodontic patients: A prospective study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rai, Ambesh Kumar; Rozario, Joe E.; Ganeshkar, Sanjay V.

    2014-01-01

    Background: The intensity and duration of speech difficulty inherently associated with lingual therapy is a significant issue of concern in orthodontics. This study was designed to evaluate and to compare the duration of changes in speech between labial and lingual orthodontics. Materials and Methods: A prospective longitudinal clinical study was designed to assess speech of 24 patients undergoing labial or lingual orthodontic treatment. An objective spectrographic evaluation of/s/sound was done using software PRAAT version 5.0.47, a semiobjective auditive evaluation of articulation was done by four speech pathologists and a subjective assessment of speech was done by four laypersons. The tests were performed before (T1), within 24 h (T2), after 1 week (T3) and after 1 month (T4) of the start of therapy. The Mann-Whitney U-test for independent samples was used to assess the significance difference between the labial and lingual appliances. A speech alteration with P appliance systems caused a comparable speech difficulty immediately after bonding (T2). Although the speech recovered within a week in the labial group (T3), the lingual group continued to experience discomfort even after a month (T4). PMID:25540661

  12. Top-Down Cognitive and Linguistic Influences on the Suppression of Spontaneous Otoacoustic Emissions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Viorica Marian

    2018-06-01

    Full Text Available Auditory sensation is often thought of as a bottom-up process, yet the brain exerts top-down control to affect how and what we hear. We report the discovery that the magnitude of top-down influence varies across individuals as a result of differences in linguistic background and executive function. Participants were 32 normal-hearing individuals (23 female varying in language background (11 English monolinguals, 10 Korean-English late bilinguals, and 11 Korean-English early bilinguals, as well as cognitive abilities (working memory, cognitive control. To assess efferent control over inner ear function, participants were presented with speech-sounds (e.g., /ba/, /pa/ in one ear while spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs were measured in the contralateral ear. SOAEs are associated with the amplification of sound in the cochlea, and can be used as an index of top-down efferent activity. Individuals with bilingual experience and those with better cognitive control experienced larger reductions in the amplitude of SOAEs in response to speech stimuli, likely as a result of greater efferent suppression of amplification in the cochlea. This suppression may aid in the critical task of speech perception by minimizing the disruptive effects of noise. In contrast, individuals with better working memory exert less control over the cochlea, possibly due to a greater capacity to process complex stimuli at later stages. These findings demonstrate that even peripheral mechanics of auditory perception are shaped by top-down cognitive and linguistic influences.

  13. 75 FR 54040 - Telecommunications Relay Services and Speech-to-Speech Services for Individuals With Hearing and...

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-09-03

    ...] Telecommunications Relay Services and Speech-to-Speech Services for Individuals With Hearing and Speech Disabilities...; speech-to-speech (STS); pay-per-call (900) calls; types of calls; and equal access to interexchange... of a report, due April 16, 2011, addressing whether it is necessary for the waivers to remain in...

  14. Computer-based Programs in Speech Therapy of Dyslalia and Dyslexia- Dysgraphia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mirela Danubianu

    2010-04-01

    Full Text Available During the last years, the researchers and therapists in speech therapy have been more and more concerned with the elaboration and use of computer programs in speech disorders therapy. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the therapeutic effectiveness of computer-based programs for the Romanian language in speech therapy. Along the study, we will present the experimental research through assessing the effectiveness of computer programs in the speech therapy for speech disorders: dyslalia, dyslexia and dysgraphia. Methodologically, the use of the computer in the therapeutic phases was carried out with the help of some computer-based programs (Logomon, Dislex-Test etc. that we elaborated and we experimented with during several years of therapeutic activity. The sample used in our experiments was composed of 120 subjects; two groups of 60 children with speech disorders were selected for both speech disorders: 30 for the experimental ('computer-based' group and 30 for the control ('classical method' group. The study hypotheses verified whether the results, obtained by the subjects within the experimental group, improved significantly after using the computer-based program, compared to the subjects within the control group, who did not use this program but got a classical therapy. The hypotheses were confirmed for the speech disorders included in this research; the conclusions of the study confirm the advantages of using computer-based programs within speech therapy by correcting these disorders, as well as due to the positive influence these programs have on the development of children’s personality.

  15. Indonesian Automatic Speech Recognition For Command Speech Controller Multimedia Player

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vivien Arief Wardhany

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of multimedia devices development is controlling through voice. Nowdays voice that can be recognized only in English. To overcome the issue, then recognition using Indonesian language model and accousticc model and dictionary. Automatic Speech Recognizier is build using engine CMU Sphinx with modified english language to Indonesian Language database and XBMC used as the multimedia player. The experiment is using 10 volunteers testing items based on 7 commands. The volunteers is classifiedd by the genders, 5 Male & 5 female. 10 samples is taken in each command, continue with each volunteer perform 10 testing command. Each volunteer also have to try all 7 command that already provided. Based on percentage clarification table, the word “Kanan” had the most recognize with percentage 83% while “pilih” is the lowest one. The word which had the most wrong clarification is “kembali” with percentagee 67%, while the word “kanan” is the lowest one. From the result of Recognition Rate by male there are several command such as “Kembali”, “Utama”, “Atas “ and “Bawah” has the low Recognition Rate. Especially for “kembali” cannot be recognized as the command in the female voices but in male voice that command has 4% of RR this is because the command doesn’t have similar word in english near to “kembali” so the system unrecognize the command. Also for the command “Pilih” using the female voice has 80% of RR but for the male voice has only 4% of RR. This problem is mostly because of the different voice characteristic between adult male and female which male has lower voice frequencies (from 85 to 180 Hz than woman (165 to 255 Hz.The result of the experiment showed that each man had different number of recognition rate caused by the difference tone, pronunciation, and speed of speech. For further work needs to be done in order to improving the accouracy of the Indonesian Automatic Speech Recognition system

  16. Environmental Contamination of Normal Speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Harley, Trevor A.

    1990-01-01

    Environmentally contaminated speech errors (irrelevant words or phrases derived from the speaker's environment and erroneously incorporated into speech) are hypothesized to occur at a high level of speech processing, but with a relatively late insertion point. The data indicate that speech production processes are not independent of other…

  17. Speech and orthodontic appliances: a systematic literature review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Junyu; Wan, Jia; You, Lun

    2018-01-23

    Various types of orthodontic appliances can lead to speech difficulties. However, speech difficulties caused by orthodontic appliances have not been sufficiently investigated by an evidence-based method. The aim of this study is to outline the scientific evidence and mechanism of the speech difficulties caused by orthodontic appliances. Randomized-controlled clinical trials (RCT), controlled clinical trials, and cohort studies focusing on the effect of orthodontic appliances on speech were included. A systematic search was conducted by an electronic search in PubMed, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library databases, complemented by a manual search. The types of orthodontic appliances, the affected sounds, and duration period of the speech disturbances were extracted. The ROBINS-I tool was applied to evaluate the quality of non-randomized studies, and the bias of RCT was assessed based on the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. No meta-analyses could be performed due to the heterogeneity in the study designs and treatment modalities. Among 448 screened articles, 13 studies were included (n = 297 patients). Different types of orthodontic appliances such as fixed appliances, orthodontic retainers and palatal expanders could influence the clarity of speech. The /i/, /a/, and /e/ vowels as well as /s/, /z/, /l/, /t/, /d/, /r/, and /ʃ/ consonants could be distorted by appliances. Although most speech impairments could return to normal within weeks, speech distortion of the /s/ sound might last for more than 3 months. The low evidence level grading and heterogeneity were the two main limitations in this systematic review. Lingual fixed appliances, palatal expanders, and Hawley retainers have an evident influence on speech production. The /i/, /s/, /t/, and /d/ sounds are the primarily affected ones. The results of this systematic review should be interpreted with caution and more high-quality RCTs with larger sample sizes and longer follow-up periods are

  18. Emotionally conditioning the target-speech voice enhances recognition of the target speech under "cocktail-party" listening conditions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lu, Lingxi; Bao, Xiaohan; Chen, Jing; Qu, Tianshu; Wu, Xihong; Li, Liang

    2018-05-01

    Under a noisy "cocktail-party" listening condition with multiple people talking, listeners can use various perceptual/cognitive unmasking cues to improve recognition of the target speech against informational speech-on-speech masking. One potential unmasking cue is the emotion expressed in a speech voice, by means of certain acoustical features. However, it was unclear whether emotionally conditioning a target-speech voice that has none of the typical acoustical features of emotions (i.e., an emotionally neutral voice) can be used by listeners for enhancing target-speech recognition under speech-on-speech masking conditions. In this study we examined the recognition of target speech against a two-talker speech masker both before and after the emotionally neutral target voice was paired with a loud female screaming sound that has a marked negative emotional valence. The results showed that recognition of the target speech (especially the first keyword in a target sentence) was significantly improved by emotionally conditioning the target speaker's voice. Moreover, the emotional unmasking effect was independent of the unmasking effect of the perceived spatial separation between the target speech and the masker. Also, (skin conductance) electrodermal responses became stronger after emotional learning when the target speech and masker were perceptually co-located, suggesting an increase of listening efforts when the target speech was informationally masked. These results indicate that emotionally conditioning the target speaker's voice does not change the acoustical parameters of the target-speech stimuli, but the emotionally conditioned vocal features can be used as cues for unmasking target speech.

  19. Automated Intelligibility Assessment of Pathological Speech Using Phonological Features

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Catherine Middag

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available It is commonly acknowledged that word or phoneme intelligibility is an important criterion in the assessment of the communication efficiency of a pathological speaker. People have therefore put a lot of effort in the design of perceptual intelligibility rating tests. These tests usually have the drawback that they employ unnatural speech material (e.g., nonsense words and that they cannot fully exclude errors due to listener bias. Therefore, there is a growing interest in the application of objective automatic speech recognition technology to automate the intelligibility assessment. Current research is headed towards the design of automated methods which can be shown to produce ratings that correspond well with those emerging from a well-designed and well-performed perceptual test. In this paper, a novel methodology that is built on previous work (Middag et al., 2008 is presented. It utilizes phonological features, automatic speech alignment based on acoustic models that were trained on normal speech, context-dependent speaker feature extraction, and intelligibility prediction based on a small model that can be trained on pathological speech samples. The experimental evaluation of the new system reveals that the root mean squared error of the discrepancies between perceived and computed intelligibilities can be as low as 8 on a scale of 0 to 100.

  20. Multilevel Analysis in Analyzing Speech Data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guddattu, Vasudeva; Krishna, Y.

    2011-01-01

    The speech produced by human vocal tract is a complex acoustic signal, with diverse applications in phonetics, speech synthesis, automatic speech recognition, speaker identification, communication aids, speech pathology, speech perception, machine translation, hearing research, rehabilitation and assessment of communication disorders and many…

  1. Speech Enhancement by MAP Spectral Amplitude Estimation Using a Super-Gaussian Speech Model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lotter Thomas

    2005-01-01

    Full Text Available This contribution presents two spectral amplitude estimators for acoustical background noise suppression based on maximum a posteriori estimation and super-Gaussian statistical modelling of the speech DFT amplitudes. The probability density function of the speech spectral amplitude is modelled with a simple parametric function, which allows a high approximation accuracy for Laplace- or Gamma-distributed real and imaginary parts of the speech DFT coefficients. Also, the statistical model can be adapted to optimally fit the distribution of the speech spectral amplitudes for a specific noise reduction system. Based on the super-Gaussian statistical model, computationally efficient maximum a posteriori speech estimators are derived, which outperform the commonly applied Ephraim-Malah algorithm.

  2. Exploring the role of brain oscillations in speech perception in noise: Intelligibility of isochronously retimed speech

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vincent Aubanel

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available A growing body of evidence shows that brain oscillations track speech. This mechanism is thought to maximise processing efficiency by allocating resources to important speech information, effectively parsing speech into units of appropriate granularity for further decoding. However, some aspects of this mechanism remain unclear. First, while periodicity is an intrinsic property of this physiological mechanism, speech is only quasi-periodic, so it is not clear whether periodicity would present an advantage in processing. Second, it is still a matter of debate which aspect of speech triggers or maintains cortical entrainment, from bottom-up cues such as fluctuations of the amplitude envelope of speech to higher level linguistic cues such as syntactic structure. We present data from a behavioural experiment assessing the effect of isochronous retiming of speech on speech perception in noise. Two types of anchor points were defined for retiming speech, namely syllable onsets and amplitude envelope peaks. For each anchor point type, retiming was implemented at two hierarchical levels, a slow time scale around 2.5 Hz and a fast time scale around 4 Hz. Results show that while any temporal distortion resulted in reduced speech intelligibility, isochronous speech anchored to P-centers (approximated by stressed syllable vowel onsets was significantly more intelligible than a matched anisochronous retiming, suggesting a facilitative role of periodicity defined on linguistically motivated units in processing speech in noise.

  3. Speech characteristics of miners with black lung disease (pneumoconiosis).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gilbert, H R

    1975-06-01

    Speech samples were obtained from 10 miners with diagnosed black lung disease and 10 nonminers who had never worked in a dusty environment and who had no history of respiratory diseases. Frequency, intensity and durational measures were used as a basis upon which to compare the two groups. Results indicated that four of the six pausal measures, vowel duration, vowel intensity variation and vowel perturbation differentiated the miners from the nonminers. The results indicate that black lung disease may affect not only respiratory physiology associated with speech production but also laryngeal physiology.

  4. Ear, Hearing and Speech

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Poulsen, Torben

    2000-01-01

    An introduction is given to the the anatomy and the function of the ear, basic psychoacoustic matters (hearing threshold, loudness, masking), the speech signal and speech intelligibility. The lecture note is written for the course: Fundamentals of Acoustics and Noise Control (51001)......An introduction is given to the the anatomy and the function of the ear, basic psychoacoustic matters (hearing threshold, loudness, masking), the speech signal and speech intelligibility. The lecture note is written for the course: Fundamentals of Acoustics and Noise Control (51001)...

  5. Music expertise shapes audiovisual temporal integration windows for speech, sinewave speech and music

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hwee Ling eLee

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available This psychophysics study used musicians as a model to investigate whether musical expertise shapes the temporal integration window for audiovisual speech, sinewave speech or music. Musicians and non-musicians judged the audiovisual synchrony of speech, sinewave analogues of speech, and music stimuli at 13 audiovisual stimulus onset asynchronies (±360, ±300 ±240, ±180, ±120, ±60, and 0 ms. Further, we manipulated the duration of the stimuli by presenting sentences/melodies or syllables/tones. Critically, musicians relative to non-musicians exhibited significantly narrower temporal integration windows for both music and sinewave speech. Further, the temporal integration window for music decreased with the amount of music practice, but not with age of acquisition. In other words, the more musicians practiced piano in the past three years, the more sensitive they became to the temporal misalignment of visual and auditory signals. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that music practicing fine-tunes the audiovisual temporal integration window to various extents depending on the stimulus class. While the effect of piano practicing was most pronounced for music, it also generalized to other stimulus classes such as sinewave speech and to a marginally significant degree to natural speech.

  6. Speech-language pathologists' practices regarding assessment, analysis, target selection, intervention, and service delivery for children with speech sound disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mcleod, Sharynne; Baker, Elise

    2014-01-01

    A survey of 231 Australian speech-language pathologists (SLPs) was undertaken to describe practices regarding assessment, analysis, target selection, intervention, and service delivery for children with speech sound disorders (SSD). The participants typically worked in private practice, education, or community health settings and 67.6% had a waiting list for services. For each child, most of the SLPs spent 10-40 min in pre-assessment activities, 30-60 min undertaking face-to-face assessments, and 30-60 min completing paperwork after assessments. During an assessment SLPs typically conducted a parent interview, single-word speech sampling, collected a connected speech sample, and used informal tests. They also determined children's stimulability and estimated intelligibility. With multilingual children, informal assessment procedures and English-only tests were commonly used and SLPs relied on family members or interpreters to assist. Common analysis techniques included determination of phonological processes, substitutions-omissions-distortions-additions (SODA), and phonetic inventory. Participants placed high priority on selecting target sounds that were stimulable, early developing, and in error across all word positions and 60.3% felt very confident or confident selecting an appropriate intervention approach. Eight intervention approaches were frequently used: auditory discrimination, minimal pairs, cued articulation, phonological awareness, traditional articulation therapy, auditory bombardment, Nuffield Centre Dyspraxia Programme, and core vocabulary. Children typically received individual therapy with an SLP in a clinic setting. Parents often observed and participated in sessions and SLPs typically included siblings and grandparents in intervention sessions. Parent training and home programs were more frequently used than the group therapy. Two-thirds kept up-to-date by reading journal articles monthly or every 6 months. There were many similarities with

  7. Speech and language intervention in bilinguals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eliane Ramos

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Increasingly, speech and language pathologists (SLPs around the world are faced with the unique set of issues presented by their bilingual clients. Some professional associations in different countries have presented recommendations when assessing and treating bilingual populations. In children, most of the studies have focused on intervention for language and phonology/ articulation impairments and very few focus on stuttering. In general, studies of language intervention tend to agree that intervention in the first language (L1 either increase performance on L2 or does not hinder it. In bilingual adults, monolingual versus bilingual intervention is especially relevant in cases of aphasia; dysarthria in bilinguals has been barely approached. Most studies of cross-linguistic effects in bilingual aphasics have focused on lexical retrieval training. It has been noted that even though a majority of studies have disclosed a cross-linguistic generalization from one language to the other, some methodological weaknesses are evident. It is concluded that even though speech and language intervention in bilinguals represents a most important clinical area in speech language pathology, much more research using larger samples and controlling for potentially confounding variables is evidently required.

  8. Effect of gap detection threshold on consistency of speech in children with speech sound disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sayyahi, Fateme; Soleymani, Zahra; Akbari, Mohammad; Bijankhan, Mahmood; Dolatshahi, Behrooz

    2017-02-01

    The present study examined the relationship between gap detection threshold and speech error consistency in children with speech sound disorder. The participants were children five to six years of age who were categorized into three groups of typical speech, consistent speech disorder (CSD) and inconsistent speech disorder (ISD).The phonetic gap detection threshold test was used for this study, which is a valid test comprised six syllables with inter-stimulus intervals between 20-300ms. The participants were asked to listen to the recorded stimuli three times and indicate whether they heard one or two sounds. There was no significant difference between the typical and CSD groups (p=0.55), but there were significant differences in performance between the ISD and CSD groups and the ISD and typical groups (p=0.00). The ISD group discriminated between speech sounds at a higher threshold. Children with inconsistent speech errors could not distinguish speech sounds during time-limited phonetic discrimination. It is suggested that inconsistency in speech is a representation of inconsistency in auditory perception, which causes by high gap detection threshold. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. Speech Perception as a Multimodal Phenomenon

    OpenAIRE

    Rosenblum, Lawrence D.

    2008-01-01

    Speech perception is inherently multimodal. Visual speech (lip-reading) information is used by all perceivers and readily integrates with auditory speech. Imaging research suggests that the brain treats auditory and visual speech similarly. These findings have led some researchers to consider that speech perception works by extracting amodal information that takes the same form across modalities. From this perspective, speech integration is a property of the input information itself. Amodal s...

  10. Poor Speech Perception Is Not a Core Deficit of Childhood Apraxia of Speech: Preliminary Findings

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zuk, Jennifer; Iuzzini-Seigel, Jenya; Cabbage, Kathryn; Green, Jordan R.; Hogan, Tiffany P.

    2018-01-01

    Purpose: Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is hypothesized to arise from deficits in speech motor planning and programming, but the influence of abnormal speech perception in CAS on these processes is debated. This study examined speech perception abilities among children with CAS with and without language impairment compared to those with…

  11. Behavioral and neurobiological correlates of childhood apraxia of speech in Italian children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chilosi, Anna Maria; Lorenzini, Irene; Fiori, Simona; Graziosi, Valentina; Rossi, Giuseppe; Pasquariello, Rosa; Cipriani, Paola; Cioni, Giovanni

    2015-11-01

    Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a neurogenic Speech Sound Disorder whose etiology and neurobiological correlates are still unclear. In the present study, 32 Italian children with idiopathic CAS underwent a comprehensive speech and language, genetic and neuroradiological investigation aimed to gather information on the possible behavioral and neurobiological markers of the disorder. The results revealed four main aggregations of behavioral symptoms that indicate a multi-deficit disorder involving both motor-speech and language competence. Six children presented with chromosomal alterations. The familial aggregation rate for speech and language difficulties and the male to female ratio were both very high in the whole sample, supporting the hypothesis that genetic factors make substantial contribution to the risk of CAS. As expected in accordance with the diagnosis of idiopathic CAS, conventional MRI did not reveal macrostructural pathogenic neuroanatomical abnormalities, suggesting that CAS may be due to brain microstructural alterations. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  12. A Change of a Consonant Status: the Bedouinisation of the [j] Sound in the Speech of Kuwaitis: A Case Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Abdulmohsen A. Dashti

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available In light of sociolinguist phonological change, the following study investigates the [j] sound in the speech of Kuwaitis as the predominant form and characterizes the sedentary population which is made up of both the indigenous and non-indigenous group; while [ʤ] is the realisation of the Bedouins who are also a part of the indigenous population. Although [ʤ] is the classical variant, it has, for some time, been regarded by Kuwaitis as the stigmatized form and the [j] as the one that carries prestige. This study examines the change of status of [j] and [ʤ] in the speech of Kuwaitis. The main hypothesis is that [j] no longer carries prestige. To test this hypothesis, 40 Kuwaitis of different gender, ages, educational background, and social networks were spontaneously chosen to be interviewed. Their speech was phonetically transcribed and accordingly was quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. Results indicate that the [j] variant is undergoing change of status and that the social parameters and the significant political and social changes, that Kuwait has undergone recently, have triggered this linguistic shift.

  13. Principles of speech coding

    CERN Document Server

    Ogunfunmi, Tokunbo

    2010-01-01

    It is becoming increasingly apparent that all forms of communication-including voice-will be transmitted through packet-switched networks based on the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, the design of modern devices that rely on speech interfaces, such as cell phones and PDAs, requires a complete and up-to-date understanding of the basics of speech coding. Outlines key signal processing algorithms used to mitigate impairments to speech quality in VoIP networksOffering a detailed yet easily accessible introduction to the field, Principles of Speech Coding provides an in-depth examination of the

  14. The Neural Bases of Difficult Speech Comprehension and Speech Production: Two Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) Meta-Analyses

    Science.gov (United States)

    Adank, Patti

    2012-01-01

    The role of speech production mechanisms in difficult speech comprehension is the subject of on-going debate in speech science. Two Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) analyses were conducted on neuroimaging studies investigating difficult speech comprehension or speech production. Meta-analysis 1 included 10 studies contrasting comprehension…

  15. A Challenging Issue in the Etiology of Speech Problems: The Effect of Maternal Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields on Speech Problems in the Offspring

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zarei S

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Background: Nowadays, mothers are continuously exposed to different sources of electromagnetic fields before and even during pregnancy. It has recently been shown that exposure to mobile phone radiation during pregnancy may lead to adverse effects on the brain development in offspring and cause hyperactivity. Researchers have shown that behavioral problems in laboratory animals which have a similar appearance to ADHD are caused by intrauterine exposure to mobile phones. Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the maternal exposure to different sources of electromagnetic fields affect on the rate and severity of speech problems in their offspring. Methods: In this study, mothers of 35 healthy 3-5 year old children (control group and 77 children and diagnosed with speech problems who had been referred to a speech treatment center in Shiraz, Iran were interviewed. These mothers were asked whether they had exposure to different sources of electromagnetic fields such as mobile phones, mobile base stations, Wi-Fi, cordless phones, laptops and power lines. Results: We found a significant association between either the call time (P=0.002 or history of mobile phone use (months used and speech problems in the offspring (P=0.003. However, other exposures had no effect on the occurrence of speech problems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate a possible association between maternal exposure to electromagnetic field and speech problems in the offspring. Although a major limitation in our study is the relatively small sample size, this study indicates that the maternal exposure to common sources of electromagnetic fields such as mobile phones can affect the occurrence of speech problems in the offspring.

  16. Identification of a novel interspecific hybrid yeast from a metagenomic spontaneously inoculated beer sample using Hi-C.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smukowski Heil, Caiti; Burton, Joshua N; Liachko, Ivan; Friedrich, Anne; Hanson, Noah A; Morris, Cody L; Schacherer, Joseph; Shendure, Jay; Thomas, James H; Dunham, Maitreya J

    2018-01-01

    Interspecific hybridization is a common mechanism enabling genetic diversification and adaptation; however, the detection of hybrid species has been quite difficult. The identification of microbial hybrids is made even more complicated, as most environmental microbes are resistant to culturing and must be studied in their native mixed communities. We have previously adapted the chromosome conformation capture method Hi-C to the assembly of genomes from mixed populations. Here, we show the method's application in assembling genomes directly from an uncultured, mixed population from a spontaneously inoculated beer sample. Our assembly method has enabled us to de-convolute four bacterial and four yeast genomes from this sample, including a putative yeast hybrid. Downstream isolation and analysis of this hybrid confirmed its genome to consist of Pichia membranifaciens and that of another related, but undescribed, yeast. Our work shows that Hi-C-based metagenomic methods can overcome the limitation of traditional sequencing methods in studying complex mixtures of genomes. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  17. Speech discrimination difficulties in High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder are likely independent of auditory hypersensitivity.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    William Andrew Dunlop

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD, characterised by impaired communication skills and repetitive behaviours, can also result in differences in sensory perception. Individuals with ASD often perform normally in simple auditory tasks but poorly compared to typically developed (TD individuals on complex auditory tasks like discriminating speech from complex background noise. A common trait of individuals with ASD is hypersensitivity to auditory stimulation. No studies to our knowledge consider whether hypersensitivity to sounds is related to differences in speech-in-noise discrimination. We provide novel evidence that individuals with high-functioning ASD show poor performance compared to TD individuals in a speech-in-noise discrimination task with an attentionally demanding background noise, but not in a purely energetic noise. Further, we demonstrate in our small sample that speech-hypersensitivity does not appear to predict performance in the speech-in-noise task. The findings support the argument that an attentional deficit, rather than a perceptual deficit, affects the ability of individuals with ASD to discriminate speech from background noise. Finally, we piloted a novel questionnaire that measures difficulty hearing in noisy environments, and sensitivity to non-verbal and verbal sounds. Psychometric analysis using 128 TD participants provided novel evidence for a difference in sensitivity to non-verbal and verbal sounds, and these findings were reinforced by participants with ASD who also completed the questionnaire. The study was limited by a small and high-functioning sample of participants with ASD. Future work could test larger sample sizes and include lower-functioning ASD participants.

  18. Metaheuristic applications to speech enhancement

    CERN Document Server

    Kunche, Prajna

    2016-01-01

    This book serves as a basic reference for those interested in the application of metaheuristics to speech enhancement. The major goal of the book is to explain the basic concepts of optimization methods and their use in heuristic optimization in speech enhancement to scientists, practicing engineers, and academic researchers in speech processing. The authors discuss why it has been a challenging problem for researchers to develop new enhancement algorithms that aid in the quality and intelligibility of degraded speech. They present powerful optimization methods to speech enhancement that can help to solve the noise reduction problems. Readers will be able to understand the fundamentals of speech processing as well as the optimization techniques, how the speech enhancement algorithms are implemented by utilizing optimization methods, and will be given the tools to develop new algorithms. The authors also provide a comprehensive literature survey regarding the topic.

  19. Systematic Studies of Modified Vocalization: The Effect of Speech Rate on Speech Production Measures during Metronome-Paced Speech in Persons Who Stutter

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davidow, Jason H.

    2014-01-01

    Background: Metronome-paced speech results in the elimination, or substantial reduction, of stuttering moments. The cause of fluency during this fluency-inducing condition is unknown. Several investigations have reported changes in speech pattern characteristics from a control condition to a metronome-paced speech condition, but failure to control…

  20. TongueToSpeech (TTS): Wearable wireless assistive device for augmented speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marjanovic, Nicholas; Piccinini, Giacomo; Kerr, Kevin; Esmailbeigi, Hananeh

    2017-07-01

    Speech is an important aspect of human communication; individuals with speech impairment are unable to communicate vocally in real time. Our team has developed the TongueToSpeech (TTS) device with the goal of augmenting speech communication for the vocally impaired. The proposed device is a wearable wireless assistive device that incorporates a capacitive touch keyboard interface embedded inside a discrete retainer. This device connects to a computer, tablet or a smartphone via Bluetooth connection. The developed TTS application converts text typed by the tongue into audible speech. Our studies have concluded that an 8-contact point configuration between the tongue and the TTS device would yield the best user precision and speed performance. On average using the TTS device inside the oral cavity takes 2.5 times longer than the pointer finger using a T9 (Text on 9 keys) keyboard configuration to type the same phrase. In conclusion, we have developed a discrete noninvasive wearable device that allows the vocally impaired individuals to communicate in real time.

  1. Social eye gaze modulates processing of speech and co-speech gesture.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holler, Judith; Schubotz, Louise; Kelly, Spencer; Hagoort, Peter; Schuetze, Manuela; Özyürek, Aslı

    2014-12-01

    In human face-to-face communication, language comprehension is a multi-modal, situated activity. However, little is known about how we combine information from different modalities during comprehension, and how perceived communicative intentions, often signaled through visual signals, influence this process. We explored this question by simulating a multi-party communication context in which a speaker alternated her gaze between two recipients. Participants viewed speech-only or speech+gesture object-related messages when being addressed (direct gaze) or unaddressed (gaze averted to other participant). They were then asked to choose which of two object images matched the speaker's preceding message. Unaddressed recipients responded significantly more slowly than addressees for speech-only utterances. However, perceiving the same speech accompanied by gestures sped unaddressed recipients up to a level identical to that of addressees. That is, when unaddressed recipients' speech processing suffers, gestures can enhance the comprehension of a speaker's message. We discuss our findings with respect to two hypotheses attempting to account for how social eye gaze may modulate multi-modal language comprehension. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. Electrophysiological evidence for speech-specific audiovisual integration.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baart, Martijn; Stekelenburg, Jeroen J; Vroomen, Jean

    2014-01-01

    Lip-read speech is integrated with heard speech at various neural levels. Here, we investigated the extent to which lip-read induced modulations of the auditory N1 and P2 (measured with EEG) are indicative of speech-specific audiovisual integration, and we explored to what extent the ERPs were modulated by phonetic audiovisual congruency. In order to disentangle speech-specific (phonetic) integration from non-speech integration, we used Sine-Wave Speech (SWS) that was perceived as speech by half of the participants (they were in speech-mode), while the other half was in non-speech mode. Results showed that the N1 obtained with audiovisual stimuli peaked earlier than the N1 evoked by auditory-only stimuli. This lip-read induced speeding up of the N1 occurred for listeners in speech and non-speech mode. In contrast, if listeners were in speech-mode, lip-read speech also modulated the auditory P2, but not if listeners were in non-speech mode, thus revealing speech-specific audiovisual binding. Comparing ERPs for phonetically congruent audiovisual stimuli with ERPs for incongruent stimuli revealed an effect of phonetic stimulus congruency that started at ~200 ms after (in)congruence became apparent. Critically, akin to the P2 suppression, congruency effects were only observed if listeners were in speech mode, and not if they were in non-speech mode. Using identical stimuli, we thus confirm that audiovisual binding involves (partially) different neural mechanisms for sound processing in speech and non-speech mode. © 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  3. Free Speech Yearbook 1978.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Phifer, Gregg, Ed.

    The 17 articles in this collection deal with theoretical and practical freedom of speech issues. The topics include: freedom of speech in Marquette Park, Illinois; Nazis in Skokie, Illinois; freedom of expression in the Confederate States of America; Robert M. LaFollette's arguments for free speech and the rights of Congress; the United States…

  4. Supplementary Motor Area Activation in Disfluency Perception : An fMRI Study of Listener Neural Responses to Spontaneously Produced Unfilled and Filled Pauses

    OpenAIRE

    Eklund, Robert; Ingvar, Martin

    2016-01-01

    Spontaneously produced Unfilled Pauses (UPs) and Filled Pauses (FPs) were played to subjects in an fMRI experiment. For both stimuli increased activity was observed in the Primary Auditory Cortex (PAC). However, FPs, but not UPs, elicited modulation in the Supplementary Motor Area (SMA), Brodmann Area 6. Our results provide neurocognitive confirmation of the alleged difference between FPs and other kinds of speech disfluency and could also provide a partial explanation for the previously repo...

  5. The Role of Rhythm in Speech and Language Rehabilitation: The SEP Hypothesis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fujii, Shinya; Wan, Catherine Y

    2014-01-01

    For thousands of years, human beings have engaged in rhythmic activities such as drumming, dancing, and singing. Rhythm can be a powerful medium to stimulate communication and social interactions, due to the strong sensorimotor coupling. For example, the mere presence of an underlying beat or pulse can result in spontaneous motor responses such as hand clapping, foot stepping, and rhythmic vocalizations. Examining the relationship between rhythm and speech is fundamental not only to our understanding of the origins of human communication but also in the treatment of neurological disorders. In this paper, we explore whether rhythm has therapeutic potential for promoting recovery from speech and language dysfunctions. Although clinical studies are limited to date, existing experimental evidence demonstrates rich rhythmic organization in both music and language, as well as overlapping brain networks that are crucial in the design of rehabilitation approaches. Here, we propose the "SEP" hypothesis, which postulates that (1) "sound envelope processing" and (2) "synchronization and entrainment to pulse" may help stimulate brain networks that underlie human communication. Ultimately, we hope that the SEP hypothesis will provide a useful framework for facilitating rhythm-based research in various patient populations.

  6. Visual context enhanced. The joint contribution of iconic gestures and visible speech to degraded speech comprehension.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Drijvers, L.; Özyürek, A.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: This study investigated whether and to what extent iconic co-speech gestures contribute to information from visible speech to enhance degraded speech comprehension at different levels of noise-vocoding. Previous studies of the contributions of these 2 visual articulators to speech

  7. Does Spontaneous Favorability to Power (vs. Universalism) Values Predict Spontaneous Prejudice and Discrimination?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Souchon, Nicolas; Maio, Gregory R; Hanel, Paul H P; Bardin, Brigitte

    2017-10-01

    We conducted five studies testing whether an implicit measure of favorability toward power over universalism values predicts spontaneous prejudice and discrimination. Studies 1 (N = 192) and 2 (N = 86) examined correlations between spontaneous favorability toward power (vs. universalism) values, achievement (vs. benevolence) values, and a spontaneous measure of prejudice toward ethnic minorities. Study 3 (N = 159) tested whether conditioning participants to associate power values with positive adjectives and universalism values with negative adjectives (or inversely) affects spontaneous prejudice. Study 4 (N = 95) tested whether decision bias toward female handball players could be predicted by spontaneous attitude toward power (vs. universalism) values. Study 5 (N = 123) examined correlations between spontaneous attitude toward power (vs. universalism) values, spontaneous importance toward power (vs. universalism) values, and spontaneous prejudice toward Black African people. Spontaneous positivity toward power (vs. universalism) values was associated with spontaneous negativity toward minorities and predicted gender bias in a decision task, whereas the explicit measures did not. These results indicate that the implicit assessment of evaluative responses attached to human values helps to model value-attitude-behavior relations. © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Personality Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  8. FLUIDITY SPEECH FORMATION AS A QUALITATIVE CHARACTERISTIC OF THE ORAL STATEMENT OF PRESCHOOL AGE CHILDREN WITH STUTTER

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    E. A. Borisova

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available The research objective is to disclose the subject matter of speech therapy work focused on fluidity speech formation of preschool age children, suffering stutter. Stutter is a difficult disorder of articulation organs suchthat the tempo-rhythmical organisation of statements is distressed that leads to defects and failures of dialogue system, negatively influences on individual development of the child; more specifically it generates the mental stratifications, specific features of emotional-volitional sphere, and causes undesirable qualities ofcharacter such as shyness, indecision, isolation, negativism. The author notes that the problem of early stutter correction among junior preschool-aged children considered as topical and immediate issue. Methods. Concerning the clinical, physiological, psychological and psychologic-pedagogical positions, the author summarizes theoretical framework; an experimentally-practical approbation of an author's method of speech fluidity and stutter abolition of preschool children is described. Stage-by-stage process of correction,spontaneous and non-convulsive speech formation: 1. restraint mode application in order to decrease incorrect verbal output; 2. training exercises to long phonatory and speech expiration; 3. development of coordination and movements rhythm helping to pronounce words and phrases; 4. formation of situational speech, at first consisted of short sentences, then passing to long ones; 5. training to coherent text statements. The research demonstrates data analyses of postexperimental diagnostic examination of stuttering preschool children, proving the efficiency of the author’s applied method. Scientific novelty. The research findings demonstrate a specific approach to correction and stutter abolition of preschool children. Proposed author’s approach consists of complementary to each other directions of speech therapy work which are combines in the following way: coherent speech

  9. Multisensory integration of speech sounds with letters vs. visual speech : only visual speech induces the mismatch negativity

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Stekelenburg, J.J.; Keetels, M.N.; Vroomen, J.H.M.

    2018-01-01

    Numerous studies have demonstrated that the vision of lip movements can alter the perception of auditory speech syllables (McGurk effect). While there is ample evidence for integration of text and auditory speech, there are only a few studies on the orthographic equivalent of the McGurk effect.

  10. Speech Research

    Science.gov (United States)

    Several articles addressing topics in speech research are presented. The topics include: exploring the functional significance of physiological tremor: A biospectroscopic approach; differences between experienced and inexperienced listeners to deaf speech; a language-oriented view of reading and its disabilities; Phonetic factors in letter detection; categorical perception; Short-term recall by deaf signers of American sign language; a common basis for auditory sensory storage in perception and immediate memory; phonological awareness and verbal short-term memory; initiation versus execution time during manual and oral counting by stutterers; trading relations in the perception of speech by five-year-old children; the role of the strap muscles in pitch lowering; phonetic validation of distinctive features; consonants and syllable boundaires; and vowel information in postvocalic frictions.

  11. Represented Speech in Qualitative Health Research

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Musaeus, Peter

    2017-01-01

    Represented speech refers to speech where we reference somebody. Represented speech is an important phenomenon in everyday conversation, health care communication, and qualitative research. This case will draw first from a case study on physicians’ workplace learning and second from a case study...... on nurses’ apprenticeship learning. The aim of the case is to guide the qualitative researcher to use own and others’ voices in the interview and to be sensitive to represented speech in everyday conversation. Moreover, reported speech matters to health professionals who aim to represent the voice...... of their patients. Qualitative researchers and students might learn to encourage interviewees to elaborate different voices or perspectives. Qualitative researchers working with natural speech might pay attention to how people talk and use represented speech. Finally, represented speech might be relevant...

  12. Spectral integration in speech and non-speech sounds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jacewicz, Ewa

    2005-04-01

    Spectral integration (or formant averaging) was proposed in vowel perception research to account for the observation that a reduction of the intensity of one of two closely spaced formants (as in /u/) produced a predictable shift in vowel quality [Delattre et al., Word 8, 195-210 (1952)]. A related observation was reported in psychoacoustics, indicating that when the components of a two-tone periodic complex differ in amplitude and frequency, its perceived pitch is shifted toward that of the more intense tone [Helmholtz, App. XIV (1875/1948)]. Subsequent research in both fields focused on the frequency interval that separates these two spectral components, in an attempt to determine the size of the bandwidth for spectral integration to occur. This talk will review the accumulated evidence for and against spectral integration within the hypothesized limit of 3.5 Bark for static and dynamic signals in speech perception and psychoacoustics. Based on similarities in the processing of speech and non-speech sounds, it is suggested that spectral integration may reflect a general property of the auditory system. A larger frequency bandwidth, possibly close to 3.5 Bark, may be utilized in integrating acoustic information, including speech, complex signals, or sound quality of a violin.

  13. Semi-spontaneous oral text production: measurements in clinical practice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lind, Marianne; Kristoffersen, Kristian Emil; Moen, Inger; Simonsen, Hanne Gram

    2009-12-01

    Functionally relevant assessment of the language production of speakers with aphasia should include assessment of connected speech production. Despite the ecological validity of everyday conversations, more controlled and monological types of texts may be easier to obtain and analyse in clinical practice. This article discusses some simple measurements for the analysis of semi-spontaneous oral text production by speakers with aphasia. Specifically, the measurements are related to the production of verbs and nouns, and the realization of different sentence types. The proposed measurements should be clinically relevant, easily applicable, and linguistically meaningful. The measurements have been applied to oral descriptions of the 'Cookie Theft' picture by eight monolingual Norwegian speakers, four with an anomic type of aphasia and four without any type of language impairment. Despite individual differences in both the clinical and the non-clinical group, most of the measurements seem to distinguish between speakers with and without aphasia.

  14. Measurement of speech parameters in casual speech of dementia patients

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ossewaarde, Roelant; Jonkers, Roel; Jalvingh, Fedor; Bastiaanse, Yvonne

    Measurement of speech parameters in casual speech of dementia patients Roelant Adriaan Ossewaarde1,2, Roel Jonkers1, Fedor Jalvingh1,3, Roelien Bastiaanse1 1CLCG, University of Groningen (NL); 2HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (NL); 33St. Marienhospital - Vechta, Geriatric Clinic Vechta

  15. The role of auditory temporal cues in the fluency of stuttering adults

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juliana Furini

    Full Text Available ABSTRACT Purpose: to compare the frequency of disfluencies and speech rate in spontaneous speech and reading in adults with and without stuttering in non-altered and delayed auditory feedback (NAF, DAF. Methods: participants were 30 adults: 15 with Stuttering (Research Group - RG, and 15 without stuttering (Control Group - CG. The procedures were: audiological assessment and speech fluency evaluation in two listening conditions, normal and delayed auditory feedback (100 milliseconds delayed by Fono Tools software. Results: the DAF caused a significant improvement in the fluency of spontaneous speech in RG when compared to speech under NAF. The effect of DAF was different in CG, because it increased the common disfluencies and the total of disfluencies in spontaneous speech and reading, besides showing an increase in the frequency of stuttering-like disfluencies in reading. The intergroup analysis showed significant differences in the two speech tasks for the two listening conditions in the frequency of stuttering-like disfluencies and in the total of disfluencies, and in the flows of syllable and word-per-minute in the NAF. Conclusion: the results demonstrated that delayed auditory feedback promoted fluency in spontaneous speech of adults who stutter, without interfering in the speech rate. In non-stuttering adults an increase occurred in the number of common disfluencies and total of disfluencies as well as reduction of speech rate in spontaneous speech and reading.

  16. Development of The Viking Speech Scale to classify the speech of children with cerebral palsy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pennington, Lindsay; Virella, Daniel; Mjøen, Tone; da Graça Andrada, Maria; Murray, Janice; Colver, Allan; Himmelmann, Kate; Rackauskaite, Gija; Greitane, Andra; Prasauskiene, Audrone; Andersen, Guro; de la Cruz, Javier

    2013-10-01

    Surveillance registers monitor the prevalence of cerebral palsy and the severity of resulting impairments across time and place. The motor disorders of cerebral palsy can affect children's speech production and limit their intelligibility. We describe the development of a scale to classify children's speech performance for use in cerebral palsy surveillance registers, and its reliability across raters and across time. Speech and language therapists, other healthcare professionals and parents classified the speech of 139 children with cerebral palsy (85 boys, 54 girls; mean age 6.03 years, SD 1.09) from observation and previous knowledge of the children. Another group of health professionals rated children's speech from information in their medical notes. With the exception of parents, raters reclassified children's speech at least four weeks after their initial classification. Raters were asked to rate how easy the scale was to use and how well the scale described the child's speech production using Likert scales. Inter-rater reliability was moderate to substantial (k>.58 for all comparisons). Test-retest reliability was substantial to almost perfect for all groups (k>.68). Over 74% of raters found the scale easy or very easy to use; 66% of parents and over 70% of health care professionals judged the scale to describe children's speech well or very well. We conclude that the Viking Speech Scale is a reliable tool to describe the speech performance of children with cerebral palsy, which can be applied through direct observation of children or through case note review. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Augmentative and alternative communication: from qualification to speech, language and hearing science clinical practice

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Carla Ciceri Cesa

    Full Text Available ABSTRACT Purpose: to investigate the qualification of the speech language and hearing therapists and their clinical performance with Augmentative and Alternative Communication. Methods: a descriptive, transversal, individual and contemporary study. Data were collected through a questionnaire, filled by twenty-four speech therapists, selected by a convenience sample. Content analysis was chosen for data study. Results: regarding access to the information media, all speech therapists in the sample presented the initiative to supply the absence of language training with Augmentative and Alternative Communication by different means. Regarding the dual focus on intervention, all speech therapists were favorable to this practice. However, according to experience, they reported resistance from the family, school and other therapists. The results showed two different types of introduction implementation and use of Augmentative and Alternative Communication, predominantly formed by strategies contemplating the pragmatic use of language through the contextualization of significant activities for the user. The other way used the Picture Exchange Communication System. Conclusion: the speech-language and hearing therapists in the present study inserted different interlocutors in the intervention, guided by implicit or explicit linguistic principles, by theoretical frameworks specific to the area of Augmentative and Alternative Communication knowledge, by global neuromotor elements and, finally, by principles of functionality and general wellness.

  18. Visual Context Enhanced: The Joint Contribution of Iconic Gestures and Visible Speech to Degraded Speech Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Drijvers, Linda; Ozyurek, Asli

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: This study investigated whether and to what extent iconic co-speech gestures contribute to information from visible speech to enhance degraded speech comprehension at different levels of noise-vocoding. Previous studies of the contributions of these 2 visual articulators to speech comprehension have only been performed separately. Method:…

  19. SPEECH STRATEGIES AND TACTICS IN THE ANNUAL ADDRESSES OF ANGELA MERKEL

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eysfeld Evgeniy Aleksandrovich

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available The article is devoted to studying speech strategies and tactics on the material of annual addresses of Angela Merkel. The author carries out the systematic linguistic analysis of her speeches in the period from 2005 to 2015 and reveals the dynamics of the speaker's stratagem and tactic complex development. The peculiarities of speech strategies and tactics used byAngela Merkel are investigated by the methods of continuous sampling and contextual analysis. As the research shows, the main speech strategies used by Angela Merkel in the analyzed texts are the following: the self-presentation strategy, the interpretation strategy, the argumentation strategy, the strategy of forming the addressee's emotional state, and the agitation strategy. Consequently, the implementation of these strategies through the set of speech tactics lets the speaker fulfil certain communicative objectives. In one of her annual speeches Angela Merkel aims to inform the audience, to interpret some facts or data, to assume confidence-building measures, to consolidate the people, to determine common tasks, to make audience believe in correctness of their political choice, to discredit political competitors, to stimulate recipients to take some actions etc. Moreover, the process of combining strategies and tactics promotes optimal achievement of communicative targets. The conclusions of this article may result in further academic research. Therefore the comparative analysis of speech strategies and tactics in Russian and German political discourse can be perspective of this study.

  20. Child speech, language and communication need re-examined in a public health context: a new direction for the speech and language therapy profession.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Law, James; Reilly, Sheena; Snow, Pamela C

    2013-01-01

    Historically speech and language therapy services for children have been framed within a rehabilitative framework with explicit assumptions made about providing therapy to individuals. While this is clearly important in many cases, we argue that this model needs revisiting for a number of reasons. First, our understanding of the nature of disability, and therefore communication disabilities, has changed over the past century. Second, there is an increasing understanding of the impact that the social gradient has on early communication difficulties. Finally, understanding how these factors interact with one other and have an impact across the life course remains poorly understood. To describe the public health paradigm and explore its implications for speech and language therapy with children. We test the application of public health methodologies to speech and language therapy services by looking at four dimensions of service delivery: (1) the uptake of services and whether those children who need services receive them; (2) the development of universal prevention services in relation to social disadvantage; (3) the risk of over-interpreting co-morbidity from clinical samples; and (4) the overlap between communicative competence and mental health. It is concluded that there is a strong case for speech and language therapy services to be reconceptualized to respond to the needs of the whole population and according to socially determined needs, focusing on primary prevention. This is not to disregard individual need, but to highlight the needs of the population as a whole. Although the socio-political context is different between countries, we maintain that this is relevant wherever speech and language therapists have a responsibility for covering whole populations. Finally, we recommend that speech and language therapy services be conceptualized within the framework laid down in The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. © 2013 Royal College of Speech and Language

  1. Speech Respiratory Measures in Spastic Cerebral Palsied and Normal Children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hashem Shemshadi

    2007-10-01

    Full Text Available Objective: Research is designed to determine speech respiratory measures in spastic cerebral palsied children versus normal ones, to be used as an applicable tool in speech therapy plans.  Materials & Methods: Via a comparative cross-sectional study (case–control, and through a directive goal oriented sampling in case and convenience approach for controls twenty spastic cerebral palsied and twenty control ones with age (5-12 years old and sex (F=20, M=20 were matched and identified. All possible inclusion and exclusion criteria were considered by thorough past medical, clinical and para clinical such as chest X-ray and Complete Blood Counts reviews to rule out any possible pulmonary and/or systemic disorders. Their speech respiratory indices were determined by Respirometer (ST 1-dysphonia, made and normalized by Glasgow University. Obtained data were analyzed by independent T test. Results: There were significant differences between cases and control groups for "mean tidal volume", "phonatory volume" and "vital capacity" at a=0/05 values and these values in patients were less (34% than normal children (P<0/001. Conclusion: Measures obtained are highly crucial for speech therapist in any speech therapy primary rehabilitative plans for spactic cerebral palsied children.

  2. Word-by-word entrainment of speech rhythm during joint story building

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tommi eHimberg

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Movements and behaviour synchronise during social interaction at many levels, often unintentionally. During smooth conversation, for example, participants adapt to each others' speech rates. Here we aimed to find out to which extent speakers adapt their turn-taking rhythms during a story-building game.Nine sex-matched dyads of adults (12 males, 6 females created two 5-min stories by contributing to them alternatingly one word at a time. The participants were located in different rooms, with audio connection during one story and audiovisual during the other. They were free to select the topic of the story.Although the participants received no instructions regarding the timing of the story building, their word rhythms were highly entrained (R ̅ = 0.70, p < 0.001 even though the rhythms as such were unstable (R ̅ = 0.14 for pooled data. Such high entrainment in the absence of steady word rhythm occurred in every individual story, independently of whether the subjects were connected via audio-only or audiovisual link.The observed entrainment was of similar strength as typical entrainment in finger-tapping tasks where participants are specifically instructed to synchronize their behaviour. Thus speech seems to spontaneously induce strong entrainment between the conversation partners, likely reflecting automatic alignment of their semantic and syntactic processes.

  3. Speech enhancement using emotion dependent codebooks

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Naidu, D.H.R.; Srinivasan, S.

    2012-01-01

    Several speech enhancement approaches utilize trained models of clean speech data, such as codebooks, Gaussian mixtures, and hidden Markov models. These models are typically trained on neutral clean speech data, without any emotion. However, in practical scenarios, emotional speech is a common

  4. Linguistic contributions to speech-on-speech masking for native and non-native listeners: Language familiarity and semantic content

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brouwer, Susanne; Van Engen, Kristin J.; Calandruccio, Lauren; Bradlow, Ann R.

    2012-01-01

    This study examined whether speech-on-speech masking is sensitive to variation in the degree of similarity between the target and the masker speech. Three experiments investigated whether speech-in-speech recognition varies across different background speech languages (English vs Dutch) for both English and Dutch targets, as well as across variation in the semantic content of the background speech (meaningful vs semantically anomalous sentences), and across variation in listener status vis-à-vis the target and masker languages (native, non-native, or unfamiliar). The results showed that the more similar the target speech is to the masker speech (e.g., same vs different language, same vs different levels of semantic content), the greater the interference on speech recognition accuracy. Moreover, the listener’s knowledge of the target and the background language modulate the size of the release from masking. These factors had an especially strong effect on masking effectiveness in highly unfavorable listening conditions. Overall this research provided evidence that that the degree of target-masker similarity plays a significant role in speech-in-speech recognition. The results also give insight into how listeners assign their resources differently depending on whether they are listening to their first or second language. PMID:22352516

  5. Speech-specificity of two audiovisual integration effects

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Eskelund, Kasper; Tuomainen, Jyrki; Andersen, Tobias

    2010-01-01

    Seeing the talker’s articulatory mouth movements can influence the auditory speech percept both in speech identification and detection tasks. Here we show that these audiovisual integration effects also occur for sine wave speech (SWS), which is an impoverished speech signal that naïve observers...... often fail to perceive as speech. While audiovisual integration in the identification task only occurred when observers were informed of the speech-like nature of SWS, integration occurred in the detection task both for informed and naïve observers. This shows that both speech-specific and general...... mechanisms underlie audiovisual integration of speech....

  6. Recognizing speech in a novel accent: the motor theory of speech perception reframed.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moulin-Frier, Clément; Arbib, Michael A

    2013-08-01

    The motor theory of speech perception holds that we perceive the speech of another in terms of a motor representation of that speech. However, when we have learned to recognize a foreign accent, it seems plausible that recognition of a word rarely involves reconstruction of the speech gestures of the speaker rather than the listener. To better assess the motor theory and this observation, we proceed in three stages. Part 1 places the motor theory of speech perception in a larger framework based on our earlier models of the adaptive formation of mirror neurons for grasping, and for viewing extensions of that mirror system as part of a larger system for neuro-linguistic processing, augmented by the present consideration of recognizing speech in a novel accent. Part 2 then offers a novel computational model of how a listener comes to understand the speech of someone speaking the listener's native language with a foreign accent. The core tenet of the model is that the listener uses hypotheses about the word the speaker is currently uttering to update probabilities linking the sound produced by the speaker to phonemes in the native language repertoire of the listener. This, on average, improves the recognition of later words. This model is neutral regarding the nature of the representations it uses (motor vs. auditory). It serve as a reference point for the discussion in Part 3, which proposes a dual-stream neuro-linguistic architecture to revisits claims for and against the motor theory of speech perception and the relevance of mirror neurons, and extracts some implications for the reframing of the motor theory.

  7. Advocate: A Distributed Architecture for Speech-to-Speech Translation

    Science.gov (United States)

    2009-01-01

    tecture, are either wrapped natural-language processing ( NLP ) components or objects developed from scratch using the architecture’s API. GATE is...framework, we put together a demonstration Arabic -to- English speech translation system using both internally developed ( Arabic speech recognition and MT...conditions of our Arabic S2S demonstration system described earlier. Once again, the data size was varied and eighty identical requests were

  8. Setting up a cohort study in speech and language therapy: lessons from The UK Cleft Collective Speech and Language (CC-SL) study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wren, Yvonne; Humphries, Kerry; Stock, Nicola Marie; Rumsey, Nichola; Lewis, Sarah; Davies, Amy; Bennett, Rhiannon; Sandy, Jonathan

    2018-05-01

    Efforts to increase the evidence base in speech and language therapy are often limited by methodological factors that have restricted the strength of the evidence to the lower levels of the evidence hierarchy. Where higher graded studies, such as randomized controlled trials, have been carried out, it has sometimes been difficult to obtain sufficient power to detect a potential effect of intervention owing to small sample sizes or heterogeneity in the participants. With certain clinical groups such as cleft lip and palate, systematic reviews of intervention studies have shown that there is no robust evidence to support the efficacy of any one intervention protocol over another. To describe the setting up of an observational clinical cohort study and to present this as an alternative design for answering research questions relating to prevalence, risk factors and outcomes from intervention. The Cleft Collective Speech and Language (CC-SL) study is a national cohort study of children born with cleft palate. Working in partnership with regional clinical cleft centres, a sample size of over 600 children and 600 parents is being recruited and followed up from birth to age 5 years. Variables being collected include demographic, psychological, surgical, hearing, and speech and language data. The process of setting up the study has led to the creation of a unique, large-scale data set which is available for researchers to access now and in future. As well as exploring predictive factors, the data can be used to explore the impact of interventions in relation to individual differences. Findings from these investigations can be used to provide information on sample criteria and definitions of intervention and dosage which can be used in future trials. The observational cohort study is a useful alternative design to explore questions around prevalence, risk factors and intervention for clinical groups where robust research data are not yet available. Findings from such a

  9. Descriptive study of 192 adults with speech and language disturbances

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Letícia Lessa Mansur

    Full Text Available CONTEXT: Aphasia is a very disabling condition caused by neurological diseases. In Brazil, we have little data on the profile of aphasics treated in rehabilitation centers. OBJECTIVE: To present a descriptive study of 192 patients, providing a reference sample of speech and language disturbances among Brazilians. DESIGN: Retrospective study. SETTING: Speech Pathology Unit linked to the Neurology Division of the Hospital das Clínicas of the Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo. SAMPLE: All patients (192 referred to our Speech Pathology service from 1995 to 2000. PROCEDURES: We collected data relating to demographic variables, etiology, language evaluation (functional evaluation, Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination, Boston Naming and Token Test, and neuroimaging studies. MAIN MEASUREMENTS: The results obtained in language tests and the clinical and neuroimaging data were organized and classified. Seventy aphasics were chosen for constructing a profile. Fourteen subjects with left single-lobe dysfunction were analyzed in detail. Seventeen aphasics were compared with 17 normal subjects, all performing the Token Test. RESULTS: One hundred subjects (52% were men and 92 (48% women. Their education varied from 0 to 16 years (average: 6.5; standard deviation: 4.53. We identified the lesion sites in 104 patients: 89% in the left hemisphere and 58% due to stroke. The incidence of aphasia was 70%; dysarthria and apraxia, 6%; functional alterations in communication, 17%; and 7% were normal. Statistically significant differences appeared when comparing the subgroup to controls in the Token Test. CONCLUSIONS: We believe that this sample contributes to a better understanding of neurological patients with speech and language disturbances and may be useful as a reference for health professionals involved in the rehabilitation of such disorders.

  10. Using the Speech Transmission Index for predicting non-native speech intelligibility

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Wijngaarden, S.J. van; Bronkhorst, A.W.; Houtgast, T.; Steeneken, H.J.M.

    2004-01-01

    While the Speech Transmission Index ~STI! is widely applied for prediction of speech intelligibility in room acoustics and telecommunication engineering, it is unclear how to interpret STI values when non-native talkers or listeners are involved. Based on subjectively measured psychometric functions

  11. Speech Planning Happens before Speech Execution: Online Reaction Time Methods in the Study of Apraxia of Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maas, Edwin; Mailend, Marja-Liisa

    2012-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this article is to present an argument for the use of online reaction time (RT) methods to the study of apraxia of speech (AOS) and to review the existing small literature in this area and the contributions it has made to our fundamental understanding of speech planning (deficits) in AOS. Method: Following a brief…

  12. Predicting speech intelligibility in adverse conditions: evaluation of the speech-based envelope power spectrum model

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jørgensen, Søren; Dau, Torsten

    2011-01-01

    conditions by comparing predictions to measured data from [Kjems et al. (2009). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 126 (3), 1415-1426] where speech is mixed with four different interferers, including speech-shaped noise, bottle noise, car noise, and cafe noise. The model accounts well for the differences in intelligibility......The speech-based envelope power spectrum model (sEPSM) [Jørgensen and Dau (2011). J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 130 (3), 1475–1487] estimates the envelope signal-to-noise ratio (SNRenv) of distorted speech and accurately describes the speech recognition thresholds (SRT) for normal-hearing listeners...... observed for the different interferers. None of the standardized models successfully describe these data....

  13. Improving on hidden Markov models: An articulatorily constrained, maximum likelihood approach to speech recognition and speech coding

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hogden, J.

    1996-11-05

    The goal of the proposed research is to test a statistical model of speech recognition that incorporates the knowledge that speech is produced by relatively slow motions of the tongue, lips, and other speech articulators. This model is called Maximum Likelihood Continuity Mapping (Malcom). Many speech researchers believe that by using constraints imposed by articulator motions, we can improve or replace the current hidden Markov model based speech recognition algorithms. Unfortunately, previous efforts to incorporate information about articulation into speech recognition algorithms have suffered because (1) slight inaccuracies in our knowledge or the formulation of our knowledge about articulation may decrease recognition performance, (2) small changes in the assumptions underlying models of speech production can lead to large changes in the speech derived from the models, and (3) collecting measurements of human articulator positions in sufficient quantity for training a speech recognition algorithm is still impractical. The most interesting (and in fact, unique) quality of Malcom is that, even though Malcom makes use of a mapping between acoustics and articulation, Malcom can be trained to recognize speech using only acoustic data. By learning the mapping between acoustics and articulation using only acoustic data, Malcom avoids the difficulties involved in collecting articulator position measurements and does not require an articulatory synthesizer model to estimate the mapping between vocal tract shapes and speech acoustics. Preliminary experiments that demonstrate that Malcom can learn the mapping between acoustics and articulation are discussed. Potential applications of Malcom aside from speech recognition are also discussed. Finally, specific deliverables resulting from the proposed research are described.

  14. [Quantitative spectrum analysis of characteristic gases of spontaneous combustion coal].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liang, Yun-Tao; Tang, Xiao-Jun; Luo, Hai-Zhu; Sun, Yong

    2011-09-01

    Aimed at the characteristics of spontaneous combustion gas such as a variety of gases, lou limit of detection, and critical requirement of safety, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectral analysis is presented to analyze characteristic gases of spontaneous combustion In this paper, analysis method is introduced at first by combing characteristics of absorption spectra of analyte and analysis requirement. Parameter setting method, sample preparation, feature variable abstract and analysis model building are taken into consideration. The methods of sample preparation, feature abstraction and analysis model are introduced in detail. And then, eleven kinds of gases were tested with Tensor 27 spectrometer. CH4, C2H6, C3H8, iC4H10, nC4H10, C2 H4, C3 H6, C3 H2, SF6, CO and CO2 were included. The optical path length was 10 cm while the spectra resolution was set as 1 cm(-1). The testing results show that the detection limit of all analytes is less than 2 x 10(-6). All the detection limits fit the measurement requirement of spontaneous combustion gas, which means that FTIR may be an ideal instrument and the analysis method used in this paper is competent for spontaneous combustion gas measurement on line.

  15. Speech Clarity Index (Ψ): A Distance-Based Speech Quality Indicator and Recognition Rate Prediction for Dysarthric Speakers with Cerebral Palsy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kayasith, Prakasith; Theeramunkong, Thanaruk

    It is a tedious and subjective task to measure severity of a dysarthria by manually evaluating his/her speech using available standard assessment methods based on human perception. This paper presents an automated approach to assess speech quality of a dysarthric speaker with cerebral palsy. With the consideration of two complementary factors, speech consistency and speech distinction, a speech quality indicator called speech clarity index (Ψ) is proposed as a measure of the speaker's ability to produce consistent speech signal for a certain word and distinguished speech signal for different words. As an application, it can be used to assess speech quality and forecast speech recognition rate of speech made by an individual dysarthric speaker before actual exhaustive implementation of an automatic speech recognition system for the speaker. The effectiveness of Ψ as a speech recognition rate predictor is evaluated by rank-order inconsistency, correlation coefficient, and root-mean-square of difference. The evaluations had been done by comparing its predicted recognition rates with ones predicted by the standard methods called the articulatory and intelligibility tests based on the two recognition systems (HMM and ANN). The results show that Ψ is a promising indicator for predicting recognition rate of dysarthric speech. All experiments had been done on speech corpus composed of speech data from eight normal speakers and eight dysarthric speakers.

  16. Longitudinal follow-up to evaluate speech disorders in early-treated patients with infantile-onset Pompe disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zeng, Yin-Ting; Hwu, Wuh-Liang; Torng, Pao-Chuan; Lee, Ni-Chung; Shieh, Jeng-Yi; Lu, Lu; Chien, Yin-Hsiu

    2017-05-01

    Patients with infantile-onset Pompe disease (IOPD) can be treated by recombinant human acid alpha glucosidase (rhGAA) replacement beginning at birth with excellent survival rates, but they still commonly present with speech disorders. This study investigated the progress of speech disorders in these early-treated patients and ascertained the relationship with treatments. Speech disorders, including hypernasal resonance, articulation disorders, and speech intelligibility, were scored by speech-language pathologists using auditory perception in seven early-treated patients over a period of 6 years. Statistical analysis of the first and last evaluations of the patients was performed with the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. A total of 29 speech samples were analyzed. All the patients suffered from hypernasality, articulation disorder, and impairment in speech intelligibility at the age of 3 years. The conditions were stable, and 2 patients developed normal or near normal speech during follow-up. Speech therapy and a high dose of rhGAA appeared to improve articulation in 6 of the 7 patients (86%, p = 0.028) by decreasing the omission of consonants, which consequently increased speech intelligibility (p = 0.041). Severity of hypernasality greatly reduced only in 2 patients (29%, p = 0.131). Speech disorders were common even in early and successfully treated patients with IOPD; however, aggressive speech therapy and high-dose rhGAA could improve their speech disorders. Copyright © 2016 European Paediatric Neurology Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Precision of working memory for speech sounds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Joseph, Sabine; Iverson, Paul; Manohar, Sanjay; Fox, Zoe; Scott, Sophie K; Husain, Masud

    2015-01-01

    Memory for speech sounds is a key component of models of verbal working memory (WM). But how good is verbal WM? Most investigations assess this using binary report measures to derive a fixed number of items that can be stored. However, recent findings in visual WM have challenged such "quantized" views by employing measures of recall precision with an analogue response scale. WM for speech sounds might rely on both continuous and categorical storage mechanisms. Using a novel speech matching paradigm, we measured WM recall precision for phonemes. Vowel qualities were sampled from a formant space continuum. A probe vowel had to be adjusted to match the vowel quality of a target on a continuous, analogue response scale. Crucially, this provided an index of the variability of a memory representation around its true value and thus allowed us to estimate how memories were distorted from the original sounds. Memory load affected the quality of speech sound recall in two ways. First, there was a gradual decline in recall precision with increasing number of items, consistent with the view that WM representations of speech sounds become noisier with an increase in the number of items held in memory, just as for vision. Based on multidimensional scaling (MDS), the level of noise appeared to be reflected in distortions of the formant space. Second, as memory load increased, there was evidence of greater clustering of participants' responses around particular vowels. A mixture model captured both continuous and categorical responses, demonstrating a shift from continuous to categorical memory with increasing WM load. This suggests that direct acoustic storage can be used for single items, but when more items must be stored, categorical representations must be used.

  18. Simultaneous natural speech and AAC interventions for children with childhood apraxia of speech: lessons from a speech-language pathologist focus group.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oommen, Elizabeth R; McCarthy, John W

    2015-03-01

    In childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), children exhibit varying levels of speech intelligibility depending on the nature of errors in articulation and prosody. Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) strategies are beneficial, and commonly adopted with children with CAS. This study focused on the decision-making process and strategies adopted by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) when simultaneously implementing interventions that focused on natural speech and AAC. Eight SLPs, with significant clinical experience in CAS and AAC interventions, participated in an online focus group. Thematic analysis revealed eight themes: key decision-making factors; treatment history and rationale; benefits; challenges; therapy strategies and activities; collaboration with team members; recommendations; and other comments. Results are discussed along with clinical implications and directions for future research.

  19. Speech Recognition on Mobile Devices

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tan, Zheng-Hua; Lindberg, Børge

    2010-01-01

    in the mobile context covering motivations, challenges, fundamental techniques and applications. Three ASR architectures are introduced: embedded speech recognition, distributed speech recognition and network speech recognition. Their pros and cons and implementation issues are discussed. Applications within......The enthusiasm of deploying automatic speech recognition (ASR) on mobile devices is driven both by remarkable advances in ASR technology and by the demand for efficient user interfaces on such devices as mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs). This chapter presents an overview of ASR...

  20. Perceptual Measures of Speech from Individuals with Parkinson's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis: Intelligibility and beyond

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sussman, Joan E.; Tjaden, Kris

    2012-01-01

    Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to compare percent correct word and sentence intelligibility scores for individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson's disease (PD) with scaled estimates of speech severity obtained for a reading passage. Method: Speech samples for 78 talkers were judged, including 30 speakers with MS, 16…

  1. Song and speech: examining the link between singing talent and speech imitation ability.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Christiner, Markus; Reiterer, Susanne M

    2013-01-01

    In previous research on speech imitation, musicality, and an ability to sing were isolated as the strongest indicators of good pronunciation skills in foreign languages. We, therefore, wanted to take a closer look at the nature of the ability to sing, which shares a common ground with the ability to imitate speech. This study focuses on whether good singing performance predicts good speech imitation. Forty-one singers of different levels of proficiency were selected for the study and their ability to sing, to imitate speech, their musical talent and working memory were tested. Results indicated that singing performance is a better indicator of the ability to imitate speech than the playing of a musical instrument. A multiple regression revealed that 64% of the speech imitation score variance could be explained by working memory together with educational background and singing performance. A second multiple regression showed that 66% of the speech imitation variance of completely unintelligible and unfamiliar language stimuli (Hindi) could be explained by working memory together with a singer's sense of rhythm and quality of voice. This supports the idea that both vocal behaviors have a common grounding in terms of vocal and motor flexibility, ontogenetic and phylogenetic development, neural orchestration and auditory memory with singing fitting better into the category of "speech" on the productive level and "music" on the acoustic level. As a result, good singers benefit from vocal and motor flexibility, productively and cognitively, in three ways. (1) Motor flexibility and the ability to sing improve language and musical function. (2) Good singers retain a certain plasticity and are open to new and unusual sound combinations during adulthood both perceptually and productively. (3) The ability to sing improves the memory span of the auditory working memory.

  2. Song and speech: examining the link between singing talent and speech imitation ability

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Markus eChristiner

    2013-11-01

    Full Text Available In previous research on speech imitation, musicality and an ability to sing were isolated as the strongest indicators of good pronunciation skills in foreign languages. We, therefore, wanted to take a closer look at the nature of the ability to sing, which shares a common ground with the ability to imitate speech. This study focuses on whether good singing performance predicts good speech imitation. Fourty-one singers of different levels of proficiency were selected for the study and their ability to sing, to imitate speech, their musical talent and working memory were tested. Results indicated that singing performance is a better indicator of the ability to imitate speech than the playing of a musical instrument. A multiple regression revealed that 64 % of the speech imitation score variance could be explained by working memory together with educational background and singing performance. A second multiple regression showed that 66 % of the speech imitation variance of completely unintelligible and unfamiliar language stimuli (Hindi could be explained by working memory together with a singer’s sense of rhythm and quality of voice. This supports the idea that both vocal behaviors have a common grounding in terms of vocal and motor flexibility, ontogenetic and phylogenetic development, neural orchestration and sound memory with singing fitting better into the category of "speech" on the productive level and "music" on the acoustic level. As a result, good singers benefit from vocal and motor flexibility, productively and cognitively, in three ways. 1. Motor flexibility and the ability to sing improve language and musical function. 2. Good singers retain a certain plasticity and are open to new and unusual sound combinations during adulthood both perceptually and productively. 3. The ability to sing improves the memory span of the auditory short term memory.

  3. Spontaneous Generation of Chirality in Simple Diaryl Ethers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lennartson, Anders; Hedström, Anna; Håkansson, Mikael

    2015-07-01

    We studied the spontaneous formation of chiral crystals of four diaryl ethers, 3-phenoxybenzaldehyde, 1; 1,3-dimethyl-2-phenoxybenzene, 2; di(4-aminophenyl) ether, 3; and di(p-tolyl) ether, 4. Compounds 1, 3, and 4 form conformationally chiral molecules in the solid state, while the chirality of 2 arises from the formation of supramolecular helices. Compound 1 is a liquid at ambient temperature, but 2-4 are crystalline, and solid-state CD-spectroscopy showed that they could be obtained as optically active bulk samples. It should be noted that the optical activity arise upon crystallization, and no optically active precursors were used. Indeed, even commercial samples of 3 and 4 were found to be optically active, giving evidence for the ease at which total spontaneous resolution may occur in certain systems. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  4. Speech Alarms Pilot Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sandor, Aniko; Moses, Haifa

    2016-01-01

    Speech alarms have been used extensively in aviation and included in International Building Codes (IBC) and National Fire Protection Association's (NFPA) Life Safety Code. However, they have not been implemented on space vehicles. Previous studies conducted at NASA JSC showed that speech alarms lead to faster identification and higher accuracy. This research evaluated updated speech and tone alerts in a laboratory environment and in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) in a realistic setup.

  5. Freedom of Speech Newsletter, September, 1975.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Allen, Winfred G., Jr., Ed.

    The Freedom of Speech Newsletter is the communication medium for the Freedom of Speech Interest Group of the Western Speech Communication Association. The newsletter contains such features as a statement of concern by the National Ad Hoc Committee Against Censorship; Reticence and Free Speech, an article by James F. Vickrey discussing the subtle…

  6. Automatic speech recognition used for evaluation of text-to-speech systems

    Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

    Vích, Robert; Nouza, J.; Vondra, Martin

    -, č. 5042 (2008), s. 136-148 ISSN 0302-9743 R&D Projects: GA AV ČR 1ET301710509; GA AV ČR 1QS108040569 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z20670512 Keywords : speech recognition * speech processing Subject RIV: JA - Electronics ; Optoelectronics, Electrical Engineering

  7. SynFace—Speech-Driven Facial Animation for Virtual Speech-Reading Support

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Giampiero Salvi

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper describes SynFace, a supportive technology that aims at enhancing audio-based spoken communication in adverse acoustic conditions by providing the missing visual information in the form of an animated talking head. Firstly, we describe the system architecture, consisting of a 3D animated face model controlled from the speech input by a specifically optimised phonetic recogniser. Secondly, we report on speech intelligibility experiments with focus on multilinguality and robustness to audio quality. The system, already available for Swedish, English, and Flemish, was optimised for German and for Swedish wide-band speech quality available in TV, radio, and Internet communication. Lastly, the paper covers experiments with nonverbal motions driven from the speech signal. It is shown that turn-taking gestures can be used to affect the flow of human-human dialogues. We have focused specifically on two categories of cues that may be extracted from the acoustic signal: prominence/emphasis and interactional cues (turn-taking/back-channelling.

  8. The Effect of English Verbal Songs on Connected Speech Aspects of Adult English Learners’ Speech Production

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Farshid Tayari Ashtiani

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available The present study was an attempt to investigate the impact of English verbal songs on connected speech aspects of adult English learners’ speech production. 40 participants were selected based on the results of their performance in a piloted and validated version of NELSON test given to 60 intermediate English learners in a language institute in Tehran. Then they were equally distributed in two control and experimental groups and received a validated pretest of reading aloud and speaking in English. Afterward, the treatment was performed in 18 sessions by singing preselected songs culled based on some criteria such as popularity, familiarity, amount, and speed of speech delivery, etc. In the end, the posttests of reading aloud and speaking in English were administered. The results revealed that the treatment had statistically positive effects on the connected speech aspects of English learners’ speech production at statistical .05 level of significance. Meanwhile, the results represented that there was not any significant difference between the experimental group’s mean scores on the posttests of reading aloud and speaking. It was thus concluded that providing the EFL learners with English verbal songs could positively affect connected speech aspects of both modes of speech production, reading aloud and speaking. The Findings of this study have pedagogical implications for language teachers to be more aware and knowledgeable of the benefits of verbal songs to promote speech production of language learners in terms of naturalness and fluency. Keywords: English Verbal Songs, Connected Speech, Speech Production, Reading Aloud, Speaking

  9. An analysis of the masking of speech by competing speech using self-report data (L)

    OpenAIRE

    Agus, Trevor R.; Akeroyd, Michael A.; Noble, William; Bhullar, Navjot

    2009-01-01

    Many of the items in the “Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing” scale questionnaire [S. Gatehouse and W. Noble, Int. J. Audiol.43, 85–99 (2004)] are concerned with speech understanding in a variety of backgrounds, both speech and nonspeech. To study if this self-report data reflected informational masking, previously collected data on 414 people were analyzed. The lowest scores (greatest difficulties) were found for the two items in which there were two speech targets, with successively ...

  10. Illustrated Speech Anatomy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shearer, William M.

    Written for students in the fields of speech correction and audiology, the text deals with the following: structures involved in respiration; the skeleton and the processes of inhalation and exhalation; phonation and pitch, the larynx, and esophageal speech; muscles involved in articulation; muscles involved in resonance; and the anatomy of the…

  11. Beyond stuttering: Speech disfluencies in normally fluent French-speaking children at age 4.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leclercq, Anne-Lise; Suaire, Pauline; Moyse, Astrid

    2018-01-01

    The aim of this study was to establish normative data on the speech disfluencies of normally fluent French-speaking children at age 4, an age at which stuttering has begun in 95% of children who stutter (Yairi & Ambrose, 2013). Fifty monolingual French-speaking children who do not stutter participated in the study. Analyses of a conversational speech sample comprising 250-550 words revealed an average of 10% total disfluencies, 2% stuttering-like disfluencies and around 8% non-stuttered disfluencies. Possible explanations for these high speech disfluency frequencies are discussed, including explanations linked to French in particular. The results shed light on the importance of normative data specific to each language.

  12. Patterns of poststroke brain damage that predict speech production errors in apraxia of speech and aphasia dissociate.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Basilakos, Alexandra; Rorden, Chris; Bonilha, Leonardo; Moser, Dana; Fridriksson, Julius

    2015-06-01

    Acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder caused by brain damage. AOS often co-occurs with aphasia, a language disorder in which patients may also demonstrate speech production errors. The overlap of speech production deficits in both disorders has raised questions on whether AOS emerges from a unique pattern of brain damage or as a subelement of the aphasic syndrome. The purpose of this study was to determine whether speech production errors in AOS and aphasia are associated with distinctive patterns of brain injury. Forty-three patients with history of a single left-hemisphere stroke underwent comprehensive speech and language testing. The AOS Rating Scale was used to rate speech errors specific to AOS versus speech errors that can also be associated with both AOS and aphasia. Localized brain damage was identified using structural magnetic resonance imaging, and voxel-based lesion-impairment mapping was used to evaluate the relationship between speech errors specific to AOS, those that can occur in AOS or aphasia, and brain damage. The pattern of brain damage associated with AOS was most strongly associated with damage to cortical motor regions, with additional involvement of somatosensory areas. Speech production deficits that could be attributed to AOS or aphasia were associated with damage to the temporal lobe and the inferior precentral frontal regions. AOS likely occurs in conjunction with aphasia because of the proximity of the brain areas supporting speech and language, but the neurobiological substrate for each disorder differs. © 2015 American Heart Association, Inc.

  13. Prisoner Fasting as Symbolic Speech: The Ultimate Speech-Action Test.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sneed, Don; Stonecipher, Harry W.

    The ultimate test of the speech-action dichotomy, as it relates to symbolic speech to be considered by the courts, may be the fasting of prison inmates who use hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their confinement or to make political statements. While hunger strikes have been utilized by prisoners for years as a means of protest, it was…

  14. Childhood apraxia of speech and multiple phonological disorders in Cairo-Egyptian Arabic speaking children: language, speech, and oro-motor differences.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aziz, Azza Adel; Shohdi, Sahar; Osman, Dalia Mostafa; Habib, Emad Iskander

    2010-06-01

    Childhood apraxia of speech is a neurological childhood speech-sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired in the absence of neuromuscular deficits. Children with childhood apraxia of speech and those with multiple phonological disorder share some common phonological errors that can be misleading in diagnosis. This study posed a question about a possible significant difference in language, speech and non-speech oral performances between children with childhood apraxia of speech, multiple phonological disorder and normal children that can be used for a differential diagnostic purpose. 30 pre-school children between the ages of 4 and 6 years served as participants. Each of these children represented one of 3 possible subject-groups: Group 1: multiple phonological disorder; Group 2: suspected cases of childhood apraxia of speech; Group 3: control group with no communication disorder. Assessment procedures included: parent interviews; testing of non-speech oral motor skills and testing of speech skills. Data showed that children with suspected childhood apraxia of speech showed significantly lower language score only in their expressive abilities. Non-speech tasks did not identify significant differences between childhood apraxia of speech and multiple phonological disorder groups except for those which required two sequential motor performances. In speech tasks, both consonant and vowel accuracy were significantly lower and inconsistent in childhood apraxia of speech group than in the multiple phonological disorder group. Syllable number, shape and sequence accuracy differed significantly in the childhood apraxia of speech group than the other two groups. In addition, children with childhood apraxia of speech showed greater difficulty in processing prosodic features indicating a clear need to address these variables for differential diagnosis and treatment of children with childhood apraxia of speech. Copyright (c

  15. Individual differneces in degraded speech perception

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carbonell, Kathy M.

    One of the lasting concerns in audiology is the unexplained individual differences in speech perception performance even for individuals with similar audiograms. One proposal is that there are cognitive/perceptual individual differences underlying this vulnerability and that these differences are present in normal hearing (NH) individuals but do not reveal themselves in studies that use clear speech produced in quiet (because of a ceiling effect). However, previous studies have failed to uncover cognitive/perceptual variables that explain much of the variance in NH performance on more challenging degraded speech tasks. This lack of strong correlations may be due to either examining the wrong measures (e.g., working memory capacity) or to there being no reliable differences in degraded speech performance in NH listeners (i.e., variability in performance is due to measurement noise). The proposed project has 3 aims; the first, is to establish whether there are reliable individual differences in degraded speech performance for NH listeners that are sustained both across degradation types (speech in noise, compressed speech, noise-vocoded speech) and across multiple testing sessions. The second aim is to establish whether there are reliable differences in NH listeners' ability to adapt their phonetic categories based on short-term statistics both across tasks and across sessions; and finally, to determine whether performance on degraded speech perception tasks are correlated with performance on phonetic adaptability tasks, thus establishing a possible explanatory variable for individual differences in speech perception for NH and hearing impaired listeners.

  16. Collective speech acts

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Meijers, A.W.M.; Tsohatzidis, S.L.

    2007-01-01

    From its early development in the 1960s, speech act theory always had an individualistic orientation. It focused exclusively on speech acts performed by individual agents. Paradigmatic examples are ‘I promise that p’, ‘I order that p’, and ‘I declare that p’. There is a single speaker and a single

  17. Commencement Speech as a Hybrid Polydiscursive Practice

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Светлана Викторовна Иванова

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Discourse and media communication researchers pay attention to the fact that popular discursive and communicative practices have a tendency to hybridization and convergence. Discourse which is understood as language in use is flexible. Consequently, it turns out that one and the same text can represent several types of discourses. A vivid example of this tendency is revealed in American commencement speech / commencement address / graduation speech. A commencement speech is a speech university graduates are addressed with which in compliance with the modern trend is delivered by outstanding media personalities (politicians, athletes, actors, etc.. The objective of this study is to define the specificity of the realization of polydiscursive practices within commencement speech. The research involves discursive, contextual, stylistic and definitive analyses. Methodologically the study is based on the discourse analysis theory, in particular the notion of a discursive practice as a verbalized social practice makes up the conceptual basis of the research. This research draws upon a hundred commencement speeches delivered by prominent representatives of American society since 1980s till now. In brief, commencement speech belongs to institutional discourse public speech embodies. Commencement speech institutional parameters are well represented in speeches delivered by people in power like American and university presidents. Nevertheless, as the results of the research indicate commencement speech institutional character is not its only feature. Conceptual information analysis enables to refer commencement speech to didactic discourse as it is aimed at teaching university graduates how to deal with challenges life is rich in. Discursive practices of personal discourse are also actively integrated into the commencement speech discourse. More than that, existential discursive practices also find their way into the discourse under study. Commencement

  18. The effectiveness of Speech-Music Therapy for Aphasia (SMTA) in five speakers with Apraxia of Speech and aphasia

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hurkmans, Joost; Jonkers, Roel; de Bruijn, Madeleen; Boonstra, Anne M.; Hartman, Paul P.; Arendzen, Hans; Reinders - Messelink, Heelen

    2015-01-01

    Background: Several studies using musical elements in the treatment of neurological language and speech disorders have reported improvement of speech production. One such programme, Speech-Music Therapy for Aphasia (SMTA), integrates speech therapy and music therapy (MT) to treat the individual with

  19. Look Who’s Talking NOW! Parentese Speech, Social Context, and Language Development Across Time

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nairán Ramírez-Esparza

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available In previous studies, we found that the social interactions infants experience in their everyday lives at 11- and 14-months of age affect language ability at 24 months of age. These studies investigated relationships between the speech style (i.e., parentese speech vs. standard speech and social context [i.e., one-on-one (1:1 vs. group] of language input in infancy and later speech development (i.e., at 24 months of age, controlling for socioeconomic status (SES. Results showed that the amount of exposure to parentese speech-1:1 in infancy was related to productive vocabulary at 24 months. The general goal of the present study was to investigate changes in (1 the pattern of social interactions between caregivers and their children from infancy to childhood and (2 relationships among speech style, social context, and language learning across time. Our study sample consisted of 30 participants from the previously published infant studies, evaluated at 33 months of age. Social interactions were assessed at home using digital first-person perspective recordings of the auditory environment. We found that caregivers use less parentese speech-1:1, and more standard speech-1:1, as their children get older. Furthermore, we found that the effects of parentese speech-1:1 in infancy on later language development at 24 months persist at 33 months of age. Finally, we found that exposure to standard speech-1:1 in childhood was the only social interaction that related to concurrent word production/use. Mediation analyses showed that standard speech-1:1 in childhood fully mediated the effects of parentese speech-1:1 in infancy on language development in childhood, controlling for SES. This study demonstrates that engaging in one-on-one interactions in infancy and later in life has important implications for language development.

  20. Current trends in multilingual speech processing

    Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

    2016-08-26

    ; speech-to-speech translation; language identification. ... interest owing to two strong driving forces. Firstly, technical advances in speech recognition and synthesis are posing new challenges and opportunities to researchers.

  1. Patterns of Post-Stroke Brain Damage that Predict Speech Production Errors in Apraxia of Speech and Aphasia Dissociate

    Science.gov (United States)

    Basilakos, Alexandra; Rorden, Chris; Bonilha, Leonardo; Moser, Dana; Fridriksson, Julius

    2015-01-01

    Background and Purpose Acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder caused by brain damage. AOS often co-occurs with aphasia, a language disorder in which patients may also demonstrate speech production errors. The overlap of speech production deficits in both disorders has raised questions regarding if AOS emerges from a unique pattern of brain damage or as a sub-element of the aphasic syndrome. The purpose of this study was to determine whether speech production errors in AOS and aphasia are associated with distinctive patterns of brain injury. Methods Forty-three patients with history of a single left-hemisphere stroke underwent comprehensive speech and language testing. The Apraxia of Speech Rating Scale was used to rate speech errors specific to AOS versus speech errors that can also be associated with AOS and/or aphasia. Localized brain damage was identified using structural MRI, and voxel-based lesion-impairment mapping was used to evaluate the relationship between speech errors specific to AOS, those that can occur in AOS and/or aphasia, and brain damage. Results The pattern of brain damage associated with AOS was most strongly associated with damage to cortical motor regions, with additional involvement of somatosensory areas. Speech production deficits that could be attributed to AOS and/or aphasia were associated with damage to the temporal lobe and the inferior pre-central frontal regions. Conclusion AOS likely occurs in conjunction with aphasia due to the proximity of the brain areas supporting speech and language, but the neurobiological substrate for each disorder differs. PMID:25908457

  2. Musicians do not benefit from differences in fundamental frequency when listening to speech in competing speech backgrounds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Madsen, Sara Miay Kim; Whiteford, Kelly L.; Oxenham, Andrew J.

    2017-01-01

    Recent studies disagree on whether musicians have an advantage over non-musicians in understanding speech in noise. However, it has been suggested that musicians may be able to use diferences in fundamental frequency (F0) to better understand target speech in the presence of interfering talkers....... Here we studied a relatively large (N=60) cohort of young adults, equally divided between nonmusicians and highly trained musicians, to test whether the musicians were better able to understand speech either in noise or in a two-talker competing speech masker. The target speech and competing speech...... were presented with either their natural F0 contours or on a monotone F0, and the F0 diference between the target and masker was systematically varied. As expected, speech intelligibility improved with increasing F0 diference between the target and the two-talker masker for both natural and monotone...

  3. Speech Sound Disorders in Preschool Children: Correspondence between Clinical Diagnosis and Teacher and Parent Report

    Science.gov (United States)

    Harrison, Linda J.; McLeod, Sharynne; McAllister, Lindy; McCormack, Jane

    2017-01-01

    This study sought to assess the level of correspondence between parent and teacher report of concern about young children's speech and specialist assessment of speech sound disorders (SSD). A sample of 157 children aged 4-5 years was recruited in preschools and long day care centres in Victoria and New South Wales (NSW). SSD was assessed…

  4. Recurrent Respiratory Papillomatosis Causing Chronic Stridor and Delayed Speech in an 18-Month-Old Boy

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adel Alharbi

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available Recurrent respiratory papillomatosis is a relatively uncommon disease that presents clinically with symptoms ranging from hoarseness to severe dyspnea. Human papilloma virus types 6 and 11 are important in the etiology of papillomas and are most probably transmitted from mother to child during birth. Although spontaneous remission is frequent, pulmonary spread and/or malignant transformation resulting in death has been reported. CO2 laser evaporation of papillomas and adjuvant drug therapy using lymphoblastoid interferon-alpha are the most common treatments. However, several other treatments have been tried, with varying success. In the present report, a case of laryngeal papillomatosis presenting with chronic stridor and delayed speech is described.

  5. Novel Techniques for Dialectal Arabic Speech Recognition

    CERN Document Server

    Elmahdy, Mohamed; Minker, Wolfgang

    2012-01-01

    Novel Techniques for Dialectal Arabic Speech describes approaches to improve automatic speech recognition for dialectal Arabic. Since speech resources for dialectal Arabic speech recognition are very sparse, the authors describe how existing Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) speech data can be applied to dialectal Arabic speech recognition, while assuming that MSA is always a second language for all Arabic speakers. In this book, Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) has been chosen as a typical Arabic dialect. ECA is the first ranked Arabic dialect in terms of number of speakers, and a high quality ECA speech corpus with accurate phonetic transcription has been collected. MSA acoustic models were trained using news broadcast speech. In order to cross-lingually use MSA in dialectal Arabic speech recognition, the authors have normalized the phoneme sets for MSA and ECA. After this normalization, they have applied state-of-the-art acoustic model adaptation techniques like Maximum Likelihood Linear Regression (MLLR) and M...

  6. Speech and Communication Disorders

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... to being completely unable to speak or understand speech. Causes include Hearing disorders and deafness Voice problems, ... or those caused by cleft lip or palate Speech problems like stuttering Developmental disabilities Learning disorders Autism ...

  7. Speech of people with autism: Echolalia and echolalic speech

    OpenAIRE

    Błeszyński, Jacek Jarosław

    2013-01-01

    Speech of people with autism is recognised as one of the basic diagnostic, therapeutic and theoretical problems. One of the most common symptoms of autism in children is echolalia, described here as being of different types and severity. This paper presents the results of studies into different levels of echolalia, both in normally developing children and in children diagnosed with autism, discusses the differences between simple echolalia and echolalic speech - which can be considered to b...

  8. A Persian Cued Speech Website Fromthe Deaf Professionals’ Views

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guita Movallali

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available Objectives: Increasingly people are using the internet to find information about medical and educational issues and one of the simplest ways to obtain information is internet. Persian Cued Speech is a very new system to Iranian families with deaf child and the professionals and a few educators have enough knowledge about it, so the purpose of this study was to introduce Persian Cued Speech website to deaf educators and rehabilitation professionals and assess their views about the website and their accessibility to important information through its use. Methods:The sample group was randomly selected fromdeaf educators and rehabilitation professionals working in different educational settings for deaf children in Tehran, our capital .They completed a questionnaire which was adopted from different website assessing questionnaires. Researchers also completed an interview with the sample group. Results: Our findings show that from the deaf educators and rehabilitation professionals point of view,the Persian Cued Speech website was a helpful and informing website. They also wanted more pictures and videos,bigger font sizes and more practical parts.So we decide to change some parts of the website to be more usable for them. Discussion: Using informational websites can be a very helpful tool in the internet area. Helpful websites are those which are more accessible, readable and appropriately designed and are user-friendly.

  9. The Effect of Explicit Instruction of Connected Speech Features on Iranian EFL Learners’

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Moussa Ahmadian

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available Listening comprehension has found its right place in the field of SLA in recent decades. For years, among all language skills, speaking and writing were of high significance in teaching and learning a new language as they were considered to be productive skills. Listening and reading, on the other hand, were neglected since they were regarded as passive skills, means to other ends, rather than ends in themselves. This study investigates possible effects of explicit instruction of connected speech features on listening comprehension of Iranian English language learners. Forty adult female Persian speaking homogeneous English learners, aged 18-30, participated in the study. They were divided into two experimental and control groups. The experimental group received explicit instructions on connected speech features, while the control group followed the routine instructions designed by their institute. Tests of connected speech features were used in pre- and post tests. The participants’ scores on the pre-posttests were compared via the paired samples t-tests and independent samples t-tests. The results indicated the outperformance of the experimental group over the control group, thus, suggesting that explicit instructions of connected speech features have facilitative roles in improving EFL learners’ listening comprehension skill. Possible implications of the findings for teaching listening comprehension are discussed.

  10. A Diagnostic Marker to Discriminate Childhood Apraxia of Speech from Speech Delay: Introduction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shriberg, Lawrence D.; Strand, Edythe A.; Fourakis, Marios; Jakielski, Kathy J.; Hall, Sheryl D.; Karlsson, Heather B.; Mabie, Heather L.; McSweeny, Jane L.; Tilkens, Christie M.; Wilson, David L.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: The goal of this article is to introduce the pause marker (PM), a single-sign diagnostic marker proposed to discriminate early or persistent childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) from speech delay.

  11. The mechanism of speech processing in congenital amusia: evidence from Mandarin speakers.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fang Liu

    Full Text Available Congenital amusia is a neuro-developmental disorder of pitch perception that causes severe problems with music processing but only subtle difficulties in speech processing. This study investigated speech processing in a group of Mandarin speakers with congenital amusia. Thirteen Mandarin amusics and thirteen matched controls participated in a set of tone and intonation perception tasks and two pitch threshold tasks. Compared with controls, amusics showed impaired performance on word discrimination in natural speech and their gliding tone analogs. They also performed worse than controls on discriminating gliding tone sequences derived from statements and questions, and showed elevated thresholds for pitch change detection and pitch direction discrimination. However, they performed as well as controls on word identification, and on statement-question identification and discrimination in natural speech. Overall, tasks that involved multiple acoustic cues to communicative meaning were not impacted by amusia. Only when the tasks relied mainly on pitch sensitivity did amusics show impaired performance compared to controls. These findings help explain why amusia only affects speech processing in subtle ways. Further studies on a larger sample of Mandarin amusics and on amusics of other language backgrounds are needed to consolidate these results.

  12. The mechanism of speech processing in congenital amusia: evidence from Mandarin speakers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Fang; Jiang, Cunmei; Thompson, William Forde; Xu, Yi; Yang, Yufang; Stewart, Lauren

    2012-01-01

    Congenital amusia is a neuro-developmental disorder of pitch perception that causes severe problems with music processing but only subtle difficulties in speech processing. This study investigated speech processing in a group of Mandarin speakers with congenital amusia. Thirteen Mandarin amusics and thirteen matched controls participated in a set of tone and intonation perception tasks and two pitch threshold tasks. Compared with controls, amusics showed impaired performance on word discrimination in natural speech and their gliding tone analogs. They also performed worse than controls on discriminating gliding tone sequences derived from statements and questions, and showed elevated thresholds for pitch change detection and pitch direction discrimination. However, they performed as well as controls on word identification, and on statement-question identification and discrimination in natural speech. Overall, tasks that involved multiple acoustic cues to communicative meaning were not impacted by amusia. Only when the tasks relied mainly on pitch sensitivity did amusics show impaired performance compared to controls. These findings help explain why amusia only affects speech processing in subtle ways. Further studies on a larger sample of Mandarin amusics and on amusics of other language backgrounds are needed to consolidate these results.

  13. Proteomic Analysis of Early Mid-Trimester Amniotic Fluid Does Not Predict Spontaneous Preterm Delivery

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lenco, Juraj; Vajrychova, Marie; Link, Marek; Tambor, Vojtech; Liman, Victor; Bullarbo, Maria; Nilsson, Staffan; Tsiartas, Panagiotis; Cobo, Teresa; Kacerovsky, Marian; Jacobsson, Bo

    2016-01-01

    Objective The aim of this study was to identify early proteomic biomarkers of spontaneous preterm delivery (PTD) in mid-trimester amniotic fluid from asymptomatic women. Methods This is a case-cohort study. Amniotic fluid from mid-trimester genetic amniocentesis (14–19 weeks of gestation) was collected from 2008 to 2011. The analysis was conducted in 24 healthy women with subsequent spontaneous PTD (cases) and 40 randomly selected healthy women delivering at term (controls). An exploratory phase with proteomics analysis of pooled samples was followed by a verification phase with ELISA of individual case and control samples. Results The median (interquartile range (IQR: 25th; 75th percentiles) gestational age at delivery was 35+5 (33+6–36+6) weeks in women with spontaneous PTD and 40+0 (39+1–40+5) weeks in women who delivered at term. In the exploratory phase, the most pronounced differences were found in C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, that were approximately two-fold higher in the pooled case samples than in the pooled control samples. However, we could not verify these differences with ELISA. The median (25th; 75th IQR) CRP level was 95.2 ng/mL (64.3; 163.5) in women with spontaneous PTD and 86.0 ng/mL (51.2; 145.8) in women delivering at term (p = 0.37; t-test). Conclusions Proteomic analysis with mass spectrometry of mid-trimester amniotic fluid suggests CRP as a potential marker of spontaneous preterm delivery, but this prognostic potential was not verified with ELISA. PMID:27214132

  14. A speech production model including the nasal Cavity: A novel approach to articulatory analysis of speech signals

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Olesen, Morten

    In order to obtain articulatory analysis of speech production the model is improved. the standard model, as used in LPC analysis, to a large extent only models the acoustic properties of speech signal as opposed to articulatory modelling of the speech production. In spite of this the LPC model...... is by far the most widely used model in speech technology....

  15. Revisiting Neil Armstrongs Moon-Landing Quote: Implications for Speech Perception, Function Word Reduction, and Acoustic Ambiguity.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Melissa M Baese-Berk

    Full Text Available Neil Armstrong insisted that his quote upon landing on the moon was misheard, and that he had said one small step for a man, instead of one small step for man. What he said is unclear in part because function words like a can be reduced and spectrally indistinguishable from the preceding context. Therefore, their presence can be ambiguous, and they may disappear perceptually depending on the rate of surrounding speech. Two experiments are presented examining production and perception of reduced tokens of for and for a in spontaneous speech. Experiment 1 investigates the distributions of several acoustic features of for and for a. The results suggest that the distributions of for and for a overlap substantially, both in terms of temporal and spectral characteristics. Experiment 2 examines perception of these same tokens when the context speaking rate differs. The perceptibility of the function word a varies as a function of this context speaking rate. These results demonstrate that substantial ambiguity exists in the original quote from Armstrong, and that this ambiguity may be understood through context speaking rate.

  16. Revisiting Neil Armstrongs Moon-Landing Quote: Implications for Speech Perception, Function Word Reduction, and Acoustic Ambiguity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baese-Berk, Melissa M; Dilley, Laura C; Schmidt, Stephanie; Morrill, Tuuli H; Pitt, Mark A

    2016-01-01

    Neil Armstrong insisted that his quote upon landing on the moon was misheard, and that he had said one small step for a man, instead of one small step for man. What he said is unclear in part because function words like a can be reduced and spectrally indistinguishable from the preceding context. Therefore, their presence can be ambiguous, and they may disappear perceptually depending on the rate of surrounding speech. Two experiments are presented examining production and perception of reduced tokens of for and for a in spontaneous speech. Experiment 1 investigates the distributions of several acoustic features of for and for a. The results suggest that the distributions of for and for a overlap substantially, both in terms of temporal and spectral characteristics. Experiment 2 examines perception of these same tokens when the context speaking rate differs. The perceptibility of the function word a varies as a function of this context speaking rate. These results demonstrate that substantial ambiguity exists in the original quote from Armstrong, and that this ambiguity may be understood through context speaking rate.

  17. Successful and rapid response of speech bulb reduction program combined with speech therapy in velopharyngeal dysfunction: a case report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shin, Yu-Jeong; Ko, Seung-O

    2015-12-01

    Velopharyngeal dysfunction in cleft palate patients following the primary palate repair may result in nasal air emission, hypernasality, articulation disorder and poor intelligibility of speech. Among conservative treatment methods, speech aid prosthesis combined with speech therapy is widely used method. However because of its long time of treatment more than a year and low predictability, some clinicians prefer a surgical intervention. Thus, the purpose of this report was to increase an attention on the effectiveness of speech aid prosthesis by introducing a case that was successfully treated. In this clinical report, speech bulb reduction program with intensive speech therapy was applied for a patient with velopharyngeal dysfunction and it was rapidly treated by 5months which was unusually short period for speech aid therapy. Furthermore, advantages of pre-operative speech aid therapy were discussed.

  18. Individual differences in language and working memory affect children’s speech recognition in noise

    Science.gov (United States)

    McCreery, Ryan W.; Spratford, Meredith; Kirby, Benjamin; Brennan, Marc

    2017-01-01

    Objective We examined how cognitive and linguistic skills affect speech recognition in noise for children with normal hearing. Children with better working memory and language abilities were expected to have better speech recognition in noise than peers with poorer skills in these domains. Design As part of a prospective, cross-sectional study, children with normal hearing completed speech recognition in noise for three types of stimuli: (1) monosyllabic words, (2) syntactically correct but semantically anomalous sentences and (3) semantically and syntactically anomalous word sequences. Measures of vocabulary, syntax and working memory were used to predict individual differences in speech recognition in noise. Study sample Ninety-six children with normal hearing, who were between 5 and 12 years of age. Results Higher working memory was associated with better speech recognition in noise for all three stimulus types. Higher vocabulary abilities were associated with better recognition in noise for sentences and word sequences, but not for words. Conclusions Working memory and language both influence children’s speech recognition in noise, but the relationships vary across types of stimuli. These findings suggest that clinical assessment of speech recognition is likely to reflect underlying cognitive and linguistic abilities, in addition to a child’s auditory skills, consistent with the Ease of Language Understanding model. PMID:27981855

  19. Spontaneous acute spinal subdural hematoma: spontaneous recovery from severe paraparesis--case report and review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Payer, Michael; Agosti, Reto

    2010-11-01

    Spontaneous idiopathic acute spinal subdural hematomas are highly exceptional. Neurological symptoms are usually severe, and rapid diagnosis with MRI is mandatory. Surgical evacuation has frequently been used therapeutically; however, spontaneous recovery in mild cases has also been reported. We present a case of spontaneous recovery from severe paraparesis after spontaneous acute SSDH, and review the English-speaking literature.

  20. Speech Intelligibility Evaluation for Mobile Phones

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jørgensen, Søren; Cubick, Jens; Dau, Torsten

    2015-01-01

    In the development process of modern telecommunication systems, such as mobile phones, it is common practice to use computer models to objectively evaluate the transmission quality of the system, instead of time-consuming perceptual listening tests. Such models have typically focused on the quality...... of the transmitted speech, while little or no attention has been provided to speech intelligibility. The present study investigated to what extent three state-of-the art speech intelligibility models could predict the intelligibility of noisy speech transmitted through mobile phones. Sentences from the Danish...... Dantale II speech material were mixed with three different kinds of background noise, transmitted through three different mobile phones, and recorded at the receiver via a local network simulator. The speech intelligibility of the transmitted sentences was assessed by six normal-hearing listeners...

  1. Atypical speech versus non-speech detection and discrimination in 4- to 6- yr old children with autism spectrum disorder: An ERP study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alena Galilee

    Full Text Available Previous event-related potential (ERP research utilizing oddball stimulus paradigms suggests diminished processing of speech versus non-speech sounds in children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD. However, brain mechanisms underlying these speech processing abnormalities, and to what extent they are related to poor language abilities in this population remain unknown. In the current study, we utilized a novel paired repetition paradigm in order to investigate ERP responses associated with the detection and discrimination of speech and non-speech sounds in 4- to 6-year old children with ASD, compared with gender and verbal age matched controls. ERPs were recorded while children passively listened to pairs of stimuli that were either both speech sounds, both non-speech sounds, speech followed by non-speech, or non-speech followed by speech. Control participants exhibited N330 match/mismatch responses measured from temporal electrodes, reflecting speech versus non-speech detection, bilaterally, whereas children with ASD exhibited this effect only over temporal electrodes in the left hemisphere. Furthermore, while the control groups exhibited match/mismatch effects at approximately 600 ms (central N600, temporal P600 when a non-speech sound was followed by a speech sound, these effects were absent in the ASD group. These findings suggest that children with ASD fail to activate right hemisphere mechanisms, likely associated with social or emotional aspects of speech detection, when distinguishing non-speech from speech stimuli. Together, these results demonstrate the presence of atypical speech versus non-speech processing in children with ASD when compared with typically developing children matched on verbal age.

  2. Atypical speech versus non-speech detection and discrimination in 4- to 6- yr old children with autism spectrum disorder: An ERP study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galilee, Alena; Stefanidou, Chrysi; McCleery, Joseph P

    2017-01-01

    Previous event-related potential (ERP) research utilizing oddball stimulus paradigms suggests diminished processing of speech versus non-speech sounds in children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, brain mechanisms underlying these speech processing abnormalities, and to what extent they are related to poor language abilities in this population remain unknown. In the current study, we utilized a novel paired repetition paradigm in order to investigate ERP responses associated with the detection and discrimination of speech and non-speech sounds in 4- to 6-year old children with ASD, compared with gender and verbal age matched controls. ERPs were recorded while children passively listened to pairs of stimuli that were either both speech sounds, both non-speech sounds, speech followed by non-speech, or non-speech followed by speech. Control participants exhibited N330 match/mismatch responses measured from temporal electrodes, reflecting speech versus non-speech detection, bilaterally, whereas children with ASD exhibited this effect only over temporal electrodes in the left hemisphere. Furthermore, while the control groups exhibited match/mismatch effects at approximately 600 ms (central N600, temporal P600) when a non-speech sound was followed by a speech sound, these effects were absent in the ASD group. These findings suggest that children with ASD fail to activate right hemisphere mechanisms, likely associated with social or emotional aspects of speech detection, when distinguishing non-speech from speech stimuli. Together, these results demonstrate the presence of atypical speech versus non-speech processing in children with ASD when compared with typically developing children matched on verbal age.

  3. Tooth display and lip position during spontaneous and posed smiling in adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Der Geld, Pieter; Oosterveld, Paul; Berge, Stefaan J; Kuijpers-Jagtman, Anne M

    2008-08-01

    To analyze differences in tooth display, lip-line height, and smile width between the posed smiling record, traditionally produced for orthodontic diagnosis, and the spontaneous (Duchenne) smile of joy. The faces of 122 male participants were each filmed during spontaneous and posed smiling. Spontaneous smiles were elicited through the participants watching a comical movie. Maxillary and mandibular lip-line heights, tooth display, and smile width were measured using a digital videographic method for smile analysis. Paired sample t-tests were used to compare measurements of posed and spontaneous smiling. Maxillary lip-line heights during spontaneous smiling were significantly higher than during posed smiling. Compared to spontaneous smiling, tooth display in the (pre)molar area during posed smiling decreased by up to 30%, along with a significant reduction of smile width. During posed smiling, also mandibular lip-line heights changed and the teeth were more covered by the lower lip than during spontaneous smiling. Reduced lip-line heights, tooth display, and smile width on a posed smiling record can have implications for the diagnostics of lip-line height, smile arc, buccal corridors, and plane of occlusion. Spontaneous smiling records next to posed smiling records are therefore recommended for diagnostic purposes. Because of the dynamic nature of spontaneous smiling, it is proposed to switch to dynamic video recording of the smile.

  4. Radiological evaluation of esophageal speech on total laryngectomee

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chung, Tae Sub; Suh, Jung Ho; Kim, Dong Ik; Kim, Gwi Eon; Hong, Won Phy; Lee, Won Sang

    1988-01-01

    Total laryngectomee requires some form of alaryngeal speech for communication. Generally, esophageal speech is regarded as the most available and comfortable technique for alaryngeal speech. But esophageal speech is difficult to train, so many patients are unable to attain esophageal speech for communication. To understand mechanism of esophageal of esophageal speech on total laryngectomee, evaluation of anatomical change of the pharyngoesophageal segment is very important. We used video fluoroscopy for evaluation of pharyngesophageal segment during esophageal speech. Eighteen total laryngectomees were evaluated with video fluoroscopy from Dec. 1986 to May 1987 at Y.U.M.C. Our results were as follows: 1. Peseudoglottis is the most important factor for esophageal speech, which is visualized in 7 cases among 8 cases of excellent esophageal speech group. 2. Two cases of longer A-P diameter at the pseudoglottis have the best quality of esophageal speech than others. 3. Two cases of mucosal vibration at the pharyngoesophageal segment can make excellent esophageal speech. 4. The cases of failed esophageal speech are poor aerophagia in 6 cases, abscence of pseudoglottis in 4 cases and poor air ejection in 3 cases. 5. Aerophagia synchronizes with diaphragmatic motion in 8 cases of excellent esophageal speech.

  5. Automatic Speech Recognition Systems for the Evaluation of Voice and Speech Disorders in Head and Neck Cancer

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andreas Maier

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available In patients suffering from head and neck cancer, speech intelligibility is often restricted. For assessment and outcome measurements, automatic speech recognition systems have previously been shown to be appropriate for objective and quick evaluation of intelligibility. In this study we investigate the applicability of the method to speech disorders caused by head and neck cancer. Intelligibility was quantified by speech recognition on recordings of a standard text read by 41 German laryngectomized patients with cancer of the larynx or hypopharynx and 49 German patients who had suffered from oral cancer. The speech recognition provides the percentage of correctly recognized words of a sequence, that is, the word recognition rate. Automatic evaluation was compared to perceptual ratings by a panel of experts and to an age-matched control group. Both patient groups showed significantly lower word recognition rates than the control group. Automatic speech recognition yielded word recognition rates which complied with experts' evaluation of intelligibility on a significant level. Automatic speech recognition serves as a good means with low effort to objectify and quantify the most important aspect of pathologic speech—the intelligibility. The system was successfully applied to voice and speech disorders.

  6. On speech recognition during anaesthesia

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Alapetite, Alexandre

    2007-01-01

    This PhD thesis in human-computer interfaces (informatics) studies the case of the anaesthesia record used during medical operations and the possibility to supplement it with speech recognition facilities. Problems and limitations have been identified with the traditional paper-based anaesthesia...... and inaccuracies in the anaesthesia record. Supplementing the electronic anaesthesia record interface with speech input facilities is proposed as one possible solution to a part of the problem. The testing of the various hypotheses has involved the development of a prototype of an electronic anaesthesia record...... interface with speech input facilities in Danish. The evaluation of the new interface was carried out in a full-scale anaesthesia simulator. This has been complemented by laboratory experiments on several aspects of speech recognition for this type of use, e.g. the effects of noise on speech recognition...

  7. Novel candidate genes and regions for childhood apraxia of speech identified by array comparative genomic hybridization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laffin, Jennifer J S; Raca, Gordana; Jackson, Craig A; Strand, Edythe A; Jakielski, Kathy J; Shriberg, Lawrence D

    2012-11-01

    The goal of this study was to identify new candidate genes and genomic copy-number variations associated with a rare, severe, and persistent speech disorder termed childhood apraxia of speech. Childhood apraxia of speech is the speech disorder segregating with a mutation in FOXP2 in a multigenerational London pedigree widely studied for its role in the development of speech-language in humans. A total of 24 participants who were suspected to have childhood apraxia of speech were assessed using a comprehensive protocol that samples speech in challenging contexts. All participants met clinical-research criteria for childhood apraxia of speech. Array comparative genomic hybridization analyses were completed using a customized 385K Nimblegen array (Roche Nimblegen, Madison, WI) with increased coverage of genes and regions previously associated with childhood apraxia of speech. A total of 16 copy-number variations with potential consequences for speech-language development were detected in 12 or half of the 24 participants. The copy-number variations occurred on 10 chromosomes, 3 of which had two to four candidate regions. Several participants were identified with copy-number variations in two to three regions. In addition, one participant had a heterozygous FOXP2 mutation and a copy-number variation on chromosome 2, and one participant had a 16p11.2 microdeletion and copy-number variations on chromosomes 13 and 14. Findings support the likelihood of heterogeneous genomic pathways associated with childhood apraxia of speech.

  8. 78 FR 63152 - Telecommunications Relay Services and Speech-to-Speech Services for Individuals With Hearing and...

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-10-23

    ...] Telecommunications Relay Services and Speech-to-Speech Services for Individuals With Hearing and Speech Disabilities... for telecommunications relay services (TRS) by eliminating standards for Internet-based relay services... comments, identified by CG Docket No. 03-123, by any of the following methods: Electronic Filers: Comments...

  9. Speech Alarms Pilot Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sandor, A.; Moses, H. R.

    2016-01-01

    Currently on the International Space Station (ISS) and other space vehicles Caution & Warning (C&W) alerts are represented with various auditory tones that correspond to the type of event. This system relies on the crew's ability to remember what each tone represents in a high stress, high workload environment when responding to the alert. Furthermore, crew receive a year or more in advance of the mission that makes remembering the semantic meaning of the alerts more difficult. The current system works for missions conducted close to Earth where ground operators can assist as needed. On long duration missions, however, they will need to work off-nominal events autonomously. There is evidence that speech alarms may be easier and faster to recognize, especially during an off-nominal event. The Information Presentation Directed Research Project (FY07-FY09) funded by the Human Research Program included several studies investigating C&W alerts. The studies evaluated tone alerts currently in use with NASA flight deck displays along with candidate speech alerts. A follow-on study used four types of speech alerts to investigate how quickly various types of auditory alerts with and without a speech component - either at the beginning or at the end of the tone - can be identified. Even though crew were familiar with the tone alert from training or direct mission experience, alerts starting with a speech component were identified faster than alerts starting with a tone. The current study replicated the results from the previous study in a more rigorous experimental design to determine if the candidate speech alarms are ready for transition to operations or if more research is needed. Four types of alarms (caution, warning, fire, and depressurization) were presented to participants in both tone and speech formats in laboratory settings and later in the Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA). In the laboratory study, the alerts were presented by software and participants were

  10. Functional connectivity between face-movement and speech-intelligibility areas during auditory-only speech perception.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schall, Sonja; von Kriegstein, Katharina

    2014-01-01

    It has been proposed that internal simulation of the talking face of visually-known speakers facilitates auditory speech recognition. One prediction of this view is that brain areas involved in auditory-only speech comprehension interact with visual face-movement sensitive areas, even under auditory-only listening conditions. Here, we test this hypothesis using connectivity analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Participants (17 normal participants, 17 developmental prosopagnosics) first learned six speakers via brief voice-face or voice-occupation training (comprehension. Overall, the present findings indicate that learned visual information is integrated into the analysis of auditory-only speech and that this integration results from the interaction of task-relevant face-movement and auditory speech-sensitive areas.

  11. Visualizing structures of speech expressiveness

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Herbelin, Bruno; Jensen, Karl Kristoffer; Graugaard, Lars

    2008-01-01

    Speech is both beautiful and informative. In this work, a conceptual study of the speech, through investigation of the tower of Babel, the archetypal phonemes, and a study of the reasons of uses of language is undertaken in order to create an artistic work investigating the nature of speech. The ....... The artwork is presented at the Re:New festival in May 2008....

  12. A Clinician Survey of Speech and Non-Speech Characteristics of Neurogenic Stuttering

    Science.gov (United States)

    Theys, Catherine; van Wieringen, Astrid; De Nil, Luc F.

    2008-01-01

    This study presents survey data on 58 Dutch-speaking patients with neurogenic stuttering following various neurological injuries. Stroke was the most prevalent cause of stuttering in our patients, followed by traumatic brain injury, neurodegenerative diseases, and other causes. Speech and non-speech characteristics were analyzed separately for…

  13. Automatic Speech Signal Analysis for Clinical Diagnosis and Assessment of Speech Disorders

    CERN Document Server

    Baghai-Ravary, Ladan

    2013-01-01

    Automatic Speech Signal Analysis for Clinical Diagnosis and Assessment of Speech Disorders provides a survey of methods designed to aid clinicians in the diagnosis and monitoring of speech disorders such as dysarthria and dyspraxia, with an emphasis on the signal processing techniques, statistical validity of the results presented in the literature, and the appropriateness of methods that do not require specialized equipment, rigorously controlled recording procedures or highly skilled personnel to interpret results. Such techniques offer the promise of a simple and cost-effective, yet objective, assessment of a range of medical conditions, which would be of great value to clinicians. The ideal scenario would begin with the collection of examples of the clients’ speech, either over the phone or using portable recording devices operated by non-specialist nursing staff. The recordings could then be analyzed initially to aid diagnosis of conditions, and subsequently to monitor the clients’ progress and res...

  14. Classification of voice disorder in children with cochlear implantation and hearing aid using multiple classifier fusion

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tayarani Hamid

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Speech production and speech phonetic features gradually improve in children by obtaining audio feedback after cochlear implantation or using hearing aids. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate automated classification of voice disorder in children with cochlear implantation and hearing aids. Methods We considered 4 disorder categories in children's voice using the following definitions: Level_1: Children who produce spontaneous phonation and use words spontaneously and imitatively. Level_2: Children, who produce spontaneous phonation, use words spontaneously and make short sentences imitatively. Level_3: Children, who produce spontaneous phonations, use words and arbitrary sentences spontaneously. Level_4: Normal children without any hearing loss background. Thirty Persian children participated in the study, including six children in each level from one to three and 12 children in level four. Voice samples of five isolated Persian words "mashin", "mar", "moosh", "gav" and "mouz" were analyzed. Four levels of the voice quality were considered, the higher the level the less significant the speech disorder. "Frame-based" and "word-based" features were extracted from voice signals. The frame-based features include intensity, fundamental frequency, formants, nasality and approximate entropy and word-based features include phase space features and wavelet coefficients. For frame-based features, hidden Markov models were used as classifiers and for word-based features, neural network was used. Results After Classifiers fusion with three methods: Majority Voting Rule, Linear Combination and Stacked fusion, the best classification rates were obtained using frame-based and word-based features with MVR rule (level 1:100%, level 2: 93.75%, level 3: 100%, level 4: 94%. Conclusions Result of this study may help speech pathologists follow up voice disorder recovery in children with cochlear implantation or hearing aid who are

  15. Sensorimotor speech disorders in Parkinson's disease: Programming and execution deficits

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Karin Zazo Ortiz

    Full Text Available ABSTRACT Introduction: Dysfunction in the basal ganglia circuits is a determining factor in the physiopathology of the classic signs of Parkinson's disease (PD and hypokinetic dysarthria is commonly related to PD. Regarding speech disorders associated with PD, the latest four-level framework of speech complicates the traditional view of dysarthria as a motor execution disorder. Based on findings that dysfunctions in basal ganglia can cause speech disorders, and on the premise that the speech deficits seen in PD are not related to an execution motor disorder alone but also to a disorder at the motor programming level, the main objective of this study was to investigate the presence of sensorimotor disorders of programming (besides the execution disorders previously described in PD patients. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a sample of 60 adults matched for gender, age and education: 30 adult patients diagnosed with idiopathic PD (PDG and 30 healthy adults (CG. All types of articulation errors were reanalyzed to investigate the nature of these errors. Interjections, hesitations and repetitions of words or sentences (during discourse were considered typical disfluencies; blocking, episodes of palilalia (words or syllables were analyzed as atypical disfluencies. We analysed features including successive self-initiated trial, phoneme distortions, self-correction, repetition of sounds and syllables, prolonged movement transitions, additions or omissions of sounds and syllables, in order to identify programming and/or execution failures. Orofacial agility was also investigated. Results: The PDG had worse performance on all sensorimotor speech tasks. All PD patients had hypokinetic dysarthria. Conclusion: The clinical characteristics found suggest both execution and programming sensorimotor speech disorders in PD patients.

  16. Song and speech: examining the link between singing talent and speech imitation ability

    Science.gov (United States)

    Christiner, Markus; Reiterer, Susanne M.

    2013-01-01

    In previous research on speech imitation, musicality, and an ability to sing were isolated as the strongest indicators of good pronunciation skills in foreign languages. We, therefore, wanted to take a closer look at the nature of the ability to sing, which shares a common ground with the ability to imitate speech. This study focuses on whether good singing performance predicts good speech imitation. Forty-one singers of different levels of proficiency were selected for the study and their ability to sing, to imitate speech, their musical talent and working memory were tested. Results indicated that singing performance is a better indicator of the ability to imitate speech than the playing of a musical instrument. A multiple regression revealed that 64% of the speech imitation score variance could be explained by working memory together with educational background and singing performance. A second multiple regression showed that 66% of the speech imitation variance of completely unintelligible and unfamiliar language stimuli (Hindi) could be explained by working memory together with a singer's sense of rhythm and quality of voice. This supports the idea that both vocal behaviors have a common grounding in terms of vocal and motor flexibility, ontogenetic and phylogenetic development, neural orchestration and auditory memory with singing fitting better into the category of “speech” on the productive level and “music” on the acoustic level. As a result, good singers benefit from vocal and motor flexibility, productively and cognitively, in three ways. (1) Motor flexibility and the ability to sing improve language and musical function. (2) Good singers retain a certain plasticity and are open to new and unusual sound combinations during adulthood both perceptually and productively. (3) The ability to sing improves the memory span of the auditory working memory. PMID:24319438

  17. A Diagnostic Marker to Discriminate Childhood Apraxia of Speech from Speech Delay: III. Theoretical Coherence of the Pause Marker with Speech Processing Deficits in Childhood Apraxia of Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shriberg, Lawrence D.; Strand, Edythe A.; Fourakis, Marios; Jakielski, Kathy J.; Hall, Sheryl D.; Karlsson, Heather B.; Mabie, Heather L.; McSweeny, Jane L.; Tilkens, Christie M.; Wilson, David L.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: Previous articles in this supplement described rationale for and development of the pause marker (PM), a diagnostic marker of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), and studies supporting its validity and reliability. The present article assesses the theoretical coherence of the PM with speech processing deficits in CAS. Method: PM and other…

  18. Speech and language support: How physicians can identify and treat speech and language delays in the office setting.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moharir, Madhavi; Barnett, Noel; Taras, Jillian; Cole, Martha; Ford-Jones, E Lee; Levin, Leo

    2014-01-01

    Failure to recognize and intervene early in speech and language delays can lead to multifaceted and potentially severe consequences for early child development and later literacy skills. While routine evaluations of speech and language during well-child visits are recommended, there is no standardized (office) approach to facilitate this. Furthermore, extensive wait times for speech and language pathology consultation represent valuable lost time for the child and family. Using speech and language expertise, and paediatric collaboration, key content for an office-based tool was developed. early and accurate identification of speech and language delays as well as children at risk for literacy challenges; appropriate referral to speech and language services when required; and teaching and, thus, empowering parents to create rich and responsive language environments at home. Using this tool, in combination with the Canadian Paediatric Society's Read, Speak, Sing and Grow Literacy Initiative, physicians will be better positioned to offer practical strategies to caregivers to enhance children's speech and language capabilities. The tool represents a strategy to evaluate speech and language delays. It depicts age-specific linguistic/phonetic milestones and suggests interventions. The tool represents a practical interim treatment while the family is waiting for formal speech and language therapy consultation.

  19. Abortion and compelled physician speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Orentlicher, David

    2015-01-01

    Informed consent mandates for abortion providers may infringe the First Amendment's freedom of speech. On the other hand, they may reinforce the physician's duty to obtain informed consent. Courts can promote both doctrines by ensuring that compelled physician speech pertains to medical facts about abortion rather than abortion ideology and that compelled speech is truthful and not misleading. © 2015 American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Inc.

  20. Speech enhancement

    CERN Document Server

    Benesty, Jacob; Chen, Jingdong

    2006-01-01

    We live in a noisy world! In all applications (telecommunications, hands-free communications, recording, human-machine interfaces, etc.) that require at least one microphone, the signal of interest is usually contaminated by noise and reverberation. As a result, the microphone signal has to be ""cleaned"" with digital signal processing tools before it is played out, transmitted, or stored.This book is about speech enhancement. Different well-known and state-of-the-art methods for noise reduction, with one or multiple microphones, are discussed. By speech enhancement, we mean not only noise red

  1. Effect of speech rate variation on acoustic phone stability in Afrikaans speech recognition

    CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

    Badenhorst, JAC

    2007-11-01

    Full Text Available The authors analyse the effect of speech rate variation on Afrikaans phone stability from an acoustic perspective. Specifically they introduce two techniques for the acoustic analysis of speech rate variation, apply these techniques to an Afrikaans...

  2. Speech, "Inner Speech," and the Development of Short-Term Memory: Effects of Picture-Labeling on Recall.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hitch, Graham J.; And Others

    1991-01-01

    Reports on experiments to determine effects of overt speech on children's use of inner speech in short-term memory. Word length and phonemic similarity had greater effects on older children and when pictures were labeled at presentation. Suggests that speaking or listening to speech activates an internal articulatory loop. (Author/GH)

  3. Phonetic recalibration of speech by text

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Keetels, M.N.; Schakel, L.; de Bonte, M.; Vroomen, J.

    2016-01-01

    Listeners adjust their phonetic categories to cope with variations in the speech signal (phonetic recalibration). Previous studies have shown that lipread speech (and word knowledge) can adjust the perception of ambiguous speech and can induce phonetic adjustments (Bertelson, Vroomen, & de Gelder in

  4. Automatic Speech Recognition Systems for the Evaluation of Voice and Speech Disorders in Head and Neck Cancer

    OpenAIRE

    Andreas Maier; Tino Haderlein; Florian Stelzle; Elmar Nöth; Emeka Nkenke; Frank Rosanowski; Anne Schützenberger; Maria Schuster

    2010-01-01

    In patients suffering from head and neck cancer, speech intelligibility is often restricted. For assessment and outcome measurements, automatic speech recognition systems have previously been shown to be appropriate for objective and quick evaluation of intelligibility. In this study we investigate the applicability of the method to speech disorders caused by head and neck cancer. Intelligibility was quantified by speech recognition on recordings of a standard text read by 41 German laryngect...

  5. James Weldon Johnson and the Speech Lab Recordings

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chris Mustazza

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available On December 24, 1935, James Weldon Johnson read thirteen of his poems at Columbia University, in a recording session engineered by Columbia Professor of Speech George W. Hibbitt and Barnard colleague Professor W. Cabell Greet, pioneers in the field that became sociolinguistics. Interested in American dialects, Greet and Hibbitt used early sound recording technologies to preserve dialect samples. In the same lab where they recorded T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and others, James Weldon Johnson read a selection of poems that included several from his seminal collection God’s Trombones and some dialect poems. Mustazza has digitized these and made them publicly available in the PennSound archive. In this essay, Mustazza contextualizes the collection, considering the recordings as sonic inscriptions alongside their textual manifestations. He argues that the collection must be heard within the frames of its production conditions—especially its recording in a speech lab—and that the sound recordings are essential elements in an hermeneutic analysis of the poems. He reasons that the poems’ original topics are reframed and refocused when historicized and contextualized within the frame of The Speech Lab Recordings.

  6. Nobel peace speech

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joshua FRYE

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available The Nobel Peace Prize has long been considered the premier peace prize in the world. According to Geir Lundestad, Secretary of the Nobel Committee, of the 300 some peace prizes awarded worldwide, “none is in any way as well known and as highly respected as the Nobel Peace Prize” (Lundestad, 2001. Nobel peace speech is a unique and significant international site of public discourse committed to articulating the universal grammar of peace. Spanning over 100 years of sociopolitical history on the world stage, Nobel Peace Laureates richly represent an important cross-section of domestic and international issues increasingly germane to many publics. Communication scholars’ interest in this rhetorical genre has increased in the past decade. Yet, the norm has been to analyze a single speech artifact from a prestigious or controversial winner rather than examine the collection of speeches for generic commonalities of import. In this essay, we analyze the discourse of Nobel peace speech inductively and argue that the organizing principle of the Nobel peace speech genre is the repetitive form of normative liberal principles and values that function as rhetorical topoi. These topoi include freedom and justice and appeal to the inviolable, inborn right of human beings to exercise certain political and civil liberties and the expectation of equality of protection from totalitarian and tyrannical abuses. The significance of this essay to contemporary communication theory is to expand our theoretical understanding of rhetoric’s role in the maintenance and development of an international and cross-cultural vocabulary for the grammar of peace.

  7. Speech outcome in unilateral complete cleft lip and palate patients: a descriptive study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rullo, R; Di Maggio, D; Addabbo, F; Rullo, F; Festa, V M; Perillo, L

    2014-09-01

    In this study, resonance and articulation disorders were examined in a group of patients surgically treated for cleft lip and palate, considering family social background, and children's ability of self monitoring their speech output while speaking. Fifty children (32 males and 18 females) mean age 6.5 ± 1.6 years, affected by non-syndromic complete unilateral cleft of the lip and palate underwent the same surgical protocol. The speech level was evaluated using the Accordi's speech assessment protocol that focuses on intelligibility, nasality, nasal air escape, pharyngeal friction, and glottal stop. Pearson product-moment correlation analysis was used to detect significant associations between analysed parameters. A total of 16% (8 children) of the sample had severe to moderate degree of nasality and nasal air escape, presence of pharyngeal friction and glottal stop, which obviously compromise speech intelligibility. Ten children (10%) showed a barely acceptable phonological outcome: nasality and nasal air escape were mild to moderate, but the intelligibility remained poor. Thirty-two children (64%) had normal speech. Statistical analysis revealed a significant correlation between the severity of nasal resonance and nasal air escape (p ≤ 0.05). No statistical significant correlation was found between the final intelligibility and the patient social background, neither between the final intelligibility nor the age of the patients. The differences in speech outcome could be explained with a specific, subjective, and inborn ability, different for each child, in self-monitoring their speech output.

  8. Don't speak too fast! Processing of fast rate speech in children with specific language impairment.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hélène Guiraud

    Full Text Available Perception of speech rhythm requires the auditory system to track temporal envelope fluctuations, which carry syllabic and stress information. Reduced sensitivity to rhythmic acoustic cues has been evidenced in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI, impeding syllabic parsing and speech decoding. Our study investigated whether these children experience specific difficulties processing fast rate speech as compared with typically developing (TD children.Sixteen French children with SLI (8-13 years old with mainly expressive phonological disorders and with preserved comprehension and 16 age-matched TD children performed a judgment task on sentences produced 1 at normal rate, 2 at fast rate or 3 time-compressed. Sensitivity index (d' to semantically incongruent sentence-final words was measured.Overall children with SLI perform significantly worse than TD children. Importantly, as revealed by the significant Group × Speech Rate interaction, children with SLI find it more challenging than TD children to process both naturally or artificially accelerated speech. The two groups do not significantly differ in normal rate speech processing.In agreement with rhythm-processing deficits in atypical language development, our results suggest that children with SLI face difficulties adjusting to rapid speech rate. These findings are interpreted in light of temporal sampling and prosodic phrasing frameworks and of oscillatory mechanisms underlying speech perception.

  9. Don't speak too fast! Processing of fast rate speech in children with specific language impairment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guiraud, Hélène; Bedoin, Nathalie; Krifi-Papoz, Sonia; Herbillon, Vania; Caillot-Bascoul, Aurélia; Gonzalez-Monge, Sibylle; Boulenger, Véronique

    2018-01-01

    Perception of speech rhythm requires the auditory system to track temporal envelope fluctuations, which carry syllabic and stress information. Reduced sensitivity to rhythmic acoustic cues has been evidenced in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), impeding syllabic parsing and speech decoding. Our study investigated whether these children experience specific difficulties processing fast rate speech as compared with typically developing (TD) children. Sixteen French children with SLI (8-13 years old) with mainly expressive phonological disorders and with preserved comprehension and 16 age-matched TD children performed a judgment task on sentences produced 1) at normal rate, 2) at fast rate or 3) time-compressed. Sensitivity index (d') to semantically incongruent sentence-final words was measured. Overall children with SLI perform significantly worse than TD children. Importantly, as revealed by the significant Group × Speech Rate interaction, children with SLI find it more challenging than TD children to process both naturally or artificially accelerated speech. The two groups do not significantly differ in normal rate speech processing. In agreement with rhythm-processing deficits in atypical language development, our results suggest that children with SLI face difficulties adjusting to rapid speech rate. These findings are interpreted in light of temporal sampling and prosodic phrasing frameworks and of oscillatory mechanisms underlying speech perception.

  10. Speech-Language Dissociations, Distractibility, and Childhood Stuttering

    Science.gov (United States)

    Conture, Edward G.; Walden, Tedra A.; Lambert, Warren E.

    2015-01-01

    Purpose This study investigated the relation among speech-language dissociations, attentional distractibility, and childhood stuttering. Method Participants were 82 preschool-age children who stutter (CWS) and 120 who do not stutter (CWNS). Correlation-based statistics (Bates, Appelbaum, Salcedo, Saygin, & Pizzamiglio, 2003) identified dissociations across 5 norm-based speech-language subtests. The Behavioral Style Questionnaire Distractibility subscale measured attentional distractibility. Analyses addressed (a) between-groups differences in the number of children exhibiting speech-language dissociations; (b) between-groups distractibility differences; (c) the relation between distractibility and speech-language dissociations; and (d) whether interactions between distractibility and dissociations predicted the frequency of total, stuttered, and nonstuttered disfluencies. Results More preschool-age CWS exhibited speech-language dissociations compared with CWNS, and more boys exhibited dissociations compared with girls. In addition, male CWS were less distractible than female CWS and female CWNS. For CWS, but not CWNS, less distractibility (i.e., greater attention) was associated with more speech-language dissociations. Last, interactions between distractibility and dissociations did not predict speech disfluencies in CWS or CWNS. Conclusions The present findings suggest that for preschool-age CWS, attentional processes are associated with speech-language dissociations. Future investigations are warranted to better understand the directionality of effect of this association (e.g., inefficient attentional processes → speech-language dissociations vs. inefficient attentional processes ← speech-language dissociations). PMID:26126203

  11. Phonological Memory, Attention Control, and Musical Ability: Effects of Individual Differences on Rater Judgments of Second Language Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Isaacs, Talia; Trofimovich, Pavel

    2011-01-01

    This study examines how listener judgments of second language speech relate to individual differences in listeners' phonological memory, attention control, and musical ability. Sixty native English listeners (30 music majors, 30 nonmusic majors) rated 40 nonnative speech samples for accentedness, comprehensibility, and fluency. The listeners were…

  12. Speech processing: from peripheral to hemispheric asymmetry of the auditory system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lazard, Diane S; Collette, Jean-Louis; Perrot, Xavier

    2012-01-01

    Language processing from the cochlea to auditory association cortices shows side-dependent specificities with an apparent left hemispheric dominance. The aim of this article was to propose to nonspeech specialists a didactic review of two complementary theories about hemispheric asymmetry in speech processing. Starting from anatomico-physiological and clinical observations of auditory asymmetry and interhemispheric connections, this review then exposes behavioral (dichotic listening paradigm) as well as functional (functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography) experiments that assessed hemispheric specialization for speech processing. Even though speech at an early phonological level is regarded as being processed bilaterally, a left-hemispheric dominance exists for higher-level processing. This asymmetry may arise from a segregation of the speech signal, broken apart within nonprimary auditory areas in two distinct temporal integration windows--a fast one on the left and a slower one on the right--modeled through the asymmetric sampling in time theory or a spectro-temporal trade-off, with a higher temporal resolution in the left hemisphere and a higher spectral resolution in the right hemisphere, modeled through the spectral/temporal resolution trade-off theory. Both theories deal with the concept that lower-order tuning principles for acoustic signal might drive higher-order organization for speech processing. However, the precise nature, mechanisms, and origin of speech processing asymmetry are still being debated. Finally, an example of hemispheric asymmetry alteration, which has direct clinical implications, is given through the case of auditory aging that mixes peripheral disorder and modifications of central processing. Copyright © 2011 The American Laryngological, Rhinological, and Otological Society, Inc.

  13. Attentional Demand of Speech in Children and Adolescents with Developmental Stuttering

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hajar Bahrami

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available Background & Objective: Stuttering is a prevalent disorder in children and adolescents. Because attention is the only fuel resource for cognitive functions and the language have high cognitive functions, then it is possible that speech difficulties are related to attention deficit. The purpose of this study was to investigate the attentional demand of speech in children and adolescents with developmental stuttering. Materials & Methods: It is a dependent measurement study though which 30 school students (8-13 yr. were selected by convenience sampling and speech therapist´s detection from Shahriyar. The instruments were used in this research consist of: a text for reading, a device for recording of speech, and stuttering severity instrument-3 (SSI-3. The research was implemented in two conditions: single task (only reading and dual task (reading along finger tapping task. The data were analyzed using T- test. Results: Findings show that stuttering severity increased in dual task condition (divided attention. Conclusion: This result suggests that a decreased attentional capacity in children with developmental stuttering cause an increase in the number of stuttering words. With a better understanding of attentional functions of stuttering people as an important cognitive variables, we can take a step toward recognizing cognitive vulnerability of disorder. Therefore, intervention programs for children with developmental stuttering should pay attention to cognitive deficits and prior to speech interventions, the cognitive deficits should be eliminated with neuropsychological implements. With the improvement of neurological base of speech which is the first point of that in the brain, the considerable improvement may be seen in the stuttering severity.

  14. International aspirations for speech-language pathologists' practice with multilingual children with speech sound disorders: development of a position paper.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McLeod, Sharynne; Verdon, Sarah; Bowen, Caroline

    2013-01-01

    A major challenge for the speech-language pathology profession in many cultures is to address the mismatch between the "linguistic homogeneity of the speech-language pathology profession and the linguistic diversity of its clientele" (Caesar & Kohler, 2007, p. 198). This paper outlines the development of the Multilingual Children with Speech Sound Disorders: Position Paper created to guide speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') facilitation of multilingual children's speech. An international expert panel was assembled comprising 57 researchers (SLPs, linguists, phoneticians, and speech scientists) with knowledge about multilingual children's speech, or children with speech sound disorders. Combined, they had worked in 33 countries and used 26 languages in professional practice. Fourteen panel members met for a one-day workshop to identify key points for inclusion in the position paper. Subsequently, 42 additional panel members participated online to contribute to drafts of the position paper. A thematic analysis was undertaken of the major areas of discussion using two data sources: (a) face-to-face workshop transcript (133 pages) and (b) online discussion artifacts (104 pages). Finally, a moderator with international expertise in working with children with speech sound disorders facilitated the incorporation of the panel's recommendations. The following themes were identified: definitions, scope, framework, evidence, challenges, practices, and consideration of a multilingual audience. The resulting position paper contains guidelines for providing services to multilingual children with speech sound disorders (http://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/position-paper). The paper is structured using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: Children and Youth Version (World Health Organization, 2007) and incorporates recommendations for (a) children and families, (b) SLPs' assessment and intervention, (c) SLPs' professional

  15. Free Speech. No. 38.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kane, Peter E., Ed.

    This issue of "Free Speech" contains the following articles: "Daniel Schoor Relieved of Reporting Duties" by Laurence Stern, "The Sellout at CBS" by Michael Harrington, "Defending Dan Schorr" by Tome Wicker, "Speech to the Washington Press Club, February 25, 1976" by Daniel Schorr, "Funds…

  16. Neural entrainment to rhythmically-presented auditory, visual and audio-visual speech in children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alan James Power

    2012-07-01

    Full Text Available Auditory cortical oscillations have been proposed to play an important role in speech perception. It is suggested that the brain may take temporal ‘samples’ of information from the speech stream at different rates, phase-resetting ongoing oscillations so that they are aligned with similar frequency bands in the input (‘phase locking’. Information from these frequency bands is then bound together for speech perception. To date, there are no explorations of neural phase-locking and entrainment to speech input in children. However, it is clear from studies of language acquisition that infants use both visual speech information and auditory speech information in learning. In order to study neural entrainment to speech in typically-developing children, we use a rhythmic entrainment paradigm (underlying 2 Hz or delta rate based on repetition of the syllable ba, presented in either the auditory modality alone, the visual modality alone, or as auditory-visual speech (via a talking head. To ensure attention to the task, children aged 13 years were asked to press a button as fast as possible when the ba stimulus violated the rhythm for each stream type. Rhythmic violation depended on delaying the occurrence of a ba in the isochronous stream. Neural entrainment was demonstrated for all stream types, and individual differences in standardized measures of language processing were related to auditory entrainment at the theta rate. Further, there was significant modulation of the preferred phase of auditory entrainment in the theta band when visual speech cues were present, indicating cross-modal phase resetting. The rhythmic entrainment paradigm developed here offers a method for exploring individual differences in oscillatory phase locking during development. In particular, a method for assessing neural entrainment and cross-modal phase resetting would be useful for exploring developmental learning difficulties thought to involve temporal sampling

  17. APPRECIATING SPEECH THROUGH GAMING

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mario T Carreon

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper discusses the Speech and Phoneme Recognition as an Educational Aid for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired (SPREAD application and the ongoing research on its deployment as a tool for motivating deaf and hearing impaired students to learn and appreciate speech. This application uses the Sphinx-4 voice recognition system to analyze the vocalization of the student and provide prompt feedback on their pronunciation. The packaging of the application as an interactive game aims to provide additional motivation for the deaf and hearing impaired student through visual motivation for them to learn and appreciate speech.

  18. Global Freedom of Speech

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Binderup, Lars Grassme

    2007-01-01

    , as opposed to a legal norm, that curbs exercises of the right to free speech that offend the feelings or beliefs of members from other cultural groups. The paper rejects the suggestion that acceptance of such a norm is in line with liberal egalitarian thinking. Following a review of the classical liberal...... egalitarian reasons for free speech - reasons from overall welfare, from autonomy and from respect for the equality of citizens - it is argued that these reasons outweigh the proposed reasons for curbing culturally offensive speech. Currently controversial cases such as that of the Danish Cartoon Controversy...

  19. Extensions to the Speech Disorders Classification System (SDCS)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shriberg, Lawrence D.; Fourakis, Marios; Hall, Sheryl D.; Karlsson, Heather B.; Lohmeier, Heather L.; McSweeny, Jane L.; Potter, Nancy L.; Scheer-Cohen, Alison R.; Strand, Edythe A.; Tilkens, Christie M.; Wilson, David L.

    2010-01-01

    This report describes three extensions to a classification system for paediatric speech sound disorders termed the Speech Disorders Classification System (SDCS). Part I describes a classification extension to the SDCS to differentiate motor speech disorders from speech delay and to differentiate among three sub-types of motor speech disorders.…

  20. Frontal and temporal contributions to understanding the iconic co-speech gestures that accompany speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dick, Anthony Steven; Mok, Eva H; Raja Beharelle, Anjali; Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Small, Steven L

    2014-03-01

    In everyday conversation, listeners often rely on a speaker's gestures to clarify any ambiguities in the verbal message. Using fMRI during naturalistic story comprehension, we examined which brain regions in the listener are sensitive to speakers' iconic gestures. We focused on iconic gestures that contribute information not found in the speaker's talk, compared with those that convey information redundant with the speaker's talk. We found that three regions-left inferior frontal gyrus triangular (IFGTr) and opercular (IFGOp) portions, and left posterior middle temporal gyrus (MTGp)--responded more strongly when gestures added information to nonspecific language, compared with when they conveyed the same information in more specific language; in other words, when gesture disambiguated speech as opposed to reinforced it. An increased BOLD response was not found in these regions when the nonspecific language was produced without gesture, suggesting that IFGTr, IFGOp, and MTGp are involved in integrating semantic information across gesture and speech. In addition, we found that activity in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STSp), previously thought to be involved in gesture-speech integration, was not sensitive to the gesture-speech relation. Together, these findings clarify the neurobiology of gesture-speech integration and contribute to an emerging picture of how listeners glean meaning from gestures that accompany speech. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  1. Freedom of racist speech: Ego and expressive threats.

    Science.gov (United States)

    White, Mark H; Crandall, Christian S

    2017-09-01

    Do claims of "free speech" provide cover for prejudice? We investigate whether this defense of racist or hate speech serves as a justification for prejudice. In a series of 8 studies (N = 1,624), we found that explicit racial prejudice is a reliable predictor of the "free speech defense" of racist expression. Participants endorsed free speech values for singing racists songs or posting racist comments on social media; people high in prejudice endorsed free speech more than people low in prejudice (meta-analytic r = .43). This endorsement was not principled-high levels of prejudice did not predict endorsement of free speech values when identical speech was directed at coworkers or the police. Participants low in explicit racial prejudice actively avoided endorsing free speech values in racialized conditions compared to nonracial conditions, but participants high in racial prejudice increased their endorsement of free speech values in racialized conditions. Three experiments failed to find evidence that defense of racist speech by the highly prejudiced was based in self-relevant or self-protective motives. Two experiments found evidence that the free speech argument protected participants' own freedom to express their attitudes; the defense of other's racist speech seems motivated more by threats to autonomy than threats to self-regard. These studies serve as an elaboration of the Justification-Suppression Model (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003) of prejudice expression. The justification of racist speech by endorsing fundamental political values can serve to buffer racial and hate speech from normative disapproval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  2. Speech coding, reconstruction and recognition using acoustics and electromagnetic waves

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Holzrichter, J.F.; Ng, L.C.

    1998-01-01

    The use of EM radiation in conjunction with simultaneously recorded acoustic speech information enables a complete mathematical coding of acoustic speech. The methods include the forming of a feature vector for each pitch period of voiced speech and the forming of feature vectors for each time frame of unvoiced, as well as for combined voiced and unvoiced speech. The methods include how to deconvolve the speech excitation function from the acoustic speech output to describe the transfer function each time frame. The formation of feature vectors defining all acoustic speech units over well defined time frames can be used for purposes of speech coding, speech compression, speaker identification, language-of-speech identification, speech recognition, speech synthesis, speech translation, speech telephony, and speech teaching. 35 figs

  3. Speech coding, reconstruction and recognition using acoustics and electromagnetic waves

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holzrichter, John F.; Ng, Lawrence C.

    1998-01-01

    The use of EM radiation in conjunction with simultaneously recorded acoustic speech information enables a complete mathematical coding of acoustic speech. The methods include the forming of a feature vector for each pitch period of voiced speech and the forming of feature vectors for each time frame of unvoiced, as well as for combined voiced and unvoiced speech. The methods include how to deconvolve the speech excitation function from the acoustic speech output to describe the transfer function each time frame. The formation of feature vectors defining all acoustic speech units over well defined time frames can be used for purposes of speech coding, speech compression, speaker identification, language-of-speech identification, speech recognition, speech synthesis, speech translation, speech telephony, and speech teaching.

  4. Speech and language support: How physicians can identify and treat speech and language delays in the office setting

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moharir, Madhavi; Barnett, Noel; Taras, Jillian; Cole, Martha; Ford-Jones, E Lee; Levin, Leo

    2014-01-01

    Failure to recognize and intervene early in speech and language delays can lead to multifaceted and potentially severe consequences for early child development and later literacy skills. While routine evaluations of speech and language during well-child visits are recommended, there is no standardized (office) approach to facilitate this. Furthermore, extensive wait times for speech and language pathology consultation represent valuable lost time for the child and family. Using speech and language expertise, and paediatric collaboration, key content for an office-based tool was developed. The tool aimed to help physicians achieve three main goals: early and accurate identification of speech and language delays as well as children at risk for literacy challenges; appropriate referral to speech and language services when required; and teaching and, thus, empowering parents to create rich and responsive language environments at home. Using this tool, in combination with the Canadian Paediatric Society’s Read, Speak, Sing and Grow Literacy Initiative, physicians will be better positioned to offer practical strategies to caregivers to enhance children’s speech and language capabilities. The tool represents a strategy to evaluate speech and language delays. It depicts age-specific linguistic/phonetic milestones and suggests interventions. The tool represents a practical interim treatment while the family is waiting for formal speech and language therapy consultation. PMID:24627648

  5. Application of wavelets in speech processing

    CERN Document Server

    Farouk, Mohamed Hesham

    2014-01-01

    This book provides a survey on wide-spread of employing wavelets analysis  in different applications of speech processing. The author examines development and research in different application of speech processing. The book also summarizes the state of the art research on wavelet in speech processing.

  6. Perceptions of University Instructors When Listening to International Student Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sheppard, Beth; Elliott, Nancy; Baese-Berk, Melissa

    2017-01-01

    Intensive English Program (IEP) Instructors and content faculty both listen to international students at the university. For these two groups of instructors, this study compared perceptions of international student speech by collecting comprehensibility ratings and transcription samples for intelligibility scores. No significant differences were…

  7. Spontaneous haemoperitoneum in pregnancy and endometriosis: a case series

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Lier, M. van; Malik, R.F.; Waesberghe, J. van; Maas, J.W.; Rumpt-van de Geest, D.A. van; Coppus, S.F.P.J.; Berger, J.P.; Rijn, B.B. van; Janssen, P.F.; Boer, M.A. de; Vries, J.I.P. de; Jansen, F.W.; Brosens, I.A.; Lambalk, C.B.; Mijatovic, V.

    2017-01-01

    OBJECTIVE: To report pregnancy outcomes of SHiP (spontaneous haemoperitoneum in pregnancy) and the association with endometriosis. DESIGN: Retrospective case note review. SETTING: Dutch referral hospitals for endometriosis. SAMPLE: Eleven women presenting with 15 events of SHiP. METHODS: In

  8. Spontaneous haemoperitoneum in pregnancy and endometriosis : a case series

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Lier, McI; Malik, R F; van Waesberghe, Jhtm; Maas, J W; van Rumpt-van de Geest, D A; Coppus, S F; Berger, J P; van Rijn, B B; Janssen, P F; de Boer, M. A; de Vries, Jip; Jansen, F. W.; Brosens, I A; Lambalk, C B; Mijatovic, V

    OBJECTIVE: To report pregnancy outcomes of SHiP (spontaneous haemoperitoneum in pregnancy) and the association with endometriosis. DESIGN: Retrospective case note review. SETTING: Dutch referral hospitals for endometriosis. SAMPLE: Eleven women presenting with 15 events of SHiP. METHODS: In

  9. Recent advances in nonlinear speech processing

    CERN Document Server

    Faundez-Zanuy, Marcos; Esposito, Antonietta; Cordasco, Gennaro; Drugman, Thomas; Solé-Casals, Jordi; Morabito, Francesco

    2016-01-01

    This book presents recent advances in nonlinear speech processing beyond nonlinear techniques. It shows that it exploits heuristic and psychological models of human interaction in order to succeed in the implementations of socially believable VUIs and applications for human health and psychological support. The book takes into account the multifunctional role of speech and what is “outside of the box” (see Björn Schuller’s foreword). To this aim, the book is organized in 6 sections, each collecting a small number of short chapters reporting advances “inside” and “outside” themes related to nonlinear speech research. The themes emphasize theoretical and practical issues for modelling socially believable speech interfaces, ranging from efforts to capture the nature of sound changes in linguistic contexts and the timing nature of speech; labors to identify and detect speech features that help in the diagnosis of psychological and neuronal disease, attempts to improve the effectiveness and performa...

  10. Optimal pattern synthesis for speech recognition based on principal component analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Korsun, O. N.; Poliyev, A. V.

    2018-02-01

    The algorithm for building an optimal pattern for the purpose of automatic speech recognition, which increases the probability of correct recognition, is developed and presented in this work. The optimal pattern forming is based on the decomposition of an initial pattern to principal components, which enables to reduce the dimension of multi-parameter optimization problem. At the next step the training samples are introduced and the optimal estimates for principal components decomposition coefficients are obtained by a numeric parameter optimization algorithm. Finally, we consider the experiment results that show the improvement in speech recognition introduced by the proposed optimization algorithm.

  11. Effects of early language, speech, and cognition on later reading: A mediation analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vanessa N Durand

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available This longitudinal secondary analysis examined which early language and speech abilities are associated with school-aged reading skills, and whether these associations are mediated by cognitive ability. We analyzed vocabulary, syntax, speech sound maturity, and cognition in a sample of healthy children at age 3 years (N=241 in relation to single word reading (decoding, comprehension, and oral reading fluency in the same children at age 9 to 11 years. All predictor variables and the mediator variable were associated with the three reading outcomes. The predictor variables were all associated with cognitive abilities, the mediator. Cognitive abilities partially mediated the effects of language on reading. After mediation, decoding was associated with speech sound maturity; comprehension was associated with receptive vocabulary; and oral fluency was associated with speech sound maturity, receptive vocabulary, and syntax. In summary, all of the effects of language on reading could not be explained by cognition as a mediator. Specific components of language and speech skills in preschool made independent contributions to reading skills 6 to 8 years later. These early precursors to later reading skill represent potential targets for early intervention to improve reading.

  12. Speech and non-speech processing in children with phonological disorders: an electrophysiological study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Isabela Crivellaro Gonçalves

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available OBJECTIVE: To determine whether neurophysiological auditory brainstem responses to clicks and repeated speech stimuli differ between typically developing children and children with phonological disorders. INTRODUCTION: Phonological disorders are language impairments resulting from inadequate use of adult phonological language rules and are among the most common speech and language disorders in children (prevalence: 8 - 9%. Our hypothesis is that children with phonological disorders have basic differences in the way that their brains encode acoustic signals at brainstem level when compared to normal counterparts. METHODS: We recorded click and speech evoked auditory brainstem responses in 18 typically developing children (control group and in 18 children who were clinically diagnosed with phonological disorders (research group. The age range of the children was from 7-11 years. RESULTS: The research group exhibited significantly longer latency responses to click stimuli (waves I, III and V and speech stimuli (waves V and A when compared to the control group. DISCUSSION: These results suggest that the abnormal encoding of speech sounds may be a biological marker of phonological disorders. However, these results cannot define the biological origins of phonological problems. We also observed that speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses had a higher specificity/sensitivity for identifying phonological disorders than click-evoked auditory brainstem responses. CONCLUSIONS: Early stages of the auditory pathway processing of an acoustic stimulus are not similar in typically developing children and those with phonological disorders. These findings suggest that there are brainstem auditory pathway abnormalities in children with phonological disorders.

  13. Conflict monitoring in speech processing : An fMRI study of error detection in speech production and perception

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gauvin, Hanna; De Baene, W.; Brass, Marcel; Hartsuiker, Robert

    2016-01-01

    To minimize the number of errors in speech, and thereby facilitate communication, speech is monitored before articulation. It is, however, unclear at which level during speech production monitoring takes place, and what mechanisms are used to detect and correct errors. The present study investigated

  14. Religious Speech in the Military: Freedoms and Limitations

    Science.gov (United States)

    2011-01-01

    abridging the freedom of speech .” Speech is construed broadly and includes both oral and written speech, as well as expressive conduct and displays when...intended to convey a message that is likely to be understood.7 Religious speech is certainly included. As a bedrock constitutional right, freedom of speech has...to good order and discipline or of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces)—the First Amendment’s freedom of speech will not provide them

  15. Audiovisual Asynchrony Detection in Human Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maier, Joost X.; Di Luca, Massimiliano; Noppeney, Uta

    2011-01-01

    Combining information from the visual and auditory senses can greatly enhance intelligibility of natural speech. Integration of audiovisual speech signals is robust even when temporal offsets are present between the component signals. In the present study, we characterized the temporal integration window for speech and nonspeech stimuli with…

  16. Voice Activity Detection. Fundamentals and Speech Recognition System Robustness

    OpenAIRE

    Ramirez, J.; Gorriz, J. M.; Segura, J. C.

    2007-01-01

    This chapter has shown an overview of the main challenges in robust speech detection and a review of the state of the art and applications. VADs are frequently used in a number of applications including speech coding, speech enhancement and speech recognition. A precise VAD extracts a set of discriminative speech features from the noisy speech and formulates the decision in terms of well defined rule. The chapter has summarized three robust VAD methods that yield high speech/non-speech discri...

  17. Connected speech as a marker of disease progression in autopsy-proven Alzheimer’s disease

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ahmed, Samrah; Haigh, Anne-Marie F.; de Jager, Celeste A.

    2013-01-01

    Although an insidious history of episodic memory difficulty is a typical presenting symptom of Alzheimer’s disease, detailed neuropsychological profiling frequently demonstrates deficits in other cognitive domains, including language. Previous studies from our group have shown that language changes may be reflected in connected speech production in the earliest stages of typical Alzheimer’s disease. The aim of the present study was to identify features of connected speech that could be used to examine longitudinal profiles of impairment in Alzheimer’s disease. Samples of connected speech were obtained from 15 former participants in a longitudinal cohort study of ageing and dementia, in whom Alzheimer’s disease was diagnosed during life and confirmed at post-mortem. All patients met clinical and neuropsychological criteria for mild cognitive impairment between 6 and 18 months before converting to a status of probable Alzheimer’s disease. In a subset of these patients neuropsychological data were available, both at the point of conversion to Alzheimer’s disease, and after disease severity had progressed from the mild to moderate stage. Connected speech samples from these patients were examined at later disease stages. Spoken language samples were obtained using the Cookie Theft picture description task. Samples were analysed using measures of syntactic complexity, lexical content, speech production, fluency and semantic content. Individual case analysis revealed that subtle changes in language were evident during the prodromal stages of Alzheimer’s disease, with two-thirds of patients with mild cognitive impairment showing significant but heterogeneous changes in connected speech. However, impairments at the mild cognitive impairment stage did not necessarily entail deficits at mild or moderate stages of disease, suggesting non-language influences on some aspects of performance. Subsequent examination of these measures revealed significant linear trends

  18. Religion, hate speech, and non-domination

    OpenAIRE

    Bonotti, Matteo

    2017-01-01

    In this paper I argue that one way of explaining what is wrong with hate speech is by critically assessing what kind of freedom free speech involves and, relatedly, what kind of freedom hate speech undermines. More specifically, I argue that the main arguments for freedom of speech (e.g. from truth, from autonomy, and from democracy) rely on a “positive” conception of freedom intended as autonomy and self-mastery (Berlin, 2006), and can only partially help us to understand what is wrong with ...

  19. Modelling speech intelligibility in adverse conditions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jørgensen, Søren; Dau, Torsten

    2013-01-01

    Jørgensen and Dau (J Acoust Soc Am 130:1475-1487, 2011) proposed the speech-based envelope power spectrum model (sEPSM) in an attempt to overcome the limitations of the classical speech transmission index (STI) and speech intelligibility index (SII) in conditions with nonlinearly processed speech...... subjected to phase jitter, a condition in which the spectral structure of the intelligibility of speech signal is strongly affected, while the broadband temporal envelope is kept largely intact. In contrast, the effects of this distortion can be predicted -successfully by the spectro-temporal modulation...... suggest that the SNRenv might reflect a powerful decision metric, while some explicit across-frequency analysis seems crucial in some conditions. How such across-frequency analysis is "realized" in the auditory system remains unresolved....

  20. Speech and audio processing for coding, enhancement and recognition

    CERN Document Server

    Togneri, Roberto; Narasimha, Madihally

    2015-01-01

    This book describes the basic principles underlying the generation, coding, transmission and enhancement of speech and audio signals, including advanced statistical and machine learning techniques for speech and speaker recognition with an overview of the key innovations in these areas. Key research undertaken in speech coding, speech enhancement, speech recognition, emotion recognition and speaker diarization are also presented, along with recent advances and new paradigms in these areas. ·         Offers readers a single-source reference on the significant applications of speech and audio processing to speech coding, speech enhancement and speech/speaker recognition. Enables readers involved in algorithm development and implementation issues for speech coding to understand the historical development and future challenges in speech coding research; ·         Discusses speech coding methods yielding bit-streams that are multi-rate and scalable for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) Networks; ·     �...

  1. Sensorimotor influences on speech perception in infancy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bruderer, Alison G; Danielson, D Kyle; Kandhadai, Padmapriya; Werker, Janet F

    2015-11-03

    The influence of speech production on speech perception is well established in adults. However, because adults have a long history of both perceiving and producing speech, the extent to which the perception-production linkage is due to experience is unknown. We addressed this issue by asking whether articulatory configurations can influence infants' speech perception performance. To eliminate influences from specific linguistic experience, we studied preverbal, 6-mo-old infants and tested the discrimination of a nonnative, and hence never-before-experienced, speech sound distinction. In three experimental studies, we used teething toys to control the position and movement of the tongue tip while the infants listened to the speech sounds. Using ultrasound imaging technology, we verified that the teething toys consistently and effectively constrained the movement and positioning of infants' tongues. With a looking-time procedure, we found that temporarily restraining infants' articulators impeded their discrimination of a nonnative consonant contrast but only when the relevant articulator was selectively restrained to prevent the movements associated with producing those sounds. Our results provide striking evidence that even before infants speak their first words and without specific listening experience, sensorimotor information from the articulators influences speech perception. These results transform theories of speech perception by suggesting that even at the initial stages of development, oral-motor movements influence speech sound discrimination. Moreover, an experimentally induced "impairment" in articulator movement can compromise speech perception performance, raising the question of whether long-term oral-motor impairments may impact perceptual development.

  2. Microscopic prediction of speech intelligibility in spatially distributed speech-shaped noise for normal-hearing listeners.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Geravanchizadeh, Masoud; Fallah, Ali

    2015-12-01

    A binaural and psychoacoustically motivated intelligibility model, based on a well-known monaural microscopic model is proposed. This model simulates a phoneme recognition task in the presence of spatially distributed speech-shaped noise in anechoic scenarios. In the proposed model, binaural advantage effects are considered by generating a feature vector for a dynamic-time-warping speech recognizer. This vector consists of three subvectors incorporating two monaural subvectors to model the better-ear hearing, and a binaural subvector to simulate the binaural unmasking effect. The binaural unit of the model is based on equalization-cancellation theory. This model operates blindly, which means separate recordings of speech and noise are not required for the predictions. Speech intelligibility tests were conducted with 12 normal hearing listeners by collecting speech reception thresholds (SRTs) in the presence of single and multiple sources of speech-shaped noise. The comparison of the model predictions with the measured binaural SRTs, and with the predictions of a macroscopic binaural model called extended equalization-cancellation, shows that this approach predicts the intelligibility in anechoic scenarios with good precision. The square of the correlation coefficient (r(2)) and the mean-absolute error between the model predictions and the measurements are 0.98 and 0.62 dB, respectively.

  3. Prediction and constraint in audiovisual speech perception

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peelle, Jonathan E.; Sommers, Mitchell S.

    2015-01-01

    During face-to-face conversational speech listeners must efficiently process a rapid and complex stream of multisensory information. Visual speech can serve as a critical complement to auditory information because it provides cues to both the timing of the incoming acoustic signal (the amplitude envelope, influencing attention and perceptual sensitivity) and its content (place and manner of articulation, constraining lexical selection). Here we review behavioral and neurophysiological evidence regarding listeners' use of visual speech information. Multisensory integration of audiovisual speech cues improves recognition accuracy, particularly for speech in noise. Even when speech is intelligible based solely on auditory information, adding visual information may reduce the cognitive demands placed on listeners through increasing precision of prediction. Electrophysiological studies demonstrate oscillatory cortical entrainment to speech in auditory cortex is enhanced when visual speech is present, increasing sensitivity to important acoustic cues. Neuroimaging studies also suggest increased activity in auditory cortex when congruent visual information is available, but additionally emphasize the involvement of heteromodal regions of posterior superior temporal sulcus as playing a role in integrative processing. We interpret these findings in a framework of temporally-focused lexical competition in which visual speech information affects auditory processing to increase sensitivity to auditory information through an early integration mechanism, and a late integration stage that incorporates specific information about a speaker's articulators to constrain the number of possible candidates in a spoken utterance. Ultimately it is words compatible with both auditory and visual information that most strongly determine successful speech perception during everyday listening. Thus, audiovisual speech perception is accomplished through multiple stages of integration, supported

  4. Prediction and constraint in audiovisual speech perception.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peelle, Jonathan E; Sommers, Mitchell S

    2015-07-01

    During face-to-face conversational speech listeners must efficiently process a rapid and complex stream of multisensory information. Visual speech can serve as a critical complement to auditory information because it provides cues to both the timing of the incoming acoustic signal (the amplitude envelope, influencing attention and perceptual sensitivity) and its content (place and manner of articulation, constraining lexical selection). Here we review behavioral and neurophysiological evidence regarding listeners' use of visual speech information. Multisensory integration of audiovisual speech cues improves recognition accuracy, particularly for speech in noise. Even when speech is intelligible based solely on auditory information, adding visual information may reduce the cognitive demands placed on listeners through increasing the precision of prediction. Electrophysiological studies demonstrate that oscillatory cortical entrainment to speech in auditory cortex is enhanced when visual speech is present, increasing sensitivity to important acoustic cues. Neuroimaging studies also suggest increased activity in auditory cortex when congruent visual information is available, but additionally emphasize the involvement of heteromodal regions of posterior superior temporal sulcus as playing a role in integrative processing. We interpret these findings in a framework of temporally-focused lexical competition in which visual speech information affects auditory processing to increase sensitivity to acoustic information through an early integration mechanism, and a late integration stage that incorporates specific information about a speaker's articulators to constrain the number of possible candidates in a spoken utterance. Ultimately it is words compatible with both auditory and visual information that most strongly determine successful speech perception during everyday listening. Thus, audiovisual speech perception is accomplished through multiple stages of integration

  5. Regulation of speech in multicultural societies

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Maussen, M.; Grillo, R.

    2015-01-01

    This book focuses on the way in which public debate and legal practice intersect when it comes to the value of free speech and the need to regulate "offensive", "blasphemous" or "hate" speech, especially, though not exclusively where such speech is thought to be offensive to members of ethnic and

  6. ACOUSTIC SPEECH RECOGNITION FOR MARATHI LANGUAGE USING SPHINX

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aman Ankit

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Speech recognition or speech to text processing, is a process of recognizing human speech by the computer and converting into text. In speech recognition, transcripts are created by taking recordings of speech as audio and their text transcriptions. Speech based applications which include Natural Language Processing (NLP techniques are popular and an active area of research. Input to such applications is in natural language and output is obtained in natural language. Speech recognition mostly revolves around three approaches namely Acoustic phonetic approach, Pattern recognition approach and Artificial intelligence approach. Creation of acoustic model requires a large database of speech and training algorithms. The output of an ASR system is recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers and computerized devices. ASR today finds enormous application in tasks that require human machine interfaces like, voice dialing, and etc. Our key contribution in this paper is to create corpora for Marathi language and explore the use of Sphinx engine for automatic speech recognition

  7. Is Birdsong More Like Speech or Music?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shannon, Robert V

    2016-04-01

    Music and speech share many acoustic cues but not all are equally important. For example, harmonic pitch is essential for music but not for speech. When birds communicate is their song more like speech or music? A new study contrasting pitch and spectral patterns shows that birds perceive their song more like humans perceive speech. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Effect of "developmental speech and language training through music" on speech production in children with autism spectrum disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lim, Hayoung A

    2010-01-01

    The study compared the effect of music training, speech training and no-training on the verbal production of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Participants were 50 children with ASD, age range 3 to 5 years, who had previously been evaluated on standard tests of language and level of functioning. They were randomly assigned to one of three 3-day conditions. Participants in music training (n = 18) watched a music video containing 6 songs and pictures of the 36 target words; those in speech training (n = 18) watched a speech video containing 6 stories and pictures, and those in the control condition (n = 14) received no treatment. Participants' verbal production including semantics, phonology, pragmatics, and prosody was measured by an experimenter designed verbal production evaluation scale. Results showed that participants in both music and speech training significantly increased their pre to posttest verbal production. Results also indicated that both high and low functioning participants improved their speech production after receiving either music or speech training; however, low functioning participants showed a greater improvement after the music training than the speech training. Children with ASD perceive important linguistic information embedded in music stimuli organized by principles of pattern perception, and produce the functional speech.

  9. Speech networks at rest and in action: interactions between functional brain networks controlling speech production

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fuertinger, Stefan

    2015-01-01

    Speech production is one of the most complex human behaviors. Although brain activation during speaking has been well investigated, our understanding of interactions between the brain regions and neural networks remains scarce. We combined seed-based interregional correlation analysis with graph theoretical analysis of functional MRI data during the resting state and sentence production in healthy subjects to investigate the interface and topology of functional networks originating from the key brain regions controlling speech, i.e., the laryngeal/orofacial motor cortex, inferior frontal and superior temporal gyri, supplementary motor area, cingulate cortex, putamen, and thalamus. During both resting and speaking, the interactions between these networks were bilaterally distributed and centered on the sensorimotor brain regions. However, speech production preferentially recruited the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and cerebellum into the large-scale network, suggesting the importance of these regions in facilitation of the transition from the resting state to speaking. Furthermore, the cerebellum (lobule VI) was the most prominent region showing functional influences on speech-network integration and segregation. Although networks were bilaterally distributed, interregional connectivity during speaking was stronger in the left vs. right hemisphere, which may have underlined a more homogeneous overlap between the examined networks in the left hemisphere. Among these, the laryngeal motor cortex (LMC) established a core network that fully overlapped with all other speech-related networks, determining the extent of network interactions. Our data demonstrate complex interactions of large-scale brain networks controlling speech production and point to the critical role of the LMC, IPL, and cerebellum in the formation of speech production network. PMID:25673742

  10. Children's Attitudes Toward Peers With Unintelligible Speech Associated With Cleft Lip and/or Palate.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Alice; Gibbon, Fiona E; Spivey, Kimberley

    2017-05-01

      The objective of this study was to investigate whether reduced speech intelligibility in children with cleft palate affects social and personal attribute judgments made by typically developing children of different ages.   The study (1) measured the correlation between intelligibility scores of speech samples from children with cleft palate and social and personal attribute judgments made by typically developing children based on these samples and (2) compared the attitude judgments made by children of different ages. Participants   A total of 90 typically developing children, 30 in each of three age groups (7 to 8 years, 9 to 10 years, and 11 to 12 years).   Speech intelligibility scores and typically developing children's attitudes were measured using eight social and personal attributes on a three-point rating scale.   There was a significant correlation between the speech intelligibility scores and attitude judgments for a number of traits: "sick-healthy" as rated by the children aged 7 to 8 years, "no friends-friends" by the children aged 9 to 10 years, and "ugly-good looking" and "no friends-friends" by the children aged 11 to 12 years. Children aged 7 to 8 years gave significantly lower ratings for "mean-kind" but higher ratings for "shy-outgoing" when compared with the other two groups.   Typically developing children tended to make negative social and personal attribute judgments about children with cleft palate based solely on the intelligibility of their speech. Society, educators, and health professionals should work together to ensure that children with cleft palate are not stigmatized by their peers.

  11. Speech Synthesis Applied to Language Teaching.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sherwood, Bruce

    1981-01-01

    The experimental addition of speech output to computer-based Esperanto lessons using speech synthesized from text is described. Because of Esperanto's phonetic spelling and simple rhythm, it is particularly easy to describe the mechanisms of Esperanto synthesis. Attention is directed to how the text-to-speech conversion is performed and the ways…

  12. The Functional Connectome of Speech Control.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stefan Fuertinger

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available In the past few years, several studies have been directed to understanding the complexity of functional interactions between different brain regions during various human behaviors. Among these, neuroimaging research installed the notion that speech and language require an orchestration of brain regions for comprehension, planning, and integration of a heard sound with a spoken word. However, these studies have been largely limited to mapping the neural correlates of separate speech elements and examining distinct cortical or subcortical circuits involved in different aspects of speech control. As a result, the complexity of the brain network machinery controlling speech and language remained largely unknown. Using graph theoretical analysis of functional MRI (fMRI data in healthy subjects, we quantified the large-scale speech network topology by constructing functional brain networks of increasing hierarchy from the resting state to motor output of meaningless syllables to complex production of real-life speech as well as compared to non-speech-related sequential finger tapping and pure tone discrimination networks. We identified a segregated network of highly connected local neural communities (hubs in the primary sensorimotor and parietal regions, which formed a commonly shared core hub network across the examined conditions, with the left area 4p playing an important role in speech network organization. These sensorimotor core hubs exhibited features of flexible hubs based on their participation in several functional domains across different networks and ability to adaptively switch long-range functional connectivity depending on task content, resulting in a distinct community structure of each examined network. Specifically, compared to other tasks, speech production was characterized by the formation of six distinct neural communities with specialized recruitment of the prefrontal cortex, insula, putamen, and thalamus, which collectively

  13. Private Speech in Ballet

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnston, Dale

    2006-01-01

    Authoritarian teaching practices in ballet inhibit the use of private speech. This paper highlights the critical importance of private speech in the cognitive development of young ballet students, within what is largely a non-verbal art form. It draws upon research by Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and contemporary socioculturalists, to…

  14. An empirical study on the effect of speech therapy with cognitive behavior therapy on reducing the severity of stuttering and anxiety

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pegah Ansari

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of speech therapy with Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT on reducing the severity of stuttering & anxiety for adults who stutter in the city of Isfahan, Iran. The study used a semi-experimental design with pre-test/post-test control groups and it was conducted among 24 clients. The sample was selected through available sampling method among the clients suffering from stuttering and attended public speech therapy clinics of Isfahan. The measurement instruments were Stuttering Severity Instrument (SSI4 and Beck's Anxiety Inventory (BAI. After doing the pretest, clients were placed into one experimental group of speech therapy with CBT and one control group. Speech therapy for this research included ten 45-minutes sessions accomplished for each individual subject and CBT included ten 90-minutes group sessions. After finishing the therapy sessions, the posttest was executed on both groups. For statistical analysis of data, Analysis of Covariance was carried out. The research findings indicated that speech therapy with CBT reduced the severity of Stuttering and Anxiety. Speech therapy with CBT is effective in reducing Stuttering & Anxiety.

  15. Effect of subthalamic stimulation on voice and speech in Parkinson´s disease: for the better or worse ?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sabine eSkodda

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Background: Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus, although highly effective for the treatment of motor impairment in Parkinson´s disease, can induce speech deterioration in a subgroup of patients. The aim of the current study was to survey 1 if there are distinctive stimulation effects on the different parameters of voice and speech and 2 if there is a special pattern of preexisting speech abnormalities indicating a risk for further worsening under stimulation. Methods: N = 38 patients with Parkinson´s disease had to perform a speech test without medication with stimulation ON and OFF. Speech samples were analysed: 1 according to a four-dimensional perceptual speech score and 2 by acoustic analysis to obtain quantifiable measures of distinctive speech parameters.Results: Quality of voice was ameliorated with stimulation ON, and there were trends to increased loudness and better pitch variability. N = 8 patients featured a deterioration of speech with stimulation ON, caused by worsening of articulation or/and fluency. These patients had more severe overall speech impairment with characteristic features of articulatory slurring and articulatory acceleration already under StimOFF condition.Conclusion: The influence of subthalamic stimulation on Parkinsonian speech differs considerably between individual patients, however, there is a trend to amelioration of voice quality and prosody. Patients with stimulation-associated speech deterioration featured higher overall speech impairment and showed a distinctive pattern of articulatory abnormalities at baseline. Further investigations to confirm these preliminary findings are necessary to allow neurologists to pre-surgically estimate the individual risk of deterioration of speech under stimulation.

  16. Speech and nonspeech: What are we talking about?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maas, Edwin

    2017-08-01

    Understanding of the behavioural, cognitive and neural underpinnings of speech production is of interest theoretically, and is important for understanding disorders of speech production and how to assess and treat such disorders in the clinic. This paper addresses two claims about the neuromotor control of speech production: (1) speech is subserved by a distinct, specialised motor control system and (2) speech is holistic and cannot be decomposed into smaller primitives. Both claims have gained traction in recent literature, and are central to a task-dependent model of speech motor control. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate thinking about speech production, its disorders and the clinical implications of these claims. The paper poses several conceptual and empirical challenges for these claims - including the critical importance of defining speech. The emerging conclusion is that a task-dependent model is called into question as its two central claims are founded on ill-defined and inconsistently applied concepts. The paper concludes with discussion of methodological and clinical implications, including the potential utility of diadochokinetic (DDK) tasks in assessment of motor speech disorders and the contraindication of nonspeech oral motor exercises to improve speech function.

  17. Schizophrenia affects speech-induced functional connectivity of the superior temporal gyrus under cocktail-party listening conditions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Juanhua; Wu, Chao; Zheng, Yingjun; Li, Ruikeng; Li, Xuanzi; She, Shenglin; Wu, Haibo; Peng, Hongjun; Ning, Yuping; Li, Liang

    2017-09-17

    The superior temporal gyrus (STG) is involved in speech recognition against informational masking under cocktail-party-listening conditions. Compared to healthy listeners, people with schizophrenia perform worse in speech recognition under informational speech-on-speech masking conditions. It is not clear whether the schizophrenia-related vulnerability to informational masking is associated with certain changes in FC of the STG with some critical brain regions. Using sparse-sampling fMRI design, this study investigated the differences between people with schizophrenia and healthy controls in FC of the STG for target-speech listening against informational speech-on-speech masking, when a listening condition with either perceived spatial separation (PSS, with a spatial release of informational masking) or perceived spatial co-location (PSC, without the spatial release) between target speech and masking speech was introduced. The results showed that in healthy participants, but not participants with schizophrenia, the contrast of either the PSS or PSC condition against the masker-only condition induced an enhancement of functional connectivity (FC) of the STG with the left superior parietal lobule and the right precuneus. Compared to healthy participants, participants with schizophrenia showed declined FC of the STG with the bilateral precuneus, right SPL, and right supplementary motor area. Thus, FC of the STG with the parietal areas is normally involved in speech listening against informational masking under either the PSS or PSC conditions, and declined FC of the STG in people with schizophrenia with the parietal areas may be associated with the increased vulnerability to informational masking. Copyright © 2017 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Noise-robust speech triage.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bartos, Anthony L; Cipr, Tomas; Nelson, Douglas J; Schwarz, Petr; Banowetz, John; Jerabek, Ladislav

    2018-04-01

    A method is presented in which conventional speech algorithms are applied, with no modifications, to improve their performance in extremely noisy environments. It has been demonstrated that, for eigen-channel algorithms, pre-training multiple speaker identification (SID) models at a lattice of signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) levels and then performing SID using the appropriate SNR dependent model was successful in mitigating noise at all SNR levels. In those tests, it was found that SID performance was optimized when the SNR of the testing and training data were close or identical. In this current effort multiple i-vector algorithms were used, greatly improving both processing throughput and equal error rate classification accuracy. Using identical approaches in the same noisy environment, performance of SID, language identification, gender identification, and diarization were significantly improved. A critical factor in this improvement is speech activity detection (SAD) that performs reliably in extremely noisy environments, where the speech itself is barely audible. To optimize SAD operation at all SNR levels, two algorithms were employed. The first maximized detection probability at low levels (-10 dB ≤ SNR < +10 dB) using just the voiced speech envelope, and the second exploited features extracted from the original speech to improve overall accuracy at higher quality levels (SNR ≥ +10 dB).

  19. Specialization in audiovisual speech perception: a replication study

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Eskelund, Kasper; Andersen, Tobias

    Speech perception is audiovisual as evidenced by bimodal integration in the McGurk effect. This integration effect may be specific to speech or be applied to all stimuli in general. To investigate this, Tuomainen et al. (2005) used sine-wave speech, which naïve observers may perceive as non......-speech, but hear as speech once informed of the linguistic origin of the signal. Combinations of sine-wave speech and incongruent video of the talker elicited a McGurk effect only for informed observers. This indicates that the audiovisual integration effect is specific to speech perception. However, observers...... that observers did look near the mouth. We conclude that eye-movements did not influence the results of Tuomainen et al. and that their results thus can be taken as evidence of a speech specific mode of audiovisual integration underlying the McGurk illusion....

  20. Speech and Debate as Civic Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hogan, J. Michael; Kurr, Jeffrey A.; Johnson, Jeremy D.; Bergmaier, Michael J.

    2016-01-01

    In light of the U.S. Senate's designation of March 15, 2016 as "National Speech and Debate Education Day" (S. Res. 398, 2016), it only seems fitting that "Communication Education" devote a special section to the role of speech and debate in civic education. Speech and debate have been at the heart of the communication…

  1. Tuning Neural Phase Entrainment to Speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Falk, Simone; Lanzilotti, Cosima; Schön, Daniele

    2017-08-01

    Musical rhythm positively impacts on subsequent speech processing. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are so far unclear. We investigated whether carryover effects from a preceding musical cue to a speech stimulus result from a continuation of neural phase entrainment to periodicities that are present in both music and speech. Participants listened and memorized French metrical sentences that contained (quasi-)periodic recurrences of accents and syllables. Speech stimuli were preceded by a rhythmically regular or irregular musical cue. Our results show that the presence of a regular cue modulates neural response as estimated by EEG power spectral density, intertrial coherence, and source analyses at critical frequencies during speech processing compared with the irregular condition. Importantly, intertrial coherences for regular cues were indicative of the participants' success in memorizing the subsequent speech stimuli. These findings underscore the highly adaptive nature of neural phase entrainment across fundamentally different auditory stimuli. They also support current models of neural phase entrainment as a tool of predictive timing and attentional selection across cognitive domains.

  2. Speech perception as an active cognitive process

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shannon eHeald

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available One view of speech perception is that acoustic signals are transformed into representations for pattern matching to determine linguistic structure. This process can be taken as a statistical pattern-matching problem, assuming realtively stable linguistic categories are characterized by neural representations related to auditory properties of speech that can be compared to speech input. This kind of pattern matching can be termed a passive process which implies rigidity of processingd with few demands on cognitive processing. An alternative view is that speech recognition, even in early stages, is an active process in which speech analysis is attentionally guided. Note that this does not mean consciously guided but that information-contingent changes in early auditory encoding can occur as a function of context and experience. Active processing assumes that attention, plasticity, and listening goals are important in considering how listeners cope with adverse circumstances that impair hearing by masking noise in the environment or hearing loss. Although theories of speech perception have begun to incorporate some active processing, they seldom treat early speech encoding as plastic and attentionally guided. Recent research has suggested that speech perception is the product of both feedforward and feedback interactions between a number of brain regions that include descending projections perhaps as far downstream as the cochlea. It is important to understand how the ambiguity of the speech signal and constraints of context dynamically determine cognitive resources recruited during perception including focused attention, learning, and working memory. Theories of speech perception need to go beyond the current corticocentric approach in order to account for the intrinsic dynamics of the auditory encoding of speech. In doing so, this may provide new insights into ways in which hearing disorders and loss may be treated either through augementation or

  3. Spontaneous external gallbladder perforation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Noeldge, G.; Wimmer, B.; Kirchner, R.

    1981-01-01

    Spontaneous perforation of the gallbladder is one complication of cholelithiasis. There is a greater occurence of free perforation in the peritoneal cavity with bilary pertonitis, followed by the perforation into the stomach, small intestine and colon. A single case of the nowadays rare spontaneous perforation in and through the abdominal wall will be reported. Spontaneous gallbladder perforation appears nearly asymptomatic in its clinical course because of absent biliary peritonitis. (orig.) [de

  4. Speaker-sensitive emotion recognition via ranking: Studies on acted and spontaneous speech☆

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cao, Houwei; Verma, Ragini; Nenkova, Ani

    2015-01-01

    We introduce a ranking approach for emotion recognition which naturally incorporates information about the general expressivity of speakers. We demonstrate that our approach leads to substantial gains in accuracy compared to conventional approaches. We train ranking SVMs for individual emotions, treating the data from each speaker as a separate query, and combine the predictions from all rankers to perform multi-class prediction. The ranking method provides two natural benefits. It captures speaker specific information even in speaker-independent training/testing conditions. It also incorporates the intuition that each utterance can express a mix of possible emotion and that considering the degree to which each emotion is expressed can be productively exploited to identify the dominant emotion. We compare the performance of the rankers and their combination to standard SVM classification approaches on two publicly available datasets of acted emotional speech, Berlin and LDC, as well as on spontaneous emotional data from the FAU Aibo dataset. On acted data, ranking approaches exhibit significantly better performance compared to SVM classification both in distinguishing a specific emotion from all others and in multi-class prediction. On the spontaneous data, which contains mostly neutral utterances with a relatively small portion of less intense emotional utterances, ranking-based classifiers again achieve much higher precision in identifying emotional utterances than conventional SVM classifiers. In addition, we discuss the complementarity of conventional SVM and ranking-based classifiers. On all three datasets we find dramatically higher accuracy for the test items on whose prediction the two methods agree compared to the accuracy of individual methods. Furthermore on the spontaneous data the ranking and standard classification are complementary and we obtain marked improvement when we combine the two classifiers by late-stage fusion.

  5. Implementation of a Tour Guide Robot System Using RFID Technology and Viterbi Algorithm-Based HMM for Speech Recognition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Neng-Sheng Pai

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper applied speech recognition and RFID technologies to develop an omni-directional mobile robot into a robot with voice control and guide introduction functions. For speech recognition, the speech signals were captured by short-time processing. The speaker first recorded the isolated words for the robot to create speech database of specific speakers. After the speech pre-processing of this speech database, the feature parameters of cepstrum and delta-cepstrum were obtained using linear predictive coefficient (LPC. Then, the Hidden Markov Model (HMM was used for model training of the speech database, and the Viterbi algorithm was used to find an optimal state sequence as the reference sample for speech recognition. The trained reference model was put into the industrial computer on the robot platform, and the user entered the isolated words to be tested. After processing by the same reference model and comparing with previous reference model, the path of the maximum total probability in various models found using the Viterbi algorithm in the recognition was the recognition result. Finally, the speech recognition and RFID systems were achieved in an actual environment to prove its feasibility and stability, and implemented into the omni-directional mobile robot.

  6. Steganalysis of recorded speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnson, Micah K.; Lyu, Siwei; Farid, Hany

    2005-03-01

    Digital audio provides a suitable cover for high-throughput steganography. At 16 bits per sample and sampled at a rate of 44,100 Hz, digital audio has the bit-rate to support large messages. In addition, audio is often transient and unpredictable, facilitating the hiding of messages. Using an approach similar to our universal image steganalysis, we show that hidden messages alter the underlying statistics of audio signals. Our statistical model begins by building a linear basis that captures certain statistical properties of audio signals. A low-dimensional statistical feature vector is extracted from this basis representation and used by a non-linear support vector machine for classification. We show the efficacy of this approach on LSB embedding and Hide4PGP. While no explicit assumptions about the content of the audio are made, our technique has been developed and tested on high-quality recorded speech.

  7. Audiovisual Speech Synchrony Measure: Application to Biometrics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gérard Chollet

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available Speech is a means of communication which is intrinsically bimodal: the audio signal originates from the dynamics of the articulators. This paper reviews recent works in the field of audiovisual speech, and more specifically techniques developed to measure the level of correspondence between audio and visual speech. It overviews the most common audio and visual speech front-end processing, transformations performed on audio, visual, or joint audiovisual feature spaces, and the actual measure of correspondence between audio and visual speech. Finally, the use of synchrony measure for biometric identity verification based on talking faces is experimented on the BANCA database.

  8. The motor theory of speech perception revisited.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Massaro, Dominic W; Chen, Trevor H

    2008-04-01

    Galantucci, Fowler, and Turvey (2006) have claimed that perceiving speech is perceiving gestures and that the motor system is recruited for perceiving speech. We make the counter argument that perceiving speech is not perceiving gestures, that the motor system is not recruitedfor perceiving speech, and that speech perception can be adequately described by a prototypical pattern recognition model, the fuzzy logical model of perception (FLMP). Empirical evidence taken as support for gesture and motor theory is reconsidered in more detail and in the framework of the FLMR Additional theoretical and logical arguments are made to challenge gesture and motor theory.

  9. Use of Language Sample Analysis by School-Based SLPs: Results of a Nationwide Survey

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pavelko, Stacey L.; Owens, Robert E., Jr.; Ireland, Marie; Hahs-Vaughn, Debbie L.

    2016-01-01

    Purpose: This article examines use of language sample analysis (LSA) by school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs), including characteristics of language samples, methods of transcription and analysis, barriers to LSA use, and factors affecting LSA use, such as American Speech-Language-Hearing Association certification, number of years'…

  10. Commercial speech in crisis: Crisis Pregnancy Center regulations and definitions of commercial speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gilbert, Kathryn E

    2013-02-01

    Recent attempts to regulate Crisis Pregnancy Centers, pseudoclinics that surreptitiously aim to dissuade pregnant women from choosing abortion, have confronted the thorny problem of how to define commercial speech. The Supreme Court has offered three potential answers to this definitional quandary. This Note uses the Crisis Pregnancy Center cases to demonstrate that courts should use one of these solutions, the factor-based approach of Bolger v. Youngs Drugs Products Corp., to define commercial speech in the Crisis Pregnancy Center cases and elsewhere. In principle and in application, the Bolger factor-based approach succeeds in structuring commercial speech analysis at the margins of the doctrine.

  11. Development of a speech-based dialogue system for report dictation and machine control in the endoscopic laboratory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Molnar, B; Gergely, J; Toth, G; Pronai, L; Zagoni, T; Papik, K; Tulassay, Z

    2000-01-01

    Reporting and machine control based on speech technology can enhance work efficiency in the gastrointestinal endoscopy laboratory. The status and activation of endoscopy laboratory equipment were described as a multivariate parameter and function system. Speech recognition, text evaluation and action definition engines were installed. Special programs were developed for the grammatical analysis of command sentences, and a rule-based expert system for the definition of machine answers. A speech backup engine provides feedback to the user. Techniques were applied based on the "Hidden Markov" model of discrete word, user-independent speech recognition and on phoneme-based speech synthesis. Speech samples were collected from three male low-tone investigators. The dictation module and machine control modules were incorporated in a personal computer (PC) simulation program. Altogether 100 unidentified patient records were analyzed. The sentences were grouped according to keywords, which indicate the main topics of a gastrointestinal endoscopy report. They were: "endoscope", "esophagus", "cardia", "fundus", "corpus", "antrum", "pylorus", "bulbus", and "postbulbar section", in addition to the major pathological findings: "erosion", "ulceration", and "malignancy". "Biopsy" and "diagnosis" were also included. We implemented wireless speech communication control commands for equipment including an endoscopy unit, video, monitor, printer, and PC. The recognition rate was 95%. Speech technology may soon become an integrated part of our daily routine in the endoscopy laboratory. A central speech and laboratory computer could be the most efficient alternative to having separate speech recognition units in all items of equipment.

  12. Neurophysiological influence of musical training on speech perception.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shahin, Antoine J

    2011-01-01

    Does musical training affect our perception of speech? For example, does learning to play a musical instrument modify the neural circuitry for auditory processing in a way that improves one's ability to perceive speech more clearly in noisy environments? If so, can speech perception in individuals with hearing loss (HL), who struggle in noisy situations, benefit from musical training? While music and speech exhibit some specialization in neural processing, there is evidence suggesting that skills acquired through musical training for specific acoustical processes may transfer to, and thereby improve, speech perception. The neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the influence of musical training on speech processing and the extent of this influence remains a rich area to be explored. A prerequisite for such transfer is the facilitation of greater neurophysiological overlap between speech and music processing following musical training. This review first establishes a neurophysiological link between musical training and speech perception, and subsequently provides further hypotheses on the neurophysiological implications of musical training on speech perception in adverse acoustical environments and in individuals with HL.

  13. The Relationship between Binaural Benefit and Difference in Unilateral Speech Recognition Performance for Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yoon, Yang-soo; Li, Yongxin; Kang, Hou-Yong; Fu, Qian-Jie

    2011-01-01

    Objective The full benefit of bilateral cochlear implants may depend on the unilateral performance with each device, the speech materials, processing ability of the user, and/or the listening environment. In this study, bilateral and unilateral speech performances were evaluated in terms of recognition of phonemes and sentences presented in quiet or in noise. Design Speech recognition was measured for unilateral left, unilateral right, and bilateral listening conditions; speech and noise were presented at 0° azimuth. The “binaural benefit” was defined as the difference between bilateral performance and unilateral performance with the better ear. Study Sample 9 adults with bilateral cochlear implants participated. Results On average, results showed a greater binaural benefit in noise than in quiet for all speech tests. More importantly, the binaural benefit was greater when unilateral performance was similar across ears. As the difference in unilateral performance between ears increased, the binaural advantage decreased; this functional relationship was observed across the different speech materials and noise levels even though there was substantial intra- and inter-subject variability. Conclusions The results indicate that subjects who show symmetry in speech recognition performance between implanted ears in general show a large binaural benefit. PMID:21696329

  14. Auditory Masking Effects on Speech Fluency in Apraxia of Speech and Aphasia: Comparison to Altered Auditory Feedback

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jacks, Adam; Haley, Katarina L.

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: To study the effects of masked auditory feedback (MAF) on speech fluency in adults with aphasia and/or apraxia of speech (APH/AOS). We hypothesized that adults with AOS would increase speech fluency when speaking with noise. Altered auditory feedback (AAF; i.e., delayed/frequency-shifted feedback) was included as a control condition not…

  15. LIBERDADE DE EXPRESSÃO E DISCURSO DO ÓDIO NO BRASIL / FREE SPEECH AND HATE SPEECH IN BRAZIL

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nevita Maria Pessoa de Aquino Franca Luna

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this article is to analyze the restriction of free speech when it comes close to hate speech. In this perspective, the aim of this study is to answer the question: what is the understanding adopted by the Brazilian Supreme Court in cases involving the conflict between free speech and hate speech? The methodology combines a bibliographic review on the theoretical assumptions of the research (concept of free speech and hate speech, and understanding of the rights of defense of traditionally discriminated minorities and empirical research (documental and jurisprudential analysis of judged cases of American Court, German Court and Brazilian Court. Firstly, free speech is discussed, defining its meaning, content and purpose. Then, the hate speech is pointed as an inhibitor element of free speech for offending members of traditionally discriminated minorities, who are outnumbered or in a situation of cultural, socioeconomic or political subordination. Subsequently, are discussed some aspects of American (negative freedom and German models (positive freedom, to demonstrate that different cultures adopt different legal solutions. At the end, it is concluded that there is an approximation of the Brazilian understanding with the German doctrine, from the analysis of landmark cases as the publisher Siegfried Ellwanger (2003 and the Samba School Unidos do Viradouro (2008. The Brazilian comprehension, a multicultural country made up of different ethnicities, leads to a new process of defending minorities who, despite of involving the collision of fundamental rights (dignity, equality and freedom, is still restrained by incompatible barriers of a contemporary pluralistic democracy.

  16. Speech production in amplitude-modulated noise

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Macdonald, Ewen N; Raufer, Stefan

    2013-01-01

    The Lombard effect refers to the phenomenon where talkers automatically increase their level of speech in a noisy environment. While many studies have characterized how the Lombard effect influences different measures of speech production (e.g., F0, spectral tilt, etc.), few have investigated...... the consequences of temporally fluctuating noise. In the present study, 20 talkers produced speech in a variety of noise conditions, including both steady-state and amplitude-modulated white noise. While listening to noise over headphones, talkers produced randomly generated five word sentences. Similar...... of noisy environments and will alter their speech accordingly....

  17. Free Speech Yearbook 1980.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kane, Peter E., Ed.

    The 11 articles in this collection deal with theoretical and practical freedom of speech issues. The topics covered are (1) the United States Supreme Court and communication theory; (2) truth, knowledge, and a democratic respect for diversity; (3) denial of freedom of speech in Jock Yablonski's campaign for the presidency of the United Mine…

  18. Facial Speech Gestures: The Relation between Visual Speech Processing, Phonological Awareness, and Developmental Dyslexia in 10-Year-Olds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schaadt, Gesa; Männel, Claudia; van der Meer, Elke; Pannekamp, Ann; Friederici, Angela D.

    2016-01-01

    Successful communication in everyday life crucially involves the processing of auditory and visual components of speech. Viewing our interlocutor and processing visual components of speech facilitates speech processing by triggering auditory processing. Auditory phoneme processing, analyzed by event-related brain potentials (ERP), has been shown…

  19. Speech enhancement on smartphone voice recording

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Atmaja, Bagus Tris; Farid, Mifta Nur; Arifianto, Dhany

    2016-01-01

    Speech enhancement is challenging task in audio signal processing to enhance the quality of targeted speech signal while suppress other noises. In the beginning, the speech enhancement algorithm growth rapidly from spectral subtraction, Wiener filtering, spectral amplitude MMSE estimator to Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF). Smartphone as revolutionary device now is being used in all aspect of life including journalism; personally and professionally. Although many smartphones have two microphones (main and rear) the only main microphone is widely used for voice recording. This is why the NMF algorithm widely used for this purpose of speech enhancement. This paper evaluate speech enhancement on smartphone voice recording by using some algorithms mentioned previously. We also extend the NMF algorithm to Kulback-Leibler NMF with supervised separation. The last algorithm shows improved result compared to others by spectrogram and PESQ score evaluation. (paper)

  20. From birdsong to human speech recognition: bayesian inference on a hierarchy of nonlinear dynamical systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yildiz, Izzet B; von Kriegstein, Katharina; Kiebel, Stefan J

    2013-01-01

    Our knowledge about the computational mechanisms underlying human learning and recognition of sound sequences, especially speech, is still very limited. One difficulty in deciphering the exact means by which humans recognize speech is that there are scarce experimental findings at a neuronal, microscopic level. Here, we show that our neuronal-computational understanding of speech learning and recognition may be vastly improved by looking at an animal model, i.e., the songbird, which faces the same challenge as humans: to learn and decode complex auditory input, in an online fashion. Motivated by striking similarities between the human and songbird neural recognition systems at the macroscopic level, we assumed that the human brain uses the same computational principles at a microscopic level and translated a birdsong model into a novel human sound learning and recognition model with an emphasis on speech. We show that the resulting Bayesian model with a hierarchy of nonlinear dynamical systems can learn speech samples such as words rapidly and recognize them robustly, even in adverse conditions. In addition, we show that recognition can be performed even when words are spoken by different speakers and with different accents-an everyday situation in which current state-of-the-art speech recognition models often fail. The model can also be used to qualitatively explain behavioral data on human speech learning and derive predictions for future experiments.

  1. From birdsong to human speech recognition: bayesian inference on a hierarchy of nonlinear dynamical systems.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Izzet B Yildiz

    Full Text Available Our knowledge about the computational mechanisms underlying human learning and recognition of sound sequences, especially speech, is still very limited. One difficulty in deciphering the exact means by which humans recognize speech is that there are scarce experimental findings at a neuronal, microscopic level. Here, we show that our neuronal-computational understanding of speech learning and recognition may be vastly improved by looking at an animal model, i.e., the songbird, which faces the same challenge as humans: to learn and decode complex auditory input, in an online fashion. Motivated by striking similarities between the human and songbird neural recognition systems at the macroscopic level, we assumed that the human brain uses the same computational principles at a microscopic level and translated a birdsong model into a novel human sound learning and recognition model with an emphasis on speech. We show that the resulting Bayesian model with a hierarchy of nonlinear dynamical systems can learn speech samples such as words rapidly and recognize them robustly, even in adverse conditions. In addition, we show that recognition can be performed even when words are spoken by different speakers and with different accents-an everyday situation in which current state-of-the-art speech recognition models often fail. The model can also be used to qualitatively explain behavioral data on human speech learning and derive predictions for future experiments.

  2. Hearing speech in music.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ekström, Seth-Reino; Borg, Erik

    2011-01-01

    The masking effect of a piano composition, played at different speeds and in different octaves, on speech-perception thresholds was investigated in 15 normal-hearing and 14 moderately-hearing-impaired subjects. Running speech (just follow conversation, JFC) testing and use of hearing aids increased the everyday validity of the findings. A comparison was made with standard audiometric noises [International Collegium of Rehabilitative Audiology (ICRA) noise and speech spectrum-filtered noise (SPN)]. All masking sounds, music or noise, were presented at the same equivalent sound level (50 dBA). The results showed a significant effect of piano performance speed and octave (Ptempo had the largest effect; and high octave and slow tempo, the smallest. Music had a lower masking effect than did ICRA noise with two or six speakers at normal vocal effort (Pmusic offers an interesting opportunity for studying masking under realistic conditions, where spectral and temporal features can be varied independently. The results have implications for composing music with vocal parts, designing acoustic environments and creating a balance between speech perception and privacy in social settings.

  3. Speech networks at rest and in action: interactions between functional brain networks controlling speech production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Simonyan, Kristina; Fuertinger, Stefan

    2015-04-01

    Speech production is one of the most complex human behaviors. Although brain activation during speaking has been well investigated, our understanding of interactions between the brain regions and neural networks remains scarce. We combined seed-based interregional correlation analysis with graph theoretical analysis of functional MRI data during the resting state and sentence production in healthy subjects to investigate the interface and topology of functional networks originating from the key brain regions controlling speech, i.e., the laryngeal/orofacial motor cortex, inferior frontal and superior temporal gyri, supplementary motor area, cingulate cortex, putamen, and thalamus. During both resting and speaking, the interactions between these networks were bilaterally distributed and centered on the sensorimotor brain regions. However, speech production preferentially recruited the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and cerebellum into the large-scale network, suggesting the importance of these regions in facilitation of the transition from the resting state to speaking. Furthermore, the cerebellum (lobule VI) was the most prominent region showing functional influences on speech-network integration and segregation. Although networks were bilaterally distributed, interregional connectivity during speaking was stronger in the left vs. right hemisphere, which may have underlined a more homogeneous overlap between the examined networks in the left hemisphere. Among these, the laryngeal motor cortex (LMC) established a core network that fully overlapped with all other speech-related networks, determining the extent of network interactions. Our data demonstrate complex interactions of large-scale brain networks controlling speech production and point to the critical role of the LMC, IPL, and cerebellum in the formation of speech production network. Copyright © 2015 the American Physiological Society.

  4. Definition of spontaneous reconnection

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schindler, K.

    1984-01-01

    The author discusses his view of driven versus spontaneous. There is a close link between ''spontaneous'' and ''instability.'' One of the prominent examples for instability is the thermal convection instability. Just to remind you, if you heat a fluid layer from below, it takes a certain Rayleigh number to make it unstable. Beyond the onset point you find qualitatively new features. That is called ''spontaneous,'' and this is a bit more than semantics. It's a new qualitative property that appears and it is spontaneous although we have an energy flux through the system. It's a misconception, to call this ''driven'' pointing at the energy flux through it. Of course, the convection would not exist without this energy flux. But what makes it ''spontaneous'' is that without any particular external signal, a new qualitative feature appears. And this is what is called an ''instability'' and ''spontaneous.'' From these considerations the author got a little reassured of what distinction should be made in the field of the magnetosphere. If we have a smooth energy transport into the magnetosphere and suddenly we have this qualitatively new feature (change of B-topology) coming up; then, using this terminology we don't have a choice other than calling this spontaneous or unstable, if you like. If we ''tell'' the system where it should make its neutral line and where it should make its plasmoids, then, it is driven. And this provides a very clear-cut observational distinction. The author emphasizes the difference he sees is a qualitative difference, not only a quantitative one

  5. Segmental intelligibility of synthetic speech produced by rule.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Logan, J S; Greene, B G; Pisoni, D B

    1989-08-01

    This paper reports the results of an investigation that employed the modified rhyme test (MRT) to measure the segmental intelligibility of synthetic speech generated automatically by rule. Synthetic speech produced by ten text-to-speech systems was studied and compared to natural speech. A variation of the standard MRT was also used to study the effects of response set size on perceptual confusions. Results indicated that the segmental intelligibility scores formed a continuum. Several systems displayed very high levels of performance that were close to or equal to scores obtained with natural speech; other systems displayed substantially worse performance compared to natural speech. The overall performance of the best system, DECtalk--Paul, was equivalent to the data obtained with natural speech for consonants in syllable-initial position. The findings from this study are discussed in terms of the use of a set of standardized procedures for measuring intelligibility of synthetic speech under controlled laboratory conditions. Recent work investigating the perception of synthetic speech under more severe conditions in which greater demands are made on the listener's processing resources is also considered. The wide range of intelligibility scores obtained in the present study demonstrates important differences in perception and suggests that not all synthetic speech is perceptually equivalent to the listener.

  6. Segmental intelligibility of synthetic speech produced by rule

    Science.gov (United States)

    Logan, John S.; Greene, Beth G.; Pisoni, David B.

    2012-01-01

    This paper reports the results of an investigation that employed the modified rhyme test (MRT) to measure the segmental intelligibility of synthetic speech generated automatically by rule. Synthetic speech produced by ten text-to-speech systems was studied and compared to natural speech. A variation of the standard MRT was also used to study the effects of response set size on perceptual confusions. Results indicated that the segmental intelligibility scores formed a continuum. Several systems displayed very high levels of performance that were close to or equal to scores obtained with natural speech; other systems displayed substantially worse performance compared to natural speech. The overall performance of the best system, DECtalk—Paul, was equivalent to the data obtained with natural speech for consonants in syllable-initial position. The findings from this study are discussed in terms of the use of a set of standardized procedures for measuring intelligibility of synthetic speech under controlled laboratory conditions. Recent work investigating the perception of synthetic speech under more severe conditions in which greater demands are made on the listener’s processing resources is also considered. The wide range of intelligibility scores obtained in the present study demonstrates important differences in perception and suggests that not all synthetic speech is perceptually equivalent to the listener. PMID:2527884

  7. Empathy, Ways of Knowing, and Interdependence as Mediators of Gender Differences in Attitudes toward Hate Speech and Freedom of Speech

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cowan, Gloria; Khatchadourian, Desiree

    2003-01-01

    Women are more intolerant of hate speech than men. This study examined relationality measures as mediators of gender differences in the perception of the harm of hate speech and the importance of freedom of speech. Participants were 107 male and 123 female college students. Questionnaires assessed the perceived harm of hate speech, the importance…

  8. Speech enhancement theory and practice

    CERN Document Server

    Loizou, Philipos C

    2013-01-01

    With the proliferation of mobile devices and hearing devices, including hearing aids and cochlear implants, there is a growing and pressing need to design algorithms that can improve speech intelligibility without sacrificing quality. Responding to this need, Speech Enhancement: Theory and Practice, Second Edition introduces readers to the basic problems of speech enhancement and the various algorithms proposed to solve these problems. Updated and expanded, this second edition of the bestselling textbook broadens its scope to include evaluation measures and enhancement algorithms aimed at impr

  9. Recognizing emotional speech in Persian: a validated database of Persian emotional speech (Persian ESD).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Keshtiari, Niloofar; Kuhlmann, Michael; Eslami, Moharram; Klann-Delius, Gisela

    2015-03-01

    Research on emotional speech often requires valid stimuli for assessing perceived emotion through prosody and lexical content. To date, no comprehensive emotional speech database for Persian is officially available. The present article reports the process of designing, compiling, and evaluating a comprehensive emotional speech database for colloquial Persian. The database contains a set of 90 validated novel Persian sentences classified in five basic emotional categories (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness), as well as a neutral category. These sentences were validated in two experiments by a group of 1,126 native Persian speakers. The sentences were articulated by two native Persian speakers (one male, one female) in three conditions: (1) congruent (emotional lexical content articulated in a congruent emotional voice), (2) incongruent (neutral sentences articulated in an emotional voice), and (3) baseline (all emotional and neutral sentences articulated in neutral voice). The speech materials comprise about 470 sentences. The validity of the database was evaluated by a group of 34 native speakers in a perception test. Utterances recognized better than five times chance performance (71.4 %) were regarded as valid portrayals of the target emotions. Acoustic analysis of the valid emotional utterances revealed differences in pitch, intensity, and duration, attributes that may help listeners to correctly classify the intended emotion. The database is designed to be used as a reliable material source (for both text and speech) in future cross-cultural or cross-linguistic studies of emotional speech, and it is available for academic research purposes free of charge. To access the database, please contact the first author.

  10. Imitation and speech: commonalities within Broca's area.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kühn, Simone; Brass, Marcel; Gallinat, Jürgen

    2013-11-01

    The so-called embodiment of communication has attracted considerable interest. Recently a growing number of studies have proposed a link between Broca's area's involvement in action processing and its involvement in speech. The present quantitative meta-analysis set out to test whether neuroimaging studies on imitation and overt speech show overlap within inferior frontal gyrus. By means of activation likelihood estimation (ALE), we investigated concurrence of brain regions activated by object-free hand imitation studies as well as overt speech studies including simple syllable and more complex word production. We found direct overlap between imitation and speech in bilateral pars opercularis (BA 44) within Broca's area. Subtraction analyses revealed no unique localization neither for speech nor for imitation. To verify the potential of ALE subtraction analysis to detect unique involvement within Broca's area, we contrasted the results of a meta-analysis on motor inhibition and imitation and found separable regions involved for imitation. This is the first meta-analysis to compare the neural correlates of imitation and overt speech. The results are in line with the proposed evolutionary roots of speech in imitation.

  11. Design and realisation of an audiovisual speech activity detector

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Van Bree, K.C.

    2006-01-01

    For many speech telecommunication technologies a robust speech activity detector is important. An audio-only speech detector will givefalse positives when the interfering signal is speech or has speech characteristics. The modality video is suitable to solve this problem. In this report the approach

  12. Utility of TMS to understand the neurobiology of speech

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Takenobu eMurakami

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available According to a traditional view, speech perception and production are processed largely separately in sensory and motor brain areas. Recent psycholinguistic and neuroimaging studies provide novel evidence that the sensory and motor systems dynamically interact in speech processing, by demonstrating that speech perception and imitation share regional brain activations. However, the exact nature and mechanisms of these sensorimotor interactions are not completely understood yet.Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS has often been used in the cognitive neurosciences, including speech research, as a complementary technique to behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Here we provide an up-to-date review focusing on TMS studies that explored speech perception and imitation.Single-pulse TMS of the primary motor cortex (M1 demonstrated a speech specific and somatotopically specific increase of excitability of the M1 lip area during speech perception (listening to speech or lip reading. A paired-coil TMS approach showed increases in effective connectivity from brain regions that are involved in speech processing to the M1 lip area when listening to speech. TMS in virtual lesion mode applied to speech processing areas modulated performance of phonological recognition and imitation of perceived speech.In summary, TMS is an innovative tool to investigate processing of speech perception and imitation. TMS studies have provided strong evidence that the sensory system is critically involved in mapping sensory input onto motor output and that the motor system plays an important role in speech perception.

  13. LinguaTag: an Emotional Speech Analysis Application

    OpenAIRE

    Cullen, Charlie; Vaughan, Brian; Kousidis, Spyros

    2008-01-01

    The analysis of speech, particularly for emotional content, is an open area of current research. Ongoing work has developed an emotional speech corpus for analysis, and defined a vowel stress method by which this analysis may be performed. This paper documents the development of LinguaTag, an open source speech analysis software application which implements this vowel stress emotional speech analysis method developed as part of research into the acoustic and linguistic correlates of emotional...

  14. Correlational Analysis of Speech Intelligibility Tests and Metrics for Speech Transmission

    Science.gov (United States)

    2017-12-04

    sounds, are more prone to masking than the high-energy, wide-spectrum vowels. Such contaminated speech is still audible but not clear. Thus, speech...Science; 2012 June 12–14; Kuala Lumpur ( Malaysia ): New York (NY): IEEE; c2012. p. 676–682. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. 47...ARRABITO 1 UNIV OF COLORADO (PDF) K AREHART 1 NASA (PDF) J ALLEN 1 FOOD AND DRUG ADM-DEPT (PDF) OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

  15. Spontaneous neutrophil migration patterns during sepsis after major burns.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jones, Caroline N; Moore, Molly; Dimisko, Laurie; Alexander, Andrew; Ibrahim, Amir; Hassell, Bryan A; Warren, H Shaw; Tompkins, Ronald G; Fagan, Shawn P; Irimia, Daniel

    2014-01-01

    Finely tuned to respond quickly to infections, neutrophils have amazing abilities to migrate fast and efficiently towards sites of infection and inflammation. Although neutrophils ability to migrate is perturbed in patients after major burns, no correlations have yet been demonstrated between altered migration and higher rate of infections and sepsis in these patients when compared to healthy individuals. To probe if such correlations exist, we designed microfluidic devices to quantify the neutrophil migration phenotype with high precision. Inside these devices, moving neutrophils are confined in channels smaller than the neutrophils and forced to make directional decisions at bifurcations and around posts. We employed these devices to quantify neutrophil migration across 18 independent parameters in 74 blood samples from 13 patients with major burns and 3 healthy subjects. Blinded, retrospective analysis of clinical data and neutrophil migration parameters revealed that neutrophils isolated from blood samples collected during sepsis migrate spontaneously inside the microfluidic channels. The spontaneous neutrophil migration is a unique phenotype, typical for patients with major burns during sepsis and often observed one or two days before the diagnosis of sepsis is confirmed. The spontaneous neutrophil migration phenotype is rare in patients with major burns in the absence of sepsis, and is not encountered in healthy individuals. Our findings warrant further studies of neutrophils and their utility for early diagnosing and monitoring sepsis in patients after major burns.

  16. The use of conjunctions by children with typical language development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Glória, Yasmin Alves Leão; Hanauer, Letícia Pessota; Wiethan, Fernanda Marafiga; Nóro, Letícia Arruda; Mota, Helena Bolli

    2016-07-04

    To investigate the use of conjunctions in the spontaneous speech of three years old children with typical language development, who live in Santa Maria - RS. 45 children, aged 3:0;0 - 3:11;29 (years:months;days) from the database of the Center for the Study of Language and Speech (CELF) participated of this study. The spontaneous speech of each child was transcribed and followed by analysis of the samples to identify the types of conjunctions for each age group. The samples were statistically analyzed using the R software that allowed the evaluation of the number and type of conjunctions used in each age group by comparing them with each other. The data indicated that the higher the age of the child, the greater the number of types of conjunctions used by them. The comparison between age groups showed significant differences when comparing the average number of conjunctions per age group, as well as for additive conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions. At age of three the children begin to develop the grammatical use of conjunctions, early appearing additive, adversative and explanatory coordinating conjunctions, and at 3:6 they are able to use the most complex conjunctions, as subordinating conjunctions.

  17. Cognitive functions in Childhood Apraxia of Speech

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Nijland, L.; Terband, H.; Maassen, B.

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is diagnosed on the basis of specific speech characteristics, in the absence of problems in hearing, intelligence, and language comprehension. This does not preclude the possibility that children with this speech disorder might demonstrate additional

  18. Perceptual Speech and Paralinguistic Skills of Adolescents with Williams Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hargrove, Patricia M.; Pittelko, Stephen; Fillingane, Evan; Rustman, Emily; Lund, Bonnie

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of this research was to compare selected speech and paralinguistic skills of speakers with Williams syndrome (WS) and typically developing peers and to demonstrate the feasibility of providing preexisting databases to students to facilitate graduate research. In a series of three studies, conversational samples of 12 adolescents with…

  19. Subjective Quality Measurement of Speech Its Evaluation, Estimation and Applications

    CERN Document Server

    Kondo, Kazuhiro

    2012-01-01

    It is becoming crucial to accurately estimate and monitor speech quality in various ambient environments to guarantee high quality speech communication. This practical hands-on book shows speech intelligibility measurement methods so that the readers can start measuring or estimating speech intelligibility of their own system. The book also introduces subjective and objective speech quality measures, and describes in detail speech intelligibility measurement methods. It introduces a diagnostic rhyme test which uses rhyming word-pairs, and includes: An investigation into the effect of word familiarity on speech intelligibility. Speech intelligibility measurement of localized speech in virtual 3-D acoustic space using the rhyme test. Estimation of speech intelligibility using objective measures, including the ITU standard PESQ measures, and automatic speech recognizers.

  20. Comparison of two speech privacy measurements, articulation index (AI) and speech privacy noise isolation class (NIC'), in open workplaces

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yoon, Heakyung C.; Loftness, Vivian

    2002-05-01

    Lack of speech privacy has been reported to be the main dissatisfaction among occupants in open workplaces, according to workplace surveys. Two speech privacy measurements, Articulation Index (AI), standardized by the American National Standards Institute in 1969, and Speech Privacy Noise Isolation Class (NIC', Noise Isolation Class Prime), adapted from Noise Isolation Class (NIC) by U. S. General Services Administration (GSA) in 1979, have been claimed as objective tools to measure speech privacy in open offices. To evaluate which of them, normal privacy for AI or satisfied privacy for NIC', is a better tool in terms of speech privacy in a dynamic open office environment, measurements were taken in the field. AIs and NIC's in the different partition heights and workplace configurations have been measured following ASTM E1130 (Standard Test Method for Objective Measurement of Speech Privacy in Open Offices Using Articulation Index) and GSA test PBS-C.1 (Method for the Direct Measurement of Speech-Privacy Potential (SPP) Based on Subjective Judgments) and PBS-C.2 (Public Building Service Standard Method of Test Method for the Sufficient Verification of Speech-Privacy Potential (SPP) Based on Objective Measurements Including Methods for the Rating of Functional Interzone Attenuation and NC-Background), respectively.