Duration, Pitch, and Loudness in Kunqu Opera Stage Speech.

PubMed

Han, Qichao; Sundberg, Johan

2017-03-01

Kunqu is a special type of opera within the Chinese tradition with 600 years of history. In it, stage speech is used for the spoken dialogue. It is performed in Ming Dynasty's mandarin language and is a much more dominant part of the play than singing. Stage speech deviates considerably from normal conversational speech with respect to duration, loudness and pitch. This paper compares these properties in stage speech conversational speech. A famous, highly experienced female singer's performed stage speech and reading of the same lyrics in a conversational speech mode. Clear differences are found. As compared with conversational speech, stage speech had longer word and sentence duration and word duration was less variable. Average sound level was 16 dB higher. Also mean fundamental frequency was considerably higher and more varied. Within sentences, both loudness and fundamental frequency tended to vary according to a low-high-low pattern. Some of the findings fail to support current opinions regarding the characteristics of stage speech, and in this sense the study demonstrates the relevance of objective measurements in descriptions of vocal styles. Copyright © 2017 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Teaching autistic children conversational speech using video modeling.

PubMed Central

Charlop, M H; Milstein, J P

1989-01-01

We assessed the effects of video modeling on acquisition and generalization of conversational skills among autistic children. Three autistic boys observed videotaped conversations consisting of two people discussing specific toys. When criterion for learning was met, generalization of conversational skills was assessed with untrained topics of conversation; new stimuli (toys); unfamiliar persons, siblings, and autistic peers; and other settings. The results indicated that the children learned through video modeling, generalized their conversational skills, and maintained conversational speech over a 15-month period. Video modeling shows much promise as a rapid and effective procedure for teaching complex verbal skills such as conversational speech. PMID:2793634

Expressed parental concern regarding childhood stuttering and the Test of Childhood Stuttering.

PubMed

Tumanova, Victoria; Choi, Dahye; Conture, Edward G; Walden, Tedra A

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether the Test of Childhood Stuttering observational rating scales (TOCS; Gillam et al., 2009) (1) differed between parents who did versus did not express concern (independent from the TOCS) about their child's speech fluency; (2) correlated with children's frequency of stuttering measured during a child-examiner conversation; and (3) correlated with the length and complexity of children's utterances, as indexed by mean length of utterance (MLU). Participants were 183 young children ages 3:0-5:11. Ninety-one had parents who reported concern about their child's stuttering (65 boys, 26 girls) and 92 had parents who reported no such concern (50 boys, 42 girls). Participants' conversational speech during a child-examiner conversation was analyzed for (a) frequency of occurrence of stuttered and non-stuttered disfluencies, and (b) MLU. Besides expressing concern or lack thereof about their child's speech fluency, parents completed the TOCS observational rating scales documenting how often they observe different disfluency types in speech of their children, as well as disfluency-related consequences. There were three main findings. First, parents who expressed concern (independently from the TOCS) about their child's stuttering reported significantly higher scores on the TOCS Speech Fluency and Disfluency-Related Consequences rating scales. Second, children whose parents rated them higher on the TOCS Speech Fluency rating scale produced more stuttered disfluencies during a child-examiner conversation. Third, children with higher scores on the TOCS Disfluency-Related Consequences rating scale had shorter MLU during child-examiner conversation, across age and level of language ability. Findings support the use of the TOCS observational rating scales as one documentable, objective means to determine parental perception of and concern about their child's stuttering. Findings also support the notion that parents are reasonably accurate, if not reliable, judges of the quantity and quality (i.e., stuttered vs. non-stuttered) of their child's speech disfluencies. Lastly, findings that some children may decrease their verbal output in attempts to minimize instances of stuttering - as indexed by relatively low MLU and a high TOCS Disfluency-Related Consequences scores - provides strong support for sampling young children's speech and language across various situations to obtain the most representative index possible of the child's MLU and associated instances of stuttering. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lessons Learned in Part-of-Speech Tagging of Conversational Speech

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-10-01

for conversational speech recognition. In Plenary Meeting and Symposium on Prosody and Speech Processing. Slav Petrov and Dan Klein. 2007. Improved...inference for unlexicalized parsing. In HLT-NAACL. Slav Petrov. 2010. Products of random latent variable grammars. In HLT-NAACL. Brian Roark, Yang Liu

Rib Torque Does Not Assist Resting Tidal Expiration or Most Conversational Speech Expiration

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hixon, Thomas J.

2006-01-01

Purpose: This research note discusses a common misconception in speech science and speech-language pathology textbooks that rib torque (i.e., "rotational stress") assists resting tidal expiration and conversational speech production. Method: The nature of this misconception is considered. Conclusion: An alternate conceptualization is offered that…

Dramatic effects of speech task on motor and linguistic planning in severely dysfluent parkinsonian speech

PubMed Central

Van Lancker Sidtis, Diana; Cameron, Krista; Sidtis, John J.

2015-01-01

In motor speech disorders, dysarthric features impacting intelligibility, articulation, fluency, and voice emerge more saliently in conversation than in repetition, reading, or singing. A role of the basal ganglia in these task discrepancies has been identified. Further, more recent studies of naturalistic speech in basal ganglia dysfunction have revealed that formulaic language is more impaired than novel language. This descriptive study extends these observations to a case of severely dysfluent dysarthria due to a parkinsonian syndrome. Dysfluencies were quantified and compared for conversation, two forms of repetition, reading, recited speech, and singing. Other measures examined phonetic inventories, word forms, and formulaic language. Phonetic, syllabic, and lexical dysfluencies were more abundant in conversation than in other task conditions. Formulaic expressions in conversation were reduced compared to normal speakers. A proposed explanation supports the notion that the basal ganglia contribute to formulation of internal models for execution of speech. PMID:22774929

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

PubMed

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.

Talker Differences in Clear and Conversational Speech: Vowel Intelligibility for Older Adults with Hearing Loss

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferguson, Sarah Hargus

2012-01-01

Purpose: To establish the range of talker variability for vowel intelligibility in clear versus conversational speech for older adults with hearing loss and to determine whether talkers who produced a clear speech benefit for young listeners with normal hearing also did so for older adults with hearing loss. Method: Clear and conversational vowels…

An acoustic comparison of two women's infant- and adult-directed speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Andruski, Jean; Katz-Gershon, Shiri

2003-04-01

In addition to having prosodic characteristics that are attractive to infant listeners, infant-directed (ID) speech shares certain characteristics of adult-directed (AD) clear speech, such as increased acoustic distance between vowels, that might be expected to make ID speech easier for adults to perceive in noise than AD conversational speech. However, perceptual tests of two women's ID productions by Andruski and Bessega [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112, 2355] showed that is not always the case. In a word identification task that compared ID speech with AD clear and conversational speech, one speaker's ID productions were less well-identified than AD clear speech, but better identified than AD conversational speech. For the second woman, ID speech was the least accurately identified of the three speech registers. For both speakers, hard words (infrequent words with many lexical neighbors) were also at an increased disadvantage relative to easy words (frequent words with few lexical neighbors) in speech registers that were less accurately perceived. This study will compare several acoustic properties of these women's productions, including pitch and formant-frequency characteristics. Results of the acoustic analyses will be examined with the original perceptual results to suggest reasons for differences in listener's accuracy in identifying these two women's ID speech in noise.

Family Worlds: Couple Satisfaction, Parenting Style, and Mothers' and Fathers' Speech to Young Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pratt, Michael W.; And Others

1992-01-01

Investigated relations between certain family context variables and the conversational behavior of 36 parents who were playing with their 3 year olds. Transcripts were coded for types of conversational functions and structure of parent speech. Marital satisfaction was associated with aspects of parent speech. (LB)

Does communication partner training improve the conversation skills of speech-language pathology students when interacting with people with aphasia?

PubMed

Finch, Emma; Cameron, Ashley; Fleming, Jennifer; Lethlean, Jennifer; Hudson, Kyla; McPhail, Steven

2017-07-01

Aphasia is a common consequence of stroke. Despite receiving specialised training in communication, speech-language pathology students may lack confidence when communicating with People with Aphasia (PWA). This paper reports data from secondary outcome measures from a randomised controlled trial. The aim of the current study was to examine the effects of communication partner training on the communication skills of speech-language pathology students during conversations with PWA. Thirty-eight speech-language pathology students were randomly allocated to trained and untrained groups. The first group received a lecture about communication strategies for communicating with PWA then participated in a conversation with PWA (Trained group), while the second group of students participated in a conversation with the PWA without receiving the lecture (Untrained group). The conversations between the groups were analysed according to the Measure of skill in Supported Conversation (MSC) scales, Measure of Participation in Conversation (MPC) scales, types of strategies used in conversation, and the occurrence and repair of conversation breakdowns. The trained group received significantly higher MSC Revealing Competence scores, used significantly more props, and introduced significantly more new ideas into the conversation than the untrained group. The trained group also used more gesture and writing to facilitate the conversation, however, the difference was not significant. There was no significant difference between the groups according to MSC Acknowledging Competence scores, MPC Interaction or Transaction scores, or in the number of interruptions, minor or major conversation breakdowns, or in the success of strategies initiated to repair the conversation breakdowns. Speech-language pathology students may benefit from participation in communication partner training programs. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Talker differences in clear and conversational speech: Vowel intelligibility for normal-hearing listeners

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hargus Ferguson, Sarah

2004-10-01

Several studies have shown that when a talker is instructed to speak as though talking to a hearing-impaired person, the resulting ``clear'' speech is significantly more intelligible than typical conversational speech. While variability among talkers during speech production is well known, only one study to date [Gagné et al., J. Acad. Rehab. Audiol. 27, 135-158 (1994)] has directly examined differences among talkers producing clear and conversational speech. Data from that study, which utilized ten talkers, suggested that talkers vary in the extent to which they improve their intelligibility by speaking clearly. Similar variability can be also seen in studies using smaller groups of talkers [e.g., Picheny, Durlach, and Braida, J. Speech Hear. Res. 28, 96-103 (1985)]. In the current paper, clear and conversational speech materials were recorded from 41 male and female talkers aged 18 to 45 years. A listening experiment demonstrated that for normal-hearing listeners in noise, vowel intelligibility varied widely among the 41 talkers for both speaking styles, as did the magnitude of the speaking style effect. While female talkers showed a larger clear speech vowel intelligibility benefit than male talkers, neither talker age nor prior experience communicating with hearing-impaired listeners significantly affected the speaking style effect. .

Automatic conversational scene analysis in children with Asperger syndrome/high-functioning autism and typically developing peers.

PubMed

Tavano, Alessandro; Pesarin, Anna; Murino, Vittorio; Cristani, Marco

2014-01-01

Individuals with Asperger syndrome/High Functioning Autism fail to spontaneously attribute mental states to the self and others, a life-long phenotypic characteristic known as mindblindness. We hypothesized that mindblindness would affect the dynamics of conversational interaction. Using generative models, in particular Gaussian mixture models and observed influence models, conversations were coded as interacting Markov processes, operating on novel speech/silence patterns, termed Steady Conversational Periods (SCPs). SCPs assume that whenever an agent's process changes state (e.g., from silence to speech), it causes a general transition of the entire conversational process, forcing inter-actant synchronization. SCPs fed into observed influence models, which captured the conversational dynamics of children and adolescents with Asperger syndrome/High Functioning Autism, and age-matched typically developing participants. Analyzing the parameters of the models by means of discriminative classifiers, the dialogs of patients were successfully distinguished from those of control participants. We conclude that meaning-free speech/silence sequences, reflecting inter-actant synchronization, at least partially encode typical and atypical conversational dynamics. This suggests a direct influence of theory of mind abilities onto basic speech initiative behavior.

Talker Differences in Clear and Conversational Speech: Acoustic Characteristics of Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferguson, Sarah Hargus; Kewley-Port, Diane

2007-01-01

Purpose: To determine the specific acoustic changes that underlie improved vowel intelligibility in clear speech. Method: Seven acoustic metrics were measured for conversational and clear vowels produced by 12 talkers--6 who previously were found (S. H. Ferguson, 2004) to produce a large clear speech vowel intelligibility effect for listeners with…

Reported Speech in Conversational Storytelling during Nursing Shift Handover Meetings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bangerter, Adrian; Mayor, Eric; Pekarek Doehler, Simona

2011-01-01

Shift handovers in nursing units involve formal transmission of information and informal conversation about non-routine events. Informal conversation often involves telling stories. Direct reported speech (DRS) was studied in handover storytelling in two nursing care units. The study goal is to contribute to a better understanding of conversation…

Why are background telephone conversations distracting?

PubMed

Marsh, John E; Ljung, Robert; Jahncke, Helena; MacCutcheon, Douglas; Pausch, Florian; Ball, Linden J; Vachon, François

2018-06-01

Telephone conversation is ubiquitous within the office setting. Overhearing a telephone conversation-whereby only one of the two speakers is heard-is subjectively more annoying and objectively more distracting than overhearing a full conversation. The present study sought to determine whether this "halfalogue" effect is attributable to unexpected offsets and onsets within the background speech (acoustic unexpectedness) or to the tendency to predict the unheard part of the conversation (semantic [un]predictability), and whether these effects can be shielded against through top-down cognitive control. In Experiment 1, participants performed an office-related task in quiet or in the presence of halfalogue and dialogue background speech. Irrelevant speech was either meaningful or meaningless speech. The halfalogue effect was only present for the meaningful speech condition. Experiment 2 addressed whether higher task-engagement could shield against the halfalogue effect by manipulating the font of the to-be-read material. Although the halfalogue effect was found with an easy-to-read font (fluent text), the use of a difficult-to-read font (disfluent text) eliminated the effect. The halfalogue effect is thus attributable to the semantic (un)predictability, not the acoustic unexpectedness, of background telephone conversation and can be prevented by simple means such as increasing the level of engagement required by the focal task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Overheard cell-phone conversations: when less speech is more distracting.

PubMed

Emberson, Lauren L; Lupyan, Gary; Goldstein, Michael H; Spivey, Michael J

2010-10-01

Why are people more irritated by nearby cell-phone conversations than by conversations between two people who are physically present? Overhearing someone on a cell phone means hearing only half of a conversation--a "halfalogue." We show that merely overhearing a halfalogue results in decreased performance on cognitive tasks designed to reflect the attentional demands of daily activities. By contrast, overhearing both sides of a cell-phone conversation or a monologue does not result in decreased performance. This may be because the content of a halfalogue is less predictable than both sides of a conversation. In a second experiment, we controlled for differences in acoustic factors between these types of overheard speech, establishing that it is the unpredictable informational content of halfalogues that results in distraction. Thus, we provide a cognitive explanation for why overheard cell-phone conversations are especially irritating: Less-predictable speech results in more distraction for a listener engaged in other tasks.

Vowel reduction across tasks for male speakers of American English.

PubMed

Kuo, Christina; Weismer, Gary

2016-07-01

This study examined acoustic variation of vowels within speakers across speech tasks. The overarching goal of the study was to understand within-speaker variation as one index of the range of normal speech motor behavior for American English vowels. Ten male speakers of American English performed four speech tasks including citation form sentence reading with a clear-speech style (clear-speech), citation form sentence reading (citation), passage reading (reading), and conversational speech (conversation). Eight monophthong vowels in a variety of consonant contexts were studied. Clear-speech was operationally defined as the reference point for describing variation. Acoustic measures associated with the conventions of vowel targets were obtained and examined. These included temporal midpoint formant frequencies for the first three formants (F1, F2, and F3) and the derived Euclidean distances in the F1-F2 and F2-F3 planes. Results indicated that reduction toward the center of the F1-F2 and F2-F3 planes increased in magnitude across the tasks in the order of clear-speech, citation, reading, and conversation. The cross-task variation was comparable for all speakers despite fine-grained individual differences. The characteristics of systematic within-speaker acoustic variation across tasks have potential implications for the understanding of the mechanisms of speech motor control and motor speech disorders.

Automatic Conversational Scene Analysis in Children with Asperger Syndrome/High-Functioning Autism and Typically Developing Peers

PubMed Central

Tavano, Alessandro; Pesarin, Anna; Murino, Vittorio; Cristani, Marco

2014-01-01

Individuals with Asperger syndrome/High Functioning Autism fail to spontaneously attribute mental states to the self and others, a life-long phenotypic characteristic known as mindblindness. We hypothesized that mindblindness would affect the dynamics of conversational interaction. Using generative models, in particular Gaussian mixture models and observed influence models, conversations were coded as interacting Markov processes, operating on novel speech/silence patterns, termed Steady Conversational Periods (SCPs). SCPs assume that whenever an agent's process changes state (e.g., from silence to speech), it causes a general transition of the entire conversational process, forcing inter-actant synchronization. SCPs fed into observed influence models, which captured the conversational dynamics of children and adolescents with Asperger syndrome/High Functioning Autism, and age-matched typically developing participants. Analyzing the parameters of the models by means of discriminative classifiers, the dialogs of patients were successfully distinguished from those of control participants. We conclude that meaning-free speech/silence sequences, reflecting inter-actant synchronization, at least partially encode typical and atypical conversational dynamics. This suggests a direct influence of theory of mind abilities onto basic speech initiative behavior. PMID:24489674

A little more conversation, a little less action - candidate roles for motor cortex in speech perception

PubMed Central

Scott, Sophie K; McGettigan, Carolyn; Eisner, Frank

2014-01-01

The motor theory of speech perception assumes that activation of the motor system is essential in the perception of speech. However, deficits in speech perception and comprehension do not arise from damage that is restricted to the motor cortex, few functional imaging studies reveal activity in motor cortex during speech perception, and the motor cortex is strongly activated by many different sound categories. Here, we evaluate alternative roles for the motor cortex in spoken communication and suggest a specific role in sensorimotor processing in conversation. We argue that motor-cortex activation it is essential in joint speech, particularly for the timing of turn-taking. PMID:19277052

Clear speech and lexical competition in younger and older adult listeners.

PubMed

Van Engen, Kristin J

2017-08-01

This study investigated whether clear speech reduces the cognitive demands of lexical competition by crossing speaking style with lexical difficulty. Younger and older adults identified more words in clear versus conversational speech and more easy words than hard words. An initial analysis suggested that the effect of lexical difficulty was reduced in clear speech, but more detailed analyses within each age group showed this interaction was significant only for older adults. The results also showed that both groups improved over the course of the task and that clear speech was particularly helpful for individuals with poorer hearing: for younger adults, clear speech eliminated hearing-related differences that affected performance on conversational speech. For older adults, clear speech was generally more helpful to listeners with poorer hearing. These results suggest that clear speech affords perceptual benefits to all listeners and, for older adults, mitigates the cognitive challenge associated with identifying words with many phonological neighbors.

Talker Differences in Clear and Conversational Speech: Perceived Sentence Clarity for Young Adults with Normal Hearing and Older Adults with Hearing Loss

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferguson, Sarah Hargus; Morgan, Shae D.

2018-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine talker differences for subjectively rated speech clarity in clear versus conversational speech, to determine whether ratings differ for young adults with normal hearing (YNH listeners) and older adults with hearing impairment (OHI listeners), and to explore effects of certain talker characteristics…

Conversational Russian in Russkij Jazyk Za Rubezom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morgan, Thomas W.

1976-01-01

Reviews materials relating to Russian speech which have appeared in the journal "Russkij Jazyk Za Rubezom" since its first issue in 1967. The articles reviewed are divided into three categories: the stylistics of Russian speech, specific conversation expressions, and methodology. (CLK)

Prosodic Contrasts in Ironic Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

Sperry Univac speech communications technology

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Medress, Mark F.

1977-01-01

Technology and systems for effective verbal communication with computers were developed. A continuous speech recognition system for verbal input, a word spotting system to locate key words in conversational speech, prosodic tools to aid speech analysis, and a prerecorded voice response system for speech output are described.

The Role of Visual Speech Information in Supporting Perceptual Learning of Degraded Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wayne, Rachel V.; Johnsrude, Ingrid S.

2012-01-01

Following cochlear implantation, hearing-impaired listeners must adapt to speech as heard through their prosthesis. Visual speech information (VSI; the lip and facial movements of speech) is typically available in everyday conversation. Here, we investigate whether learning to understand a popular auditory simulation of speech as transduced by a…

Effects of neurological damage on production of formulaic language

PubMed Central

Sidtis, D.; Canterucci, G.; Katsnelson, D.

2014-01-01

Early studies reported preserved formulaic language in left hemisphere damaged subjects and reduced incidence of formulaic expressions in the conversational speech of stroke patients with right hemispheric damage. Clinical observations suggest a possible role also of subcortical nuclei. This study examined formulaic language in the spontaneous speech of stroke patients with left, right, or subcortical damage. Four subjects were interviewed and their speech samples compared to normal speakers. Raters classified formulaic expressions as speech formulae, fillers, sentence stems, and proper nouns. Results demonstrated that brain damage affected novel and formulaic language competence differently, with a significantly smaller proportion of formulaic expressions in subjects with right or subcortical damage compared to left hemisphere damaged or healthy speakers. These findings converge with previous studies that support the proposal of a right hemisphere/subcortical circuit in the management of formulaic expressions, based on a dual-process model of language incorporating novel and formulaic language use. PMID:19382014

Stuttering Characteristics of German-English Bilingual Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schafer, Martina; Robb, Michael P.

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine stuttering behavior in German-English bilingual people who stutter (PWS), with particular reference to the frequency of stuttering on content and function words. Fifteen bilingual PWS were sampled who spoke German as the first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2). Conversational speech was…

Characteristics of Stuttering-Like Disfluencies in Dutch-Speaking Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boey, Ronny A.; Wuyts, Floris L.; Van de Heyning, Paul H.; De Bodt, Marc S.; Heylen, Louis

2007-01-01

The purpose of this study was to compare the characteristics of stuttering-like disfluencies in a group of native Dutch-speaking children who stutter (n = 693), with a group of normally fluent children (n = 79). Methods involved the observation of stuttering-like disfluencies in participants' conversational speech samples (total 77,200 words),…

Effect of concurrent walking and interlocutor distance on conversational speech intensity and rate in Parkinson's disease.

PubMed

McCaig, Cassandra M; Adams, Scott G; Dykstra, Allyson D; Jog, Mandar

2016-01-01

Previous studies have demonstrated a negative effect of concurrent walking and talking on gait in Parkinson's disease (PD) but there is limited information about the effect of concurrent walking on speech production. The present study examined the effect of sitting, standing, and three concurrent walking tasks (slow, normal, fast) on conversational speech intensity and speech rate in fifteen individuals with hypophonia related to idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) and fourteen age-equivalent controls. Interlocuter (talker-to-talker) distance effects and walking speed were also examined. Concurrent walking was found to produce a significant increase in speech intensity, relative to standing and sitting, in both the control and PD groups. Faster walking produced significantly greater speech intensity than slower walking. Concurrent walking had no effect on speech rate. Concurrent walking and talking produced significant reductions in walking speed in both the control and PD groups. In general, the results of the present study indicate that concurrent walking tasks and the speed of concurrent walking can have a significant positive effect on conversational speech intensity. These positive, "energizing" effects need to be given consideration in future attempts to develop a comprehensive model of speech intensity regulation and they may have important implications for the development of new evaluation and treatment procedures for individuals with hypophonia related to PD. Crown Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Speech and communication in Parkinson’s disease: a cross-sectional exploratory study in the UK

PubMed Central

Barnish, Maxwell S; Horton, Simon M C; Butterfint, Zoe R; Clark, Allan B; Atkinson, Rachel A; Deane, Katherine H O

2017-01-01

Objective To assess associations between cognitive status, intelligibility, acoustics and functional communication in PD. Design Cross-sectional exploratory study of functional communication, including a within-participants experimental design for listener assessment. Setting A major academic medical centre in the East of England, UK. Participants Questionnaire data were assessed for 45 people with Parkinson’s disease (PD), who had self-reported speech or communication difficulties and did not have clinical dementia. Acoustic and listener analyses were conducted on read and conversational speech for 20 people with PD and 20 familiar conversation partner controls without speech, language or cognitive difficulties. Main outcome measures Functional communication assessed by the Communicative Participation Item Bank (CPIB) and Communicative Effectiveness Survey (CES). Results People with PD had lower intelligibility than controls for both the read (mean difference 13.7%, p=0.009) and conversational (mean difference 16.2%, p=0.04) sentences. Intensity and pause were statistically significant predictors of intelligibility in read sentences. Listeners were less accurate identifying the intended emotion in the speech of people with PD (14.8% point difference across conditions, p=0.02) and this was associated with worse speaker cognitive status (16.7% point difference, p=0.04). Cognitive status was a significant predictor of functional communication using CPIB (F=8.99, p=0.005, η2 = 0.15) but not CES. Intelligibility in conversation sentences was a statistically significant predictor of CPIB (F=4.96, p=0.04, η2 = 0.19) and CES (F=13.65, p=0.002, η2 = 0.43). Read sentence intelligibility was not a significant predictor of either outcome. Conclusions Cognitive status was an important predictor of functional communication—the role of intelligibility was modest and limited to conversational and not read speech. Our results highlight the importance of focusing on functional communication as well as physical speech impairment in speech and language therapy (SLT) for PD. Our results could inform future trials of SLT techniques for PD. PMID:28554918

Criterion-related validity of the Test of Children's Speech sentence intelligibility measure for children with cerebral palsy and dysarthria.

PubMed

Hodge, Megan; Gotzke, Carrie Lynne

2014-08-01

To evaluate the criterion-related validity of the TOCS+ sentence measure (TOCS+, Hodge, Daniels & Gotzke, 2009 ) for children with dysarthria and CP by comparing intelligibility and rate scores obtained concurrently from the TOCS+ and from a conversational sample. Twenty children (3 to 10 years old) diagnosed with spastic cerebral palsy (CP) participated. Nineteen children also had a confirmed diagnosis of dysarthria. Children's intelligibility and speaking rate scores obtained from the TOCS+, which uses imitation of sets of randomly selected items ranging from 2-7 words (80 words in total) and from a contiguous 100-word conversational speech were compared. Mean intelligibility scores were 46.5% (SD = 26.4%) and 50.9% (SD = 19.1%) and mean rates in words per minute (WPM) were 90.2 (SD = 22.3) and 94.1 (SD = 25.6), respectively, for the TOCS+ and conversational samples. No significant differences were found between the two conditions for intelligibility or rate scores. Strong correlations were found between the TOCS+ and conversational samples for intelligibility (r = 0.86; p < 0.001) and WPM (r = 0.77; p < 0.001), supporting the criterion validity of the TOCS+ sentence task as a time efficient procedure for measuring intelligibility and rate in children with CP, with and without confirmed dysarthria. The results support the criterion validity of the TOCS+ sentence task as a time efficient procedure for measuring intelligibility and rate in children with CP, with and without confirmed dysarthria. Children varied in their relative performance on the two speaking tasks, reflecting the complexity of factors that influence intelligibility and rate scores.

The Words Children Hear: Picture Books and the Statistics for Language Learning.

PubMed

Montag, Jessica L; Jones, Michael N; Smith, Linda B

2015-09-01

Young children learn language from the speech they hear. Previous work suggests that greater statistical diversity of words and of linguistic contexts is associated with better language outcomes. One potential source of lexical diversity is the text of picture books that caregivers read aloud to children. Many parents begin reading to their children shortly after birth, so this is potentially an important source of linguistic input for many children. We constructed a corpus of 100 children's picture books and compared word type and token counts in that sample and a matched sample of child-directed speech. Overall, the picture books contained more unique word types than the child-directed speech. Further, individual picture books generally contained more unique word types than length-matched, child-directed conversations. The text of picture books may be an important source of vocabulary for young children, and these findings suggest a mechanism that underlies the language benefits associated with reading to children. © The Author(s) 2015.

Audio-Visual Speech Perception Is Special

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tuomainen, J.; Andersen, T.S.; Tiippana, K.; Sams, M.

2005-01-01

In face-to-face conversation speech is perceived by ear and eye. We studied the prerequisites of audio-visual speech perception by using perceptually ambiguous sine wave replicas of natural speech as auditory stimuli. When the subjects were not aware that the auditory stimuli were speech, they showed only negligible integration of auditory and…

Acoustic properties of naturally produced clear speech at normal speaking rates

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Krause, Jean C.; Braida, Louis D.

2004-01-01

Sentences spoken ``clearly'' are significantly more intelligible than those spoken ``conversationally'' for hearing-impaired listeners in a variety of backgrounds [Picheny et al., J. Speech Hear. Res. 28, 96-103 (1985); Uchanski et al., ibid. 39, 494-509 (1996); Payton et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 95, 1581-1592 (1994)]. While producing clear speech, however, talkers often reduce their speaking rate significantly [Picheny et al., J. Speech Hear. Res. 29, 434-446 (1986); Uchanski et al., ibid. 39, 494-509 (1996)]. Yet speaking slowly is not solely responsible for the intelligibility benefit of clear speech (over conversational speech), since a recent study [Krause and Braida, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 112, 2165-2172 (2002)] showed that talkers can produce clear speech at normal rates with training. This finding suggests that clear speech has inherent acoustic properties, independent of rate, that contribute to improved intelligibility. Identifying these acoustic properties could lead to improved signal processing schemes for hearing aids. To gain insight into these acoustical properties, conversational and clear speech produced at normal speaking rates were analyzed at three levels of detail (global, phonological, and phonetic). Although results suggest that talkers may have employed different strategies to achieve clear speech at normal rates, two global-level properties were identified that appear likely to be linked to the improvements in intelligibility provided by clear/normal speech: increased energy in the 1000-3000-Hz range of long-term spectra and increased modulation depth of low frequency modulations of the intensity envelope. Other phonological and phonetic differences associated with clear/normal speech include changes in (1) frequency of stop burst releases, (2) VOT of word-initial voiceless stop consonants, and (3) short-term vowel spectra.

Conversational Responsiveness of Speech- and Language-Impaired Preschoolers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hadley, Pamela A.; Rice, Mabel L.

1991-01-01

This study of 18 preschoolers' conversational responsiveness in an integrated classroom setting during free play found that language-impaired and speech-impaired children were ignored by their peers and responded less often when a peer initiated to them. Results suggest that peer interaction difficulties may be concomitant consequences of early…

How our own speech rate influences our perception of others.

PubMed

Bosker, Hans Rutger

2017-08-01

In conversation, our own speech and that of others follow each other in rapid succession. Effects of the surrounding context on speech perception are well documented but, despite the ubiquity of the sound of our own voice, it is unknown whether our own speech also influences our perception of other talkers. This study investigated context effects induced by our own speech through 6 experiments, specifically targeting rate normalization (i.e., perceiving phonetic segments relative to surrounding speech rate). Experiment 1 revealed that hearing prerecorded fast or slow context sentences altered the perception of ambiguous vowels, replicating earlier work. Experiment 2 demonstrated that talking at a fast or slow rate prior to target presentation also altered target perception, though the effect of preceding speech rate was reduced. Experiment 3 showed that silent talking (i.e., inner speech) at fast or slow rates did not modulate the perception of others, suggesting that the effect of self-produced speech rate in Experiment 2 arose through monitoring of the external speech signal. Experiment 4 demonstrated that, when participants were played back their own (fast/slow) speech, no reduction of the effect of preceding speech rate was observed, suggesting that the additional task of speech production may be responsible for the reduced effect in Experiment 2. Finally, Experiments 5 and 6 replicate Experiments 2 and 3 with new participant samples. Taken together, these results suggest that variation in speech production may induce variation in speech perception, thus carrying implications for our understanding of spoken communication in dialogue settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Long-term temporal tracking of speech rate affects spoken-word recognition.

PubMed

Baese-Berk, Melissa M; Heffner, Christopher C; Dilley, Laura C; Pitt, Mark A; Morrill, Tuuli H; McAuley, J Devin

2014-08-01

Humans unconsciously track a wide array of distributional characteristics in their sensory environment. Recent research in spoken-language processing has demonstrated that the speech rate surrounding a target region within an utterance influences which words, and how many words, listeners hear later in that utterance. On the basis of hypotheses that listeners track timing information in speech over long timescales, we investigated the possibility that the perception of words is sensitive to speech rate over such a timescale (e.g., an extended conversation). Results demonstrated that listeners tracked variation in the overall pace of speech over an extended duration (analogous to that of a conversation that listeners might have outside the lab) and that this global speech rate influenced which words listeners reported hearing. The effects of speech rate became stronger over time. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that neural entrainment by speech occurs on multiple timescales, some lasting more than an hour. © The Author(s) 2014.

Accent Attribution in Speakers with Foreign Accent Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Verhoeven, Jo; De Pauw, Guy; Pettinato, Michele; Hirson, Allen; Van Borsel, John; Marien, Peter

2013-01-01

Purpose: The main aim of this experiment was to investigate the perception of Foreign Accent Syndrome in comparison to speakers with an authentic foreign accent. Method: Three groups of listeners attributed accents to conversational speech samples of 5 FAS speakers which were embedded amongst those of 5 speakers with a real foreign accent and 5…

Relatively effortless listening promotes understanding and recall of medical instructions in older adults

PubMed Central

DiDonato, Roberta M.; Surprenant, Aimée M.

2015-01-01

Communication success under adverse conditions requires efficient and effective recruitment of both bottom-up (sensori-perceptual) and top-down (cognitive-linguistic) resources to decode the intended auditory-verbal message. Employing these limited capacity resources has been shown to vary across the lifespan, with evidence indicating that younger adults out-perform older adults for both comprehension and memory of the message. This study examined how sources of interference arising from the speaker (message spoken with conversational vs. clear speech technique), the listener (hearing-listening and cognitive-linguistic factors), and the environment (in competing speech babble noise vs. quiet) interact and influence learning and memory performance using more ecologically valid methods than has been done previously. The results suggest that when older adults listened to complex medical prescription instructions with “clear speech,” (presented at audible levels through insertion earphones) their learning efficiency, immediate, and delayed memory performance improved relative to their performance when they listened with a normal conversational speech rate (presented at audible levels in sound field). This better learning and memory performance for clear speech listening was maintained even in the presence of speech babble noise. The finding that there was the largest learning-practice effect on 2nd trial performance in the conversational speech when the clear speech listening condition was first is suggestive of greater experience-dependent perceptual learning or adaptation to the speaker's speech and voice pattern in clear speech. This suggests that experience-dependent perceptual learning plays a role in facilitating the language processing and comprehension of a message and subsequent memory encoding. PMID:26106353

Multi-stream LSTM-HMM decoding and histogram equalization for noise robust keyword spotting.

PubMed

Wöllmer, Martin; Marchi, Erik; Squartini, Stefano; Schuller, Björn

2011-09-01

Highly spontaneous, conversational, and potentially emotional and noisy speech is known to be a challenge for today's automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems, which highlights the need for advanced algorithms that improve speech features and models. Histogram Equalization is an efficient method to reduce the mismatch between clean and noisy conditions by normalizing all moments of the probability distribution of the feature vector components. In this article, we propose to combine histogram equalization and multi-condition training for robust keyword detection in noisy speech. To better cope with conversational speaking styles, we show how contextual information can be effectively exploited in a multi-stream ASR framework that dynamically models context-sensitive phoneme estimates generated by a long short-term memory neural network. The proposed techniques are evaluated on the SEMAINE database-a corpus containing emotionally colored conversations with a cognitive system for "Sensitive Artificial Listening".

Emotion to emotion speech conversion in phoneme level

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bulut, Murtaza; Yildirim, Serdar; Busso, Carlos; Lee, Chul Min; Kazemzadeh, Ebrahim; Lee, Sungbok; Narayanan, Shrikanth

2004-10-01

Having an ability to synthesize emotional speech can make human-machine interaction more natural in spoken dialogue management. This study investigates the effectiveness of prosodic and spectral modification in phoneme level on emotion-to-emotion speech conversion. The prosody modification is performed with the TD-PSOLA algorithm (Moulines and Charpentier, 1990). We also transform the spectral envelopes of source phonemes to match those of target phonemes using LPC-based spectral transformation approach (Kain, 2001). Prosodic speech parameters (F0, duration, and energy) for target phonemes are estimated from the statistics obtained from the analysis of an emotional speech database of happy, angry, sad, and neutral utterances collected from actors. Listening experiments conducted with native American English speakers indicate that the modification of prosody only or spectrum only is not sufficient to elicit targeted emotions. The simultaneous modification of both prosody and spectrum results in higher acceptance rates of target emotions, suggesting that not only modeling speech prosody but also modeling spectral patterns that reflect underlying speech articulations are equally important to synthesize emotional speech with good quality. We are investigating suprasegmental level modifications for further improvement in speech quality and expressiveness.

Collaborative Signaling of Informational Structures by Dynamic Speech Rate.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koiso, Hanae; Shimojima, Atsushi; Katagiri, Yasuhiro

1998-01-01

Investigated the functions of dynamic speech rates as contextualization cues in conversational Japanese, examining five spontaneous task-oriented dialogs and analyzing the potential of speech-rate changes in signaling the structure of the information being exchanged. Results found a correlation between speech decelerations and the openings of new…

Speech Synthesis Applied to Language Teaching.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

Hello Harlie: Enabling Speech Monitoring Through Chat-Bot Conversations.

PubMed

Ireland, David; Atay, Christina; Liddle, Jacki; Bradford, Dana; Lee, Helen; Rushin, Olivia; Mullins, Thomas; Angus, Dan; Wiles, Janet; McBride, Simon; Vogel, Adam

2016-01-01

People with neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease and dementia are known to have difficulties in language and communication. This paper presents initial testing of an artificial conversational agent, called Harlie. Harlie runs on a smartphone and is able to converse with the user on a variety of topics. A description of the application and a sample dialog are provided to illustrate the various roles chat-bots can play in the management of neurological conditions. Harlie can be used for measuring voice and communication outcomes during the daily life of the user, and for gaining information about challenges encountered. Moreover, it is anticipated that she may also have an educational and support role.

Mining of Business-Oriented Conversations at a Call Center

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Takeuchi, Hironori; Nasukawa, Tetsuya; Watanabe, Hideo

Recently it has become feasible to transcribe textual records from telephone conversations at call centers by using automatic speech recognition. In this research, we extended a text mining system for call summary records and constructed a conversation mining system for the business-oriented conversations at the call center. To acquire useful business insights from the conversational data through the text mining system, it is critical to identify appropriate textual segments and expressions as the viewpoints to focus on. In the analysis of call summary data using a text mining system, some experts defined the viewpoints for the analysis by looking at some sample records and by preparing the dictionaries based on frequent keywords in the sample dataset. However with conversations it is difficult to identify such viewpoints manually and in advance because the target data consists of complete transcripts that are often lengthy and redundant. In this research, we defined a model of the business-oriented conversations and proposed a mining method to identify segments that have impacts on the outcomes of the conversations and can then extract useful expressions in each of these identified segments. In the experiment, we processed the real datasets from a car rental service center and constructed a mining system. With this system, we show the effectiveness of the method based on the defined conversation model.

Factors affecting articulation skills in children with velocardiofacial syndrome and children with cleft palate or velopharyngeal dysfunction: A preliminary report

PubMed Central

Baylis, Adriane L.; Munson, Benjamin; Moller, Karlind T.

2010-01-01

Objective To examine the influence of speech perception, cognition, and implicit phonological learning on articulation skills of children with Velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS) and children with cleft palate or velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD). Design Cross-sectional group experimental design. Participants 8 children with VCFS and 5 children with non-syndromic cleft palate or VPD. Methods and Measures All children participated in a phonetic inventory task, speech perception task, implicit priming nonword repetition task, conversational sample, nonverbal intelligence test, and hearing screening. Speech tasks were scored for percentage of phonemes correctly produced. Group differences and relations among measures were examined using nonparametric statistics. Results Children in the VCFS group demonstrated significantly poorer articulation skills and lower standard scores of nonverbal intelligence compared to the children with cleft palate or VPD. There were no significant group differences in speech perception skills. For the implicit priming task, both groups of children were more accurate in producing primed nonwords than unprimed nonwords. Nonverbal intelligence and severity of velopharyngeal inadequacy for speech were correlated with articulation skills. Conclusions In this study, children with VCFS had poorer articulation skills compared to children with cleft palate or VPD. Articulation difficulties seen in the children with VCFS did not appear to be associated with speech perception skills or the ability to learn new phonological representations. Future research should continue to examine relationships between articulation, cognition, and velopharyngeal dysfunction in a larger sample of children with cleft palate and VCFS. PMID:18333642

Problematic topic transitions in dysarthric conversation.

PubMed

Bloch, Steven; Saldert, Charlotta; Ferm, Ulrika

2015-01-01

This study examined the nature of topic transition problems associated with acquired progressive dysarthric speech in the everyday conversation of people with motor neurone disease. Using conversation analytic methods, a video collection of five naturally occurring problematic topic transitions was identified, transcribed and analysed. These were extracted from a main collection of over 200 other-initiated repair sequences and a sub-set of 15 problematic topic transition sequences. The sequences were analysed with reference to how the participants both identified and resolved the problems. Analysis revealed that topic transition by people with dysarthria can prove problematic. Conversation partners may find transitions problematic not only because of speech intelligibility but also because of a sequential disjuncture between the dysarthric speech turn and whatever topic has come prior. In addition the treatment of problematic topic transition as a complaint reveals the potential vulnerability of people with dysarthria to judgements of competence. These findings have implications for how dysarthria is conceptualized and how specific actions in conversation, such as topic transition, might be suitable targets for clinical intervention.

Using Others' Words: Conversational Use of Reported Speech by Individuals with Aphasia and Their Communication Partners.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hengst, Julie A.; Frame, Simone R.; Neuman-Stritzel, Tiffany; Gannaway, Rachel

2005-01-01

Reported speech, wherein one quotes or paraphrases the speech of another, has been studied extensively as a set of linguistic and discourse practices. Researchers agree that reported speech is pervasive, found across languages, and used in diverse contexts. However, to date, there have been no studies of the use of reported speech among…

Hybridizing Conversational and Clear Speech to Investigate the Source of Increased Intelligibility in Speakers with Parkinson's Disease

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tjaden, Kris; Kain, Alexander; Lam, Jennifer

2014-01-01

Purpose: A speech analysis-resynthesis paradigm was used to investigate segmental and suprasegmental acoustic variables explaining intelligibility variation for 2 speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD). Method: Sentences were read in conversational and clear styles. Acoustic characteristics from clear sentences were extracted and applied to…

Ranking Hearing Aid Input-Output Functions for Understanding Low-, Conversational-, and High-Level Speech in Multitalker Babble

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chung, King; Killion, Mead C.; Christensen, Laurel A.

2007-01-01

Purpose: To determine the rankings of 6 input-output functions for understanding low-level, conversational, and high-level speech in multitalker babble without manipulating volume control for listeners with normal hearing, flat sensorineural hearing loss, and mildly sloping sensorineural hearing loss. Method: Peak clipping, compression limiting,…

When "No" Means "Yes": Agreeing and Disagreeing in Indian English Discourse.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Valentine, Tamara M.

This study examined the speech act of agreement and disagreement in the ordinary conversation of English-speakers in India. Data were collected in natural speech elicited from educated, bilingual speakers in cross-sex and same-sex conversations in a range of formal and informal settings. Subjects' ages ranged from 19 to about 60. Five agreement…

Input, Output, and Negotiation of Meaning in Spanish Conversation Classes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rondon-Pari, Graziela

2014-01-01

This research study is based on the analysis of speech in three Spanish conversation classes. Research questions are: What is the ratio of English and Spanish spoken in class? Is classroom speech more predominant in students or the instructor? And, are teachers' beliefs in regards to the use of English and Spanish consistent with their classroom…

Entrainment of Prosody in the Interaction of Mothers with Their Young Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ko, Eon-Suk; Seidl, Amanda; Cristia, Alejandrina; Reimchen, Melissa; Soderstrom, Melanie

2016-01-01

Caregiver speech is not a static collection of utterances, but occurs in "conversational exchanges," in which caregiver and child dynamically influence each other's speech. We investigate (a) whether children and caregivers modulate the prosody of their speech as a function of their interlocutor's speech, and (b) the influence of the…

Children's Perception of Conversational and Clear American-English Vowels in Noise

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leone, Dorothy; Levy, Erika S.

2015-01-01

Purpose: Much of a child's day is spent listening to speech in the presence of background noise. Although accurate vowel perception is important for listeners' accurate speech perception and comprehension, little is known about children's vowel perception in noise. "Clear speech" is a speech style frequently used by talkers in the…

Dramatic Effects of Speech Task on Motor and Linguistic Planning in Severely Dysfluent Parkinsonian Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Lancker Sidtis, Diana; Cameron, Krista; Sidtis, John J.

2012-01-01

In motor speech disorders, dysarthric features impacting intelligibility, articulation, fluency and voice emerge more saliently in conversation than in repetition, reading or singing. A role of the basal ganglia in these task discrepancies has been identified. Further, more recent studies of naturalistic speech in basal ganglia dysfunction have…

Speech-recognition interfaces for music information retrieval

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Goto, Masataka

2005-09-01

This paper describes two hands-free music information retrieval (MIR) systems that enable a user to retrieve and play back a musical piece by saying its title or the artist's name. Although various interfaces for MIR have been proposed, speech-recognition interfaces suitable for retrieving musical pieces have not been studied. Our MIR-based jukebox systems employ two different speech-recognition interfaces for MIR, speech completion and speech spotter, which exploit intentionally controlled nonverbal speech information in original ways. The first is a music retrieval system with the speech-completion interface that is suitable for music stores and car-driving situations. When a user only remembers part of the name of a musical piece or an artist and utters only a remembered fragment, the system helps the user recall and enter the name by completing the fragment. The second is a background-music playback system with the speech-spotter interface that can enrich human-human conversation. When a user is talking to another person, the system allows the user to enter voice commands for music playback control by spotting a special voice-command utterance in face-to-face or telephone conversations. Experimental results from use of these systems have demonstrated the effectiveness of the speech-completion and speech-spotter interfaces. (Video clips: http://staff.aist.go.jp/m.goto/MIR/speech-if.html)

Judgments of Emotion in Clear and Conversational Speech by Young Adults with Normal Hearing and Older Adults with Hearing Impairment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morgan, Shae D.; Ferguson, Sarah Hargus

2017-01-01

Purpose: In this study, we investigated the emotion perceived by young listeners with normal hearing (YNH listeners) and older adults with hearing impairment (OHI listeners) when listening to speech produced conversationally or in a clear speaking style. Method: The first experiment included 18 YNH listeners, and the second included 10 additional…

How Our Own Speech Rate Influences Our Perception of Others

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bosker, Hans Rutger

2017-01-01

In conversation, our own speech and that of others follow each other in rapid succession. Effects of the surrounding context on speech perception are well documented but, despite the ubiquity of the sound of our own voice, it is unknown whether our own speech also influences our perception of other talkers. This study investigated context effects…

Relational Speech Timing in Dysarthria Associated with Cerebellar Lesions in Different Loci: Word Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vandana, V. P.; Manjula, R.

2006-01-01

Cerebellum plays an important role in speech motor control. Various tasks like sustained phonation, diadochokinesis and conversation have been used to tap the speech timing abilities of dysarthric clients with cerebellar lesion. It has recently been proposed that not all areas of the cerebellum may be involved in speech motor control; especially…

Women's Speech/Men's Speech: Does Forensic Training Make a Difference?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Larson, Suzanne; Vreeland, Amy L.

A study of cross examination speeches of males and females was conducted to determine gender differences in intercollegiate debate. The theory base for gender differences in speech is closely tied to the analysis of dyadic conversation. It is based on the belief that women are less forceful and dominant in cross examination, and will exhibit…

Reporting and Reacting: Concurrent Responses to Reported Speech.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holt, Elizabeth

2000-01-01

Uses conversation analysis to investigate reported speech in talk-in-interaction. Beginning with an examination of direct and indirect reported speech, the article highlights some of the design features of the former, and the sequential environments in which it occurs. (Author/VWL)

Long-term-average spectrum characteristics of Kunqu Opera singers' speaking, singing and stage speech.

PubMed

Dong, Li; Kong, Jiangping; Sundberg, Johan

2014-07-01

Long-term-average spectrum (LTAS) characteristics were analyzed for ten Kunqu Opera singers, two in each of five roles. Each singer performed singing, stage speech, and conversational speech. Differences between the roles and between their performances of these three conditions are examined. After compensating for Leq difference LTAS characteristics still differ between the roles but are similar for the three conditions, especially for Colorful face (CF) and Old man roles, and especially between reading and singing. The curves show no evidence of a singer's formant cluster peak, but the CF role demonstrates a speaker's formant peak near 3 kHz. The LTAS characteristics deviate markedly from non-singers' standard conversational speech as well as from those of Western opera singing.

Language and Social Dynamics

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-09-01

essays , online ads, books, lyrics , poems, speeches, and other text samples in English, Spanish, Arabic, and other languages. Finally, we have been...Note. Percentage refers to percent of total words that each category averages across multiple genres including conversations, essays , novels, etc...analyzing more than 50,000 admissions essays from more than 25,000 students over the last 4 years. We have been able to compare the language of

Multifaceted Communication Problems in Everyday Conversations Involving People with Parkinson’s Disease

PubMed Central

Saldert, Charlotta; Bauer, Malin

2017-01-01

It is known that Parkinson’s disease is often accompanied by a motor speech disorder, which results in impaired communication. However, people with Parkinson’s disease may also have impaired word retrieval (anomia) and other communicative problems, which have a negative impact on their ability to participate in conversations with family as well as healthcare staff. The aim of the present study was to explore effects of impaired speech and language on communication and how this is managed by people with Parkinson’s disease and their spouses. Using a qualitative method based on Conversation Analysis, in-depth analyses were performed on natural conversational interaction in five dyads including elderly men who were at different stages of Parkinson’s disease. The findings showed that the motor speech disorder in combination with word retrieval difficulties and adaptations, such as using communication strategies, may result in atypical utterances that are difficult for communication partners to understand. The coexistence of several communication problems compounds the difficulties faced in conversations and individuals with Parkinson’s disease are often dependent on cooperation with their communication partner to make themselves understood. PMID:28946714

Effects of Real-Time Cochlear Implant Simulation on Speech Perception and Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Casserly, Elizabeth D.

2013-01-01

Real-time use of spoken language is a fundamentally interactive process involving speech perception, speech production, linguistic competence, motor control, neurocognitive abilities such as working memory, attention, and executive function, environmental noise, conversational context, and--critically--the communicative interaction between…

The brain’s conversation with itself: neural substrates of dialogic inner speech

PubMed Central

Weis, Susanne; McCarthy-Jones, Simon; Moseley, Peter; Smailes, David; Fernyhough, Charles

2016-01-01

Inner speech has been implicated in important aspects of normal and atypical cognition, including the development of auditory hallucinations. Studies to date have focused on covert speech elicited by simple word or sentence repetition, while ignoring richer and arguably more psychologically significant varieties of inner speech. This study compared neural activation for inner speech involving conversations (‘dialogic inner speech’) with single-speaker scenarios (‘monologic inner speech’). Inner speech-related activation differences were then compared with activations relating to Theory-of-Mind (ToM) reasoning and visual perspective-taking in a conjunction design. Generation of dialogic (compared with monologic) scenarios was associated with a widespread bilateral network including left and right superior temporal gyri, precuneus, posterior cingulate and left inferior and medial frontal gyri. Activation associated with dialogic scenarios and ToM reasoning overlapped in areas of right posterior temporal cortex previously linked to mental state representation. Implications for understanding verbal cognition in typical and atypical populations are discussed. PMID:26197805

Effects of a Conversation-Based Intervention on the Linguistic Skills of Children with Motor Speech Disorders Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soto, Gloria; Clarke, Michael T.

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of a conversation-based intervention on the expressive vocabulary and grammatical skills of children with severe motor speech disorders and expressive language delay who use augmentative and alternative communication. Method: Eight children aged from 8 to 13 years participated in the study.…

Effects of a Conversation-Based Intervention on the Linguistic Skills of Children With Motor Speech Disorders Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication.

PubMed

Soto, Gloria; Clarke, Michael T

2017-07-12

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of a conversation-based intervention on the expressive vocabulary and grammatical skills of children with severe motor speech disorders and expressive language delay who use augmentative and alternative communication. Eight children aged from 8 to 13 years participated in the study. After a baseline period, a conversation-based intervention was provided for each participant, in which they were supported to learn and use linguistic structures essential for the formation of clauses and the grammaticalization of their utterances, such as pronouns, verbs, and bound morphemes, in the context of personally meaningful and scaffolded conversations with trained clinicians. The conversations were videotaped, transcribed, and analyzed using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; Miller & Chapman, 1991). Results indicate that participants showed improvements in their use of spontaneous clauses, and a greater use of pronouns, verbs, and bound morphemes. These improvements were sustained and generalized to conversations with familiar partners. The results demonstrate the positive effects of the conversation-based intervention for improving the expressive vocabulary and grammatical skills of children with severe motor speech disorders and expressive language delay who use augmentative and alternative communication. Clinical and theoretical implications of conversation-based interventions are discussed and future research needs are identified. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5150113.

Effects of a Conversation-Based Intervention on the Linguistic Skills of Children With Motor Speech Disorders Who Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication

PubMed Central

Clarke, Michael T.

2017-01-01

Purpose This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of a conversation-based intervention on the expressive vocabulary and grammatical skills of children with severe motor speech disorders and expressive language delay who use augmentative and alternative communication. Method Eight children aged from 8 to 13 years participated in the study. After a baseline period, a conversation-based intervention was provided for each participant, in which they were supported to learn and use linguistic structures essential for the formation of clauses and the grammaticalization of their utterances, such as pronouns, verbs, and bound morphemes, in the context of personally meaningful and scaffolded conversations with trained clinicians. The conversations were videotaped, transcribed, and analyzed using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; Miller & Chapman, 1991). Results Results indicate that participants showed improvements in their use of spontaneous clauses, and a greater use of pronouns, verbs, and bound morphemes. These improvements were sustained and generalized to conversations with familiar partners. Conclusion The results demonstrate the positive effects of the conversation-based intervention for improving the expressive vocabulary and grammatical skills of children with severe motor speech disorders and expressive language delay who use augmentative and alternative communication. Clinical and theoretical implications of conversation-based interventions are discussed and future research needs are identified. Supplemental Materials https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5150113 PMID:28672283

Developmental Differences in Speech Act Recognition: A Pragmatic Awareness Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Garcia, Paula

2004-01-01

With the growing acknowledgement of the importance of pragmatic competence in second language (L2) learning, language researchers have identified the comprehension of speech acts as they occur in natural conversation as essential to communicative competence (e.g. Bardovi-Harlig, 2001; Thomas, 1983). Nonconventional indirect speech acts are formed…

Neural Development of Networks for Audiovisual Speech Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dick, Anthony Steven; Solodkin, Ana; Small, Steven L.

2010-01-01

Everyday conversation is both an auditory and a visual phenomenon. While visual speech information enhances comprehension for the listener, evidence suggests that the ability to benefit from this information improves with development. A number of brain regions have been implicated in audiovisual speech comprehension, but the extent to which the…

Statistical Methods of Latent Structure Discovery in Child-Directed Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Panteleyeva, Natalya B.

2010-01-01

This dissertation investigates how distributional information in the speech stream can assist infants in the initial stages of acquisition of their native language phonology. An exploratory statistical analysis derives this information from the adult speech data in the corpus of conversations between adults and young children in Russian. Because…

Beat Gestures Modulate Auditory Integration in Speech Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biau, Emmanuel; Soto-Faraco, Salvador

2013-01-01

Spontaneous beat gestures are an integral part of the paralinguistic context during face-to-face conversations. Here we investigated the time course of beat-speech integration in speech perception by measuring ERPs evoked by words pronounced with or without an accompanying beat gesture, while participants watched a spoken discourse. Words…

Techniques for decoding speech phonemes and sounds: A concept

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Lokerson, D. C.; Holby, H. G.

1975-01-01

Techniques studied involve conversion of speech sounds into machine-compatible pulse trains. (1) Voltage-level quantizer produces number of output pulses proportional to amplitude characteristics of vowel-type phoneme waveforms. (2) Pulses produced by quantizer of first speech formants are compared with pulses produced by second formants.

Using others' words: conversational use of reported speech by individuals with aphasia and their communication partners.

PubMed

Hengst, Julie A; Frame, Simone R; Neuman-Stritzel, Tiffany; Gannaway, Rachel

2005-02-01

Reported speech, wherein one quotes or paraphrases the speech of another, has been studied extensively as a set of linguistic and discourse practices. Researchers agree that reported speech is pervasive, found across languages, and used in diverse contexts. However, to date, there have been no studies of the use of reported speech among individuals with aphasia. Grounded in an interactional sociolinguistic perspective, the study presented here documents and analyzes the use of reported speech by 7 adults with mild to moderately severe aphasia and their routine communication partners. Each of the 7 pairs was videotaped in 4 everyday activities at home or around the community, yielding over 27 hr of conversational interaction for analysis. A coding scheme was developed that identified 5 types of explicitly marked reported speech: direct, indirect, projected, indexed, and undecided. Analysis of the data documented reported speech as a common discourse practice used successfully by the individuals with aphasia and their communication partners. All participants produced reported speech at least once, and across all observations the target pairs produced 400 reported speech episodes (RSEs), 149 by individuals with aphasia and 251 by their communication partners. For all participants, direct and indirect forms were the most prevalent (70% of RSEs). Situated discourse analysis of specific episodes of reported speech used by 3 of the pairs provides detailed portraits of the diverse interactional, referential, social, and discourse functions of reported speech and explores ways that the pairs used reported speech to successfully frame talk despite their ongoing management of aphasia.

Speech Comprehension Difficulties in Chronic Tinnitus and Its Relation to Hyperacusis

PubMed Central

Vielsmeier, Veronika; Kreuzer, Peter M.; Haubner, Frank; Steffens, Thomas; Semmler, Philipp R. O.; Kleinjung, Tobias; Schlee, Winfried; Langguth, Berthold; Schecklmann, Martin

2016-01-01

Objective: Many 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 behavioral 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 Methods: Speech 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 assessments (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 for 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 with speech comprehension difficulties in noisy environments, but not with speech comprehension difficulties in general. Conclusion: Speech comprehension deficits are frequent among tinnitus patients. Whereas speech comprehension deficits in quiet environments are primarily due to peripheral hearing loss, speech comprehension deficits in noisy environments are related to both peripheral hearing loss and dysfunctional central auditory processing. Disturbed speech comprehension in noisy environments might be modulated by a central inhibitory deficit. In addition, attentional and cognitive aspects may play a role. PMID:28018209

Speech Comprehension Difficulties in Chronic Tinnitus and Its Relation to Hyperacusis.

PubMed

Vielsmeier, Veronika; Kreuzer, Peter M; Haubner, Frank; Steffens, Thomas; Semmler, Philipp R O; Kleinjung, Tobias; Schlee, Winfried; Langguth, Berthold; Schecklmann, Martin

2016-01-01

Objective: Many 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 behavioral 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 Methods: Speech 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 assessments (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 for 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 with speech comprehension difficulties in noisy environments, but not with speech comprehension difficulties in general. Conclusion: Speech comprehension deficits are frequent among tinnitus patients. Whereas speech comprehension deficits in quiet environments are primarily due to peripheral hearing loss, speech comprehension deficits in noisy environments are related to both peripheral hearing loss and dysfunctional central auditory processing. Disturbed speech comprehension in noisy environments might be modulated by a central inhibitory deficit. In addition, attentional and cognitive aspects may play a role.

Rhythm as a Coordinating Device: Entrainment With Disordered Speech

PubMed Central

Borrie, Stephanie A.; Liss, Julie M.

2014-01-01

Purpose The rhythmic entrainment (coordination) of behavior during human interaction is a powerful phenomenon, considered essential for successful communication, supporting social and emotional connection, and facilitating sense-making and information exchange. Disruption in entrainment likely occurs in conversations involving those with speech and language impairment, but its contribution to communication disorders has not been defined. As a first step to exploring this phenomenon in clinical populations, the present investigation examined the influence of disordered speech on the speech production properties of healthy interactants. Method Twenty-nine neurologically healthy interactants participated in a quasi-conversational paradigm, in which they read sentences (response) in response to hearing prerecorded sentences (exposure) from speakers with dysarthria (n = 4) and healthy controls (n = 4). Recordings of read sentences prior to the task were also collected (habitual). Results Findings revealed that interactants modified their speaking rate and pitch variation to align more closely with the disordered speech. Production shifts in these rhythmic properties, however, remained significantly different from corresponding properties in dysarthric speech. Conclusion Entrainment offers a new avenue for exploring speech and language impairment, addressing a communication process not currently explained by existing frameworks. This article offers direction for advancing this line of inquiry. PMID:24686410

Bidirectional clear speech perception benefit for native and high-proficiency non-native talkers and listeners: Intelligibility and accentednessa

PubMed Central

Smiljanić, Rajka; Bradlow, Ann R.

2011-01-01

This study investigated how native language background interacts with speaking style adaptations in determining levels of speech intelligibility. The aim was to explore whether native and high proficiency non-native listeners benefit similarly from native and non-native clear speech adjustments. The sentence-in-noise perception results revealed that fluent non-native listeners gained a large clear speech benefit from native clear speech modifications. Furthermore, proficient non-native talkers in this study implemented conversational-to-clear speaking style modifications in their second language (L2) that resulted in significant intelligibility gain for both native and non-native listeners. The results of the accentedness ratings obtained for native and non-native conversational and clear speech sentences showed that while intelligibility was improved, the presence of foreign accent remained constant in both speaking styles. This suggests that objective intelligibility and subjective accentedness are two independent dimensions of non-native speech. Overall, these results provide strong evidence that greater experience in L2 processing leads to improved intelligibility in both production and perception domains. These results also demonstrated that speaking style adaptations along with less signal distortion can contribute significantly towards successful native and non-native interactions. PMID:22225056

Treating Speech Comprehensibility in Students with Down Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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

2016-01-01

Purpose: This study examined whether a particular type of therapy (Broad Target Speech Recasts, BTSR) was superior to a contrast treatment in facilitating speech comprehensibility in conversations of students with Down syndrome who began treatment with initially high verbal imitation. Method: We randomly assigned 51 5- to 12-year-old students to…

Effect of Age on Silent Gap Discrimination in Synthetic Speech Stimuli.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lister, Jennifer; Tarver, Kenton

2004-01-01

The difficulty that older listeners experience understanding conversational speech may be related to their limited ability to use information present in the silent intervals (i.e., temporal gaps) between dynamic speech sounds. When temporal gaps are present between nonspeech stimuli that are spectrally invariant (e.g., noise bands or sinusoids),…

Not so fast: Fast speech correlates with lower lexical and structural information.

PubMed

Cohen Priva, Uriel

2017-03-01

Speakers dynamically adjust their speech rate throughout conversations. These adjustments have been linked to cognitive and communicative limitations: for example, speakers speak words that are contextually unexpected (and thus add more information) with slower speech rates. This raises the question whether limitations of this type vary wildly across speakers or are relatively constant. The latter predicts that across speakers (or conversations), speech rate and the amount of information content are inversely correlated: on average, speakers can either provide high information content or speak quickly, but not both. Using two corpus studies replicated across two corpora, I demonstrate that indeed, fast speech correlates with the use of less informative words and syntactic structures. Thus, while there are individual differences in overall information throughput, speakers are more similar in this aspect than differences in speech rate would suggest. The results suggest that information theoretic constraints on production operate at a higher level than was observed before and affect language throughout production, not only after words and structures are chosen. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Conversational Moves That Matter: Bridging Learning Outcomes and Patterns of Speech in Informal Cross-Organizational Conversations Among Top-Level Leaders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hartung, Kyle John; Wilson, Daniel Gray

2016-01-01

Cross-organizational "learning conversations" are an important source of informal learning among professionals, though little is known about whether specific characteristics of conversational interaction contribute to different learning outcomes in such conversations. This mixed-methods study examined the relationship between…

Investigating interactional competencies in Parkinson's disease: the potential benefits of a conversation analytic approach.

PubMed

Griffiths, Sarah; Barnes, Rebecca; Britten, Nicky; Wilkinson, Ray

2011-01-01

Around 70% of people who develop Parkinson's disease (PD) experience speech and voice changes. Clinicians often find that when asked about their primary communication concerns, PD clients will talk about the difficulties they have 'getting into' conversations. This is an important area for clients and it has implications for quality of life and clinical management. To review the extant literature on PD and communication impairments in order to reveal key topic areas, the range of methodologies applied, and any gaps in knowledge relating to PD and social interaction and how these might be usefully addressed. A systematic search of a number of key databases and available grey literatures regarding PD and communication impairment was conducted (including motor speech changes, intelligibility, cognitive/language changes) to obtain a sense of key areas and methodologies applied. Research applying conversation analysis in the field of communication disability was also reviewed to illustrate the value of this methodology in uncovering common interactional difficulties, and in revealing the use of strategic collaborative competencies in naturally occurring conversation. In addition, available speech and language therapy assessment and intervention approaches to PD were examined with a view to their effectiveness in promoting individualized intervention planning and advice-giving for everyday interaction. A great deal has been written about the deficits underpinning communication changes in PD and the impact of communication disability on the self and others as measured in a clinical setting. Less is known about what happens for this client group in everyday conversations outside of the clinic. Current speech and language therapy assessments and interventions focus on the individual and are largely impairment based or focused on compensatory speaker-oriented techniques. A conversation analysis approach would complement basic research on what actually happens in everyday conversation for people with PD and their co-participants. The potential benefits of a conversation analysis approach to communication disability in PD include enabling a shift in clinical focus from individual impairment onto strategic collaborative competencies. This would have implications for client-centred intervention planning and the development of new and complementary clinical resources addressing participation. The impact would be new and improved support for those living with the condition as well as their families and carers. © 2011 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists.

Objective eye-gaze behaviour during face-to-face communication with proficient alaryngeal speakers: a preliminary study.

PubMed

Evitts, Paul; Gallop, Robert

2011-01-01

There is a large body of research demonstrating the impact of visual information on speaker intelligibility in both normal and disordered speaker populations. However, there is minimal information on which specific visual features listeners find salient during conversational discourse. To investigate listeners' eye-gaze behaviour during face-to-face conversation with normal, laryngeal and proficient alaryngeal speakers. Sixty participants individually participated in a 10-min conversation with one of four speakers (typical laryngeal, tracheoesophageal, oesophageal, electrolaryngeal; 15 participants randomly assigned to one mode of speech). All speakers were > 85% intelligible and were judged to be 'proficient' by two certified speech-language pathologists. Participants were fitted with a head-mounted eye-gaze tracking device (Mobile Eye, ASL) that calculated the region of interest and mean duration of eye-gaze. Self-reported gaze behaviour was also obtained following the conversation using a 10 cm visual analogue scale. While listening, participants viewed the lower facial region of the oesophageal speaker more than the normal or tracheoesophageal speaker. Results of non-hierarchical cluster analyses showed that while listening, the pattern of eye-gaze was predominantly directed at the lower face of the oesophageal and electrolaryngeal speaker and more evenly dispersed among the background, lower face, and eyes of the normal and tracheoesophageal speakers. Finally, results show a low correlation between self-reported eye-gaze behaviour and objective regions of interest data. Overall, results suggest similar eye-gaze behaviour when healthy controls converse with normal and tracheoesophageal speakers and that participants had significantly different eye-gaze patterns when conversing with an oesophageal speaker. Results are discussed in terms of existing eye-gaze data and its potential implications on auditory-visual speech perception. © 2011 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists.

Functional assessment and treatment of perseverative speech about restricted topics in an adolescent with Asperger syndrome.

PubMed

Fisher, Wayne W; Rodriguez, Nicole M; Owen, Todd M

2013-01-01

A functional analysis showed that a 14-year-old boy with Asperger syndrome displayed perseverative speech (or "restricted interests") reinforced by attention. To promote appropriate speech in a turn-taking format, we implemented differential reinforcement (DR) of nonperseverative speech and DR of on-topic speech within a multiple schedule with stimuli that signaled the contingencies in effect and who was to select the topic. Both treatments reduced perseverative speech, but only DR of on-topic speech increased appropriate turn taking during conversation. Treatment effects were maintained when implemented by family members and novel therapists. © Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.

Temporal Context in Speech Processing and Attentional Stream Selection: A Behavioral and Neural Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Golumbic, Elana M. Zion; Poeppel, David; Schroeder, Charles E.

2012-01-01

The human capacity for processing speech is remarkable, especially given that information in speech unfolds over multiple time scales concurrently. Similarly notable is our ability to filter out of extraneous sounds and focus our attention on one conversation, epitomized by the "Cocktail Party" effect. Yet, the neural mechanisms underlying on-line…

Intelligibility of Noise-Adapted and Clear Speech in Child, Young Adult, and Older Adult Talkers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smiljanic, Rajka; Gilbert, Rachael C.

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study examined intelligibility of conversational and clear speech sentences produced in quiet and in noise by children, young adults, and older adults. Relative talker intelligibility was assessed across speaking styles. Method: Sixty-one young adult participants listened to sentences mixed with speech-shaped noise at -5 dB…

Relationship between Perceptual Ratings of Nasality and Nasometry in Children/adolescents with Cleft Palate and/or Velopharyngeal Dysfunction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sweeney, Triona; Sell, Debbie

2008-01-01

Background: Nasometry has supplemented perceptual assessments of nasality, using speech stimuli, which are devoid of nasal consonants. However, such speech stimuli are not representative of conversational speech. A weak relationship has been found in previous studies between perceptual ratings of hypernasality and nasalance scores for passages…

The Role of the Right Hemisphere in Speech Act Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holtgraves, Thomas

2012-01-01

In this research the role of the RH in the comprehension of speech acts (or illocutionary force) was examined. Two split-screen experiments were conducted in which participants made lexical decisions for lateralized targets after reading a brief conversation remark. On one-half of the trials the target word named the speech act performed with the…

A Method for Determining the Timing of Displaying the Speaker's Face and Captions for a Real-Time Speech-to-Caption System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kuroki, Hayato; Ino, Shuichi; Nakano, Satoko; Hori, Kotaro; Ifukube, Tohru

The authors of this paper have been studying a real-time speech-to-caption system using speech recognition technology with a “repeat-speaking” method. In this system, they used a “repeat-speaker” who listens to a lecturer's voice and then speaks back the lecturer's speech utterances into a speech recognition computer. The througoing system showed that the accuracy of the captions is about 97% in Japanese-Japanese conversion and the conversion time from voices to captions is about 4 seconds in English-English conversion in some international conferences. Of course it required a lot of costs to achieve these high performances. In human communications, speech understanding depends not only on verbal information but also on non-verbal information such as speaker's gestures, and face and mouth movements. So the authors found the idea to display information of captions and speaker's face movement images with a suitable way to achieve a higher comprehension after storing information once into a computer briefly. In this paper, we investigate the relationship of the display sequence and display timing between captions that have speech recognition errors and the speaker's face movement images. The results show that the sequence “to display the caption before the speaker's face image” improves the comprehension of the captions. The sequence “to display both simultaneously” shows an improvement only a few percent higher than the question sentence, and the sequence “to display the speaker's face image before the caption” shows almost no change. In addition, the sequence “to display the caption 1 second before the speaker's face shows the most significant improvement of all the conditions.

The words children hear: Picture books and the statistics for language learning

PubMed Central

Montag, Jessica L.; Jones, Michael N.; Smith, Linda B.

2015-01-01

Young children learn language from the speech they hear. Previous work suggests that the statistical diversity of words and of linguistic contexts is associated with better language outcomes. One potential source of lexical diversity is the text of picture books that caregivers read aloud to children. Many parents begin reading to their children shortly after birth, so this is potentially an important source of linguistic input for many children. We constructed a corpus of 100 children’s picture books and compared word type and token counts to a matched sample of child-directed speech. Overall, the picture books contained more unique word types than the child-directed speech. Further, individual picture books generally contained more unique word types than length-matched, child-directed conversations. The text of picture books may be an important source of vocabulary for young children, and these findings suggest a mechanism that underlies the language benefits associated with reading to children. PMID:26243292

Connected speech as a marker of disease progression in autopsy-proven Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Ahmed, Samrah; Haigh, Anne-Marie F; de Jager, Celeste A; Garrard, Peter

2013-12-01

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 over the three stages of disease in syntactic complexity, semantic and lexical content. The findings suggest, first, that there is a progressive disruption in language integrity, detectable from the prodromal stage in a subset of patients with Alzheimer's disease, and secondly that measures of semantic and lexical content and syntactic complexity best capture the global progression of linguistic impairment through the successive clinical stages of disease. The identification of disease-specific language impairment in prodromal Alzheimer's disease could enhance clinicians' ability to distinguish probable Alzheimer's disease from changes attributable to ageing, while longitudinal assessment could provide a simple approach to disease monitoring in therapeutic trials.

Perceived gender in clear and conversational speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Booz, Jaime A.

Although many studies have examined acoustic and sociolinguistic differences between male and female speech, the relationship between talker speaking style and perceived gender has not yet been explored. The present study attempts to determine whether clear speech, a style adopted by talkers who perceive some barrier to effective communication, shifts perceptions of femininity for male and female talkers. Much of our understanding of gender perception in voice and speech is based on sustained vowels or single words, eliminating temporal, prosodic, and articulatory cues available in more naturalistic, connected speech. Thus, clear and conversational sentence stimuli, selected from the 41 talkers of the Ferguson Clear Speech Database (Ferguson, 2004) were presented to 17 normal-hearing listeners, aged 18 to 30. They rated the talkers' gender using a visual analog scale with "masculine" and "feminine" endpoints. This response method was chosen to account for within-category shifts of gender perception by allowing nonbinary responses. Mixed-effects regression analysis of listener responses revealed a small but significant effect of speaking style, and this effect was larger for male talkers than female talkers. Because of the high degree of talker variability observed for talker gender, acoustic analyses of these sentences were undertaken to determine the relationship between acoustic changes in clear and conversational speech and perceived femininity. Results of these analyses showed that mean fundamental frequency (fo) and f o standard deviation were significantly correlated to perceived gender for both male and female talkers, and vowel space was significantly correlated only for male talkers. Speaking rate and breathiness measures (CPPS) were not significantly related for either group. Outcomes of this study indicate that adopting a clear speaking style is correlated with increases in perceived femininity. Although the increase was small, some changes associated with making adjustments to improve speech clarity have a larger impact on perceived femininity than others. Using a clear speech strategy alone may not be sufficient for a male speaker to be perceived as female, but could be used as one of many tools to help speakers achieve more "feminine" speech, in conjunction with more specific strategies targeting the acoustic parameters outlined in this study.

Effects of gender role self-discrepancies and self-perceived attractiveness on social anxiety for women across social situations.

PubMed

Howell, Ashley N; Weeks, Justin W

2017-01-01

Psychosocial factors, such as gender role norms, may impact how social anxiety disorder (SAD) is experienced and expressed in different social contexts for women. However to date, these factors have not been examined via experimental methodology. This was a cross-sectional, quasi-experimental controlled study. The current study included 48 highly socially anxious (HSA) women (70.9% meeting criteria for SAD) and examined the relationships among psychosocial factors (i.e. gender role self-discrepancies and self-perceived physical attractiveness), self-perceived social performance, and state anxiety, across two in vivo social tasks (i.e. conversation and opinion speech). On average, participants reported belief that they ought to be less feminine for the speech task and more masculine for both the conversation and speech tasks. Also, for the conversation task, only lower self-rated attractiveness predicted poorer self-perceived performance and greater post-task state anxiety, above gender role self-discrepancies and confederate gender. For the speech task, only greater self-discrepancy in prototypical masculine traits predicted poorer performance ratings, and it was related to greater state anxiety in anticipation of the task. For HSA women, psychosocial factors may play different roles in social anxiety across social contexts.

Effect of signal to noise ratio on the speech perception ability of older adults

PubMed Central

Shojaei, Elahe; Ashayeri, Hassan; Jafari, Zahra; Zarrin Dast, Mohammad Reza; Kamali, Koorosh

2016-01-01

Background: Speech perception ability depends on auditory and extra-auditory elements. The signal- to-noise ratio (SNR) is an extra-auditory element that has an effect on the ability to normally follow speech and maintain a conversation. Speech in noise perception difficulty is a common complaint of the elderly. In this study, the importance of SNR magnitude as an extra-auditory effect on speech perception in noise was examined in the elderly. Methods: The speech perception in noise test (SPIN) was conducted on 25 elderly participants who had bilateral low–mid frequency normal hearing thresholds at three SNRs in the presence of ipsilateral white noise. These participants were selected by available sampling method. Cognitive screening was done using the Persian Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) test. Results: Independent T- test, ANNOVA and Pearson Correlation Index were used for statistical analysis. There was a significant difference in word discrimination scores at silence and at three SNRs in both ears (p≤0.047). Moreover, there was a significant difference in word discrimination scores for paired SNRs (0 and +5, 0 and +10, and +5 and +10 (p≤0.04)). No significant correlation was found between age and word recognition scores at silence and at three SNRs in both ears (p≥0.386). Conclusion: Our results revealed that decreasing the signal level and increasing the competing noise considerably reduced the speech perception ability in normal hearing at low–mid thresholds in the elderly. These results support the critical role of SNRs for speech perception ability in the elderly. Furthermore, our results revealed that normal hearing elderly participants required compensatory strategies to maintain normal speech perception in challenging acoustic situations. PMID:27390712

What Does the Sleeping Brain Say? Syntax and Semantics of Sleep Talking in Healthy Subjects and in Parasomnia Patients.

PubMed

Arnulf, Isabelle; Uguccioni, Ginevra; Gay, Frederick; Baldayrou, Etienne; Golmard, Jean-Louis; Gayraud, Frederique; Devevey, Alain

2017-11-01

Speech is a complex function in humans, but the linguistic characteristics of sleep talking are unknown. We analyzed sleep-associated speech in adults, mostly (92%) during parasomnias. The utterances recorded during night-time video-polysomnography were analyzed for number of words, propositions and speech episodes, frequency, gaps and pauses (denoting turn-taking in the conversation), lemmatization, verbosity, negative/imperative/interrogative tone, first/second person, politeness, and abuse. Two hundred thirty-two subjects (aged 49.5 ± 20 years old; 41% women; 129 with rapid eye movement [REM] sleep behavior disorder and 87 with sleepwalking/sleep terrors, 15 healthy subjects, and 1 patient with sleep apnea speaking in non-REM sleep) uttered 883 speech episodes, containing 59% nonverbal utterance (mumbles, shouts, whispers, and laughs) and 3349 understandable words. The most frequent word was "No": negations represented 21.4% of clauses (more in non-REM sleep). Interrogations were found in 26% of speech episodes (more in non-REM sleep), and subordinate clauses were found in 12.9% of speech episodes. As many as 9.7% of clauses contained profanities (more in non-REM sleep). Verbal abuse lasted longer in REM sleep and was mostly directed toward insulting or condemning someone, whereas swearing predominated in non-REM sleep. Men sleep-talked more than women and used a higher proportion of profanities. Apparent turn-taking in the conversation respected the usual language gaps. Sleep talking parallels awake talking for syntax, semantics, and turn-taking in conversation, suggesting that the sleeping brain can function at a high level. Language during sleep is mostly a familiar, tensed conversation with inaudible others, suggestive of conflicts. © Sleep Research Society 2017. Published by Oxford University Press [on behalf of the Sleep Research Society]. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

Acoustics of Clear and Noise-Adapted Speech in Children, Young, and Older Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smiljanic, Rajka; Gilbert, Rachael C.

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study investigated acoustic-phonetic modifications produced in noise-adapted speech (NAS) and clear speech (CS) by children, young adults, and older adults. Method: Ten children (11-13 years of age), 10 young adults (18-29 years of age), and 10 older adults (60-84 years of age) read sentences in conversational and clear speaking…

Speech outcomes in Cantonese patients after glossectomy.

PubMed

Wong, Ripley Kit; Poon, Esther Sok-Man; Woo, Cynthia Yuen-Man; Chan, Sabina Ching-Shun; Wong, Elsa Siu-Ping; Chu, Ada Wai-Sze

2007-08-01

We sought to determine the major factors affecting speech production of Cantonese-speaking glossectomized patients. Error pattern was analyzed. Forty-one Cantonese-speaking subjects who had undergone glossectomy > or = 6 months previously were recruited. Speech production evaluation included (1) phonetic error analysis in nonsense syllable; (2) speech intelligibility in sentences evaluated by naive listeners; (3) overall speech intelligibility in conversation evaluated by experienced speech therapists. Patients receiving adjuvant radiotherapy had significantly poorer segmental and connected speech production. Total or subtotal glossectomy also resulted in poor speech outcomes. Patients having free flap reconstruction showed the best speech outcomes. Patients without lymph node metastasis had significantly better speech scores when compared with patients with lymph node metastasis. Initial consonant production had the worst scores, while vowel production was the least affected. Speech outcomes of Cantonese-speaking glossectomized patients depended on the severity of the disease. Initial consonants had the greatest effect on speech intelligibility.

The phonetics of talk in interaction--introduction to the special issue.

PubMed

Ogden, Richard

2012-03-01

This overview paper provides an introduction to work on naturally-occurring speech data, combining techniques of conversation analysis with techniques and methods from phonetics. The paper describes the development of the field, highlighting current challenges and progress in interdisciplinary work. It considers the role of quantification and its relationship to a qualitative methodology. It presents the conversation analytic notion of sequence as a version of context, and argues that sequences of talk constrain relevant phonetic design, and so provide one account for variability in naturally occurring speech. The paper also describes the manipulation of speech and language on many levels simultaneously. All of these themes occur and are explored in more detail in the papers contained in this special issue.

Influence of stuttering variation on talker group classification in preschool children: Preliminary findings

PubMed Central

Johnson, Kia N.; Karrass, Jan; Conture, Edward G.; Walden, Tedra

2010-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether variations in disfluencies of young children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) significantly change their talker group classification or diagnosis from stutterer to nonstutterer, and vice versa. Participants consisted of 17 3- to 5-year-old CWS and 9 3- to 5-year-old CWNS, with no statistically significant between-group difference in chronological age (CWS: M = 45.53 months, SD = 8.32; CWNS: M = 47.67 months, SD = 6.69). All participants had speech, language, and hearing development within normal limits, with the exception of stuttering for CWS. Both talker groups participated in a series of speaking samples that varied by: (a) conversational partner [parent and clinician], (b) location [home and clinic], and (c) context [conversation and narrative]. The primary dependent measures for this study were the number of stuttering-like disfluencies (SLD) per total number of spoken words [%SLD] and the ratio of SLD to total disfluencies (TD) [SLD/TD]. Results indicated that significant variability of stuttering did not exist as a result of conversational partner or location. Changes in context, however, did impact the CWS, who demonstrated higher SLD/TD in the conversation sample versus a narrative sample. Consistent with hypotheses, CWS and CWNS were accurately identified as stutterers and nonstutterers, respectively, regardless of changes to conversational partner, location or context for the overall participant sample. Present findings were taken to suggest that during assessment, variations in stuttering frequency resulting from changes in conversational partner, location or context do not significantly influence the diagnosis of stuttering, especially for children not on the talker group classification borderline between CWS and CWNS. PMID:19167719

Using Video Modeling to Increase Variation in the Conversation of Children with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Charlop, Marjorie H.; Gilmore, Laura; Chang, Gina T.

2009-01-01

The present study assessed the effects of video modeling on acquisition and generalization of variation in the conversational speech of two boys with autism. A video was made showing several versions of several topics of conversation, thus providing multiple exemplars of each conversation. Video modeling consisted of showing each child a video…

Effects of Conversational Pressures on Speech Planning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Swets, Benjamin; Jacovina, Matthew E.; Gerrig, Richard J.

2013-01-01

In ordinary conversation, speakers experience pressures both to produce utterances suited to particular addressees and to do so with minimal delay. To document the impact of these conversational pressures, our experiment asked participants to produce brief utterances to describe visual displays. We complicated utterance planning by including…

Duration of the speech disfluencies of beginning stutterers.

PubMed

Zebrowski, P M

1991-06-01

This study compared the duration of within-word disfluencies and the number of repeated units per instance of sound/syllable and whole-word repetitions of beginning stutterers to those produced by age- and sex-matched nonstuttering children. Subjects were 10 stuttering children [9 males and 1 female; mean age 4:1 (years:months); age range 3:2-5:1), and 10 nonstuttering children (9 males and 1 female; mean age 4:0; age range: 2:10-5:1). Mothers of the stuttering children reported that their children had been stuttering for 1 year or less. One 300-word conversational speech sample from each of the stuttering and nonstuttering children was analyzed for (a) mean duration of sound/syllable repetition and sound prolongation, (b) mean number of repeated units per instance of sound/syllable and whole-word repetition, and (c) various related measures of the frequency of all between- and within-word speech disfluencies. There were no significant between-group differences for either the duration of acoustically measured sound/syllable repetitions and sound prolongations or the number of repeated units per instance of sound/syllable and whole-word repetition. Unlike frequency and type of speech disfluency produced, average duration of within-word disfluencies and number of repeated units per repetition do not differentiate the disfluent speech of beginning stutterers and their nonstuttering peers. Additional analyses support findings from previous perceptual work that type and frequency of speech disfluency, not duration, are the principal characteristics listeners use in distinguishing these two talker groups.

Conversation Analysis.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schiffrin, Deborah

1990-01-01

Summarizes the current state of research in conversation analysis, referring primarily to six different perspectives that have developed from the philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and linguistics disciplines. These include pragmatics; speech act theory; interactional sociolinguistics; ethnomethodology; ethnography of communication; and…

An oscillator model of the timing of turn-taking.

PubMed

Wilson, Margaret; Wilson, Thomas P

2005-12-01

When humans talk without conventionalized arrangements, they engage in conversation--that is, a continuous and largely nonsimultaneous exchange in which speakers take turns. Turn-taking is ubiquitous in conversation and is the normal case against which alternatives, such as interruptions, are treated as violations that warrant repair. Furthermore, turn-taking involves highly coordinated timing, including a cyclic rise and fall in the probability of initiating speech during brief silences, and involves the notable rarity, especially in two-party conversations, of two speakers' breaking a silence at once. These phenomena, reported by conversation analysts, have been neglected by cognitive psychologists, and to date there has been no adequate cognitive explanation. Here, we propose that, during conversation, endogenous oscillators in the brains of the speaker and the listeners become mutually entrained, on the basis of the speaker's rate of syllable production. This entrained cyclic pattern governs the potential for initiating speech at any given instant for the speaker and also for the listeners (as potential next speakers). Furthermore, the readiness functions of the listeners are counterphased with that of the speaker, minimizing the likelihood of simultaneous starts by a listener and the previous speaker. This mutual entrainment continues for a brief period when the speech stream ceases, accounting for the cyclic property of silences. This model not only captures the timing phenomena observed inthe literature on conversation analysis, but also converges with findings from the literatures on phoneme timing, syllable organization, and interpersonal coordination.

Joint Dictionary Learning-Based Non-Negative Matrix Factorization for Voice Conversion to Improve Speech Intelligibility After Oral Surgery.

PubMed

Fu, Szu-Wei; Li, Pei-Chun; Lai, Ying-Hui; Yang, Cheng-Chien; Hsieh, Li-Chun; Tsao, Yu

2017-11-01

Objective: This paper focuses on machine learning based voice conversion (VC) techniques for improving the speech intelligibility of surgical patients who have had parts of their articulators removed. Because of the removal of parts of the articulator, a patient's speech may be distorted and difficult to understand. To overcome this problem, VC methods can be applied to convert the distorted speech such that it is clear and more intelligible. To design an effective VC method, two key points must be considered: 1) the amount of training data may be limited (because speaking for a long time is usually difficult for postoperative patients); 2) rapid conversion is desirable (for better communication). Methods: We propose a novel joint dictionary learning based non-negative matrix factorization (JD-NMF) algorithm. Compared to conventional VC techniques, JD-NMF can perform VC efficiently and effectively with only a small amount of training data. Results: The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed JD-NMF method not only achieves notably higher short-time objective intelligibility (STOI) scores (a standardized objective intelligibility evaluation metric) than those obtained using the original unconverted speech but is also significantly more efficient and effective than a conventional exemplar-based NMF VC method. Conclusion: The proposed JD-NMF method may outperform the state-of-the-art exemplar-based NMF VC method in terms of STOI scores under the desired scenario. Significance: We confirmed the advantages of the proposed joint training criterion for the NMF-based VC. Moreover, we verified that the proposed JD-NMF can effectively improve the speech intelligibility scores of oral surgery patients. Objective: This paper focuses on machine learning based voice conversion (VC) techniques for improving the speech intelligibility of surgical patients who have had parts of their articulators removed. Because of the removal of parts of the articulator, a patient's speech may be distorted and difficult to understand. To overcome this problem, VC methods can be applied to convert the distorted speech such that it is clear and more intelligible. To design an effective VC method, two key points must be considered: 1) the amount of training data may be limited (because speaking for a long time is usually difficult for postoperative patients); 2) rapid conversion is desirable (for better communication). Methods: We propose a novel joint dictionary learning based non-negative matrix factorization (JD-NMF) algorithm. Compared to conventional VC techniques, JD-NMF can perform VC efficiently and effectively with only a small amount of training data. Results: The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed JD-NMF method not only achieves notably higher short-time objective intelligibility (STOI) scores (a standardized objective intelligibility evaluation metric) than those obtained using the original unconverted speech but is also significantly more efficient and effective than a conventional exemplar-based NMF VC method. Conclusion: The proposed JD-NMF method may outperform the state-of-the-art exemplar-based NMF VC method in terms of STOI scores under the desired scenario. Significance: We confirmed the advantages of the proposed joint training criterion for the NMF-based VC. Moreover, we verified that the proposed JD-NMF can effectively improve the speech intelligibility scores of oral surgery patients.

Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ten Have, Paul

Noting that conversation analysis (CA) has developed into one of the major methods of analyzing speech in the disciplines of communications, linguistics, anthropology and sociology, this book demonstrates in a practical way how to become a conversation analyst. As well as providing an overall introduction to the approach, it focuses on the…

Making sense of progressive non-fluent aphasia: an analysis of conversational speech

PubMed Central

Woollams, Anna M.; Hodges, John R.; Patterson, Karalyn

2009-01-01

The speech of patients with progressive non-fluent aphasia (PNFA) has often been described clinically, but these descriptions lack support from quantitative data. The clinical classification of the progressive aphasic syndromes is also debated. This study selected 15 patients with progressive aphasia on broad criteria, excluding only those with clear semantic dementia. It aimed to provide a detailed quantitative description of their conversational speech, along with cognitive testing and visual rating of structural brain imaging, and to examine which, if any features were consistently present throughout the group; as well as looking for sub-syndromic associations between these features. A consistent increase in grammatical and speech sound errors and a simplification of spoken syntax relative to age-matched controls were observed, though telegraphic speech was rare; slow speech was common but not universal. Almost all patients showed impairments in picture naming, syntactic comprehension and executive function. The degree to which speech was affected was independent of the severity of the other cognitive deficits. A partial dissociation was also observed between slow speech with simplified grammar on the one hand, and grammatical and speech sound errors on the other. Overlap between these sets of impairments was however, the rule rather than the exception, producing continuous variation within a single consistent syndrome. The distribution of atrophy was remarkably variable, with frontal, temporal and medial temporal areas affected, either symmetrically or asymmetrically. The study suggests that PNFA is a coherent, well-defined syndrome and that varieties such as logopaenic progressive aphasia and progressive apraxia of speech may be seen as points in a space of continuous variation within progressive non-fluent aphasia. PMID:19696033

From the analysis of verbal data to the analysis of organizations: organizing as a dialogical process.

PubMed

Lorino, Philippe

2014-12-01

The analysis of conversational turn-taking and its implications on time (the speaker cannot completely anticipate the future effects of her/his speech) and sociality (the speech is co-produced by the various speakers rather than by the speaking individual) can provide a useful basis to analyze complex organizing processes and collective action: the actor cannot completely anticipate the future effects of her/his acts and the act is co-produced by multiple actors. This translation from verbal to broader classes of interaction stresses the performativity of speeches, the importance of the situation, the role of semiotic mediations to make temporally and spatially distant "ghosts" present in the dialog, and the dissymmetrical relationship between successive conversational turns, due to temporal irreversibility.

Letter Knowledge in Parent–Child Conversations

PubMed Central

Robins, Sarah; Treiman, Rebecca; Rosales, Nicole

2014-01-01

Learning about letters is an important component of emergent literacy. We explored the possibility that parent speech provides information about letters, and also that children’s speech reflects their own letter knowledge. By studying conversations transcribed in CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000) between parents and children aged one to five, we found that alphabetic order influenced use of individual letters and letter sequences. The frequency of letters in children’s books influenced parent utterances throughout the age range studied, but children’s utterances only after age two. Conversations emphasized some literacy-relevant features of letters, such as their shapes and association with words, but not letters’ sounds. Describing these patterns and how they change over the preschool years offers important insight into the home literacy environment. PMID:25598577

Priming motivation through unattended speech.

PubMed

Radel, Rémi; Sarrazin, Philippe; Jehu, Marie; Pelletier, Luc

2013-12-01

This study examines whether motivation can be primed through unattended speech. Study 1 used a dichotic-listening paradigm and repeated strength measures. In comparison to the baseline condition, in which the unattended channel was only composed by neutral words, the presence of words related to high (low) intensity of motivation led participants to exert more (less) strength when squeezing a hand dynamometer. In a second study, a barely audible conversation was played while participants' attention was mobilized on a demanding task. Participants who were exposed to a conversation depicting intrinsic motivation performed better and persevered longer in a subsequent word-fragment completion task than those exposed to the same conversation made unintelligible. These findings suggest that motivation can be primed without attention. © 2013 The British Psychological Society.

THE COMPREHENSION OF RAPID SPEECH BY THE BLIND, PART III.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

FOULKE, EMERSON

A REVIEW OF THE RESEARCH ON THE COMPREHENSION OF RAPID SPEECH BY THE BLIND IDENTIFIES FIVE METHODS OF SPEECH COMPRESSION--SPEECH CHANGING, ELECTROMECHANICAL SAMPLING, COMPUTER SAMPLING, SPEECH SYNTHESIS, AND FREQUENCY DIVIDING WITH THE HARMONIC COMPRESSOR. THE SPEECH CHANGING AND ELECTROMECHANICAL SAMPLING METHODS AND THE NECESSARY APPARATUS HAVE…

Regional Phonological Variants in Louisiana Speech.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rubrecht, August Weston

Based on tape recorded conversations of 28 informants in 18 Louisiana communities, this study investigated regional phonological variants in Louisiana speech. On the basis of settlement history and previous dialect studies, four regions are defined: northern Louisiana, the Florida Parishes, French Louisiana, and New Orleans. The informants are all…

Discovering Communicative Competencies in a Nonspeaking Child with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stiegler, Lillian N.

2007-01-01

Purpose: This article is intended to demonstrate that adapted conversation analysis (CA) and speech act analysis (SAA) may be applied by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to (a) identify communicative competencies in nonspeaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially during particularly successful interactions, and (b) identify…

Connected speech as a marker of disease progression in autopsy-proven Alzheimer’s disease

PubMed Central

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 over the three stages of disease in syntactic complexity, semantic and lexical content. The findings suggest, first, that there is a progressive disruption in language integrity, detectable from the prodromal stage in a subset of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and secondly that measures of semantic and lexical content and syntactic complexity best capture the global progression of linguistic impairment through the successive clinical stages of disease. The identification of disease-specific language impairment in prodromal Alzheimer’s disease could enhance clinicians’ ability to distinguish probable Alzheimer’s disease from changes attributable to ageing, while longitudinal assessment could provide a simple approach to disease monitoring in therapeutic trials. PMID:24142144

An Informally Annotated Bibliography of Sociolinguistics.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tannen, Deborah

This annotated bibliography of sociolinguistics is divided into the following sections: speech events, ethnography of speaking and anthropological approaches to analysis of conversation; discourse analysis (including analysis of conversation and narrative), ethnomethodology and nonverbal communication; sociolinguistics; pragmatics (including…

A framework for communication between visually impaired, hearing impaired and speech impaired using arduino

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sujatha, R.; Khandelwa, Prakhar; Gupta, Anusha; Anand, Nayan

2017-11-01

A long time ago our society accepted the notion of treating people with disabilities not as unviable and disabled but as differently-abled, recognizing their skills beyond their disabilities. The next step has to be taken by our scientific community, that is, to normalize lives of the people with disabilities and make it so as if they are no different to us. The primary step in this direction would be to normalize communication between people. People with an impaired speech or impaired vision or impaired hearing face difficulties while having a casual conversation with others. Any form of communication feels so strenuous that the impaired end up communicating just the important information and avoid a casual conversation. To normalize conversation between the impaired we need a simple and compact device which facilitates the conversation by providing the information in the desired form.

A Conversation Analysis-Informed Test of L2 Aural Pragmatic Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walters, F. Scott

2009-01-01

Speech act theory-based, second language pragmatics testing (SLPT) raises test-validation issues owing to a lack of correspondence with empirical conversational data. On the assumption that conversation analysis (CA) provides a more accurate account of language use, it is suggested that CA serve as a more empirically valid basis for SLPT…

The Effectiveness of the High-Tech Speech-Generating Device with Proloquo2Go App in Reducing Echolalia Utterances in a Student with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alrusayni, Norah

2017-01-01

This study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of using the high-tech speech-generating device with Proloquo2Go app to reduce echolalic utterances in a student with autism during conversational speech. After observing that the iPad device with several apps was used by the students and that it served as a communication device, language…

Disordered speech disrupts conversational entrainment: a study of acoustic-prosodic entrainment and communicative success in populations with communication challenges

PubMed Central

Borrie, Stephanie A.; Lubold, Nichola; Pon-Barry, Heather

2015-01-01

Conversational entrainment, a pervasive communication phenomenon in which dialogue partners adapt their behaviors to align more closely with one another, is considered essential for successful spoken interaction. While well-established in other disciplines, this phenomenon has received limited attention in the field of speech pathology and the study of communication breakdowns in clinical populations. The current study examined acoustic-prosodic entrainment, as well as a measure of communicative success, in three distinctly different dialogue groups: (i) healthy native vs. healthy native speakers (Control), (ii) healthy native vs. foreign-accented speakers (Accented), and (iii) healthy native vs. dysarthric speakers (Disordered). Dialogue group comparisons revealed significant differences in how the groups entrain on particular acoustic–prosodic features, including pitch, intensity, and jitter. Most notably, the Disordered dialogues were characterized by significantly less acoustic-prosodic entrainment than the Control dialogues. Further, a positive relationship between entrainment indices and communicative success was identified. These results suggest that the study of conversational entrainment in speech pathology will have essential implications for both scientific theory and clinical application in this domain. PMID:26321996

Coordinated interpersonal timing in the conversations of children who stutter and their mothers and fathers.

PubMed

Savelkoul, Eileen M; Zebrowski, Patricia M; Feldstein, Stanley; Cole-Harding, Shirley

2007-01-01

Coordinated interpersonal timing (CIT) is a measure of "conversational congruence," or "attunement," and refers to the degree to which the temporal aspects of the vocal behaviors of co-conversationalists are correlated over the course of a conversation [Jasnow, M., & Feldstein, S. (1986). Adult-like temporal characteristics of mother-infant vocal interaction. Child Development, 57, 754-761]. In the present study, CIT was examined in a group of children who stutter (CWS), and a matched group of nonstuttering children (CWDNS; children who do not stutter), during conversations with either their mother or father recorded in two separate sessions (i.e., mother-child, father-child). Separate audio signals for both the child and parent (mother or father) were analyzed using AVTA software, which allowed for the quantification of sound and silence patterns in simultaneous speech. Squared cross-correlations (i.e., coefficients of CIT) for the durations of five vocal behavior states were obtained for each subject, through time series regression analysis using lag procedures. Vocal state behaviors within conversational turns included: vocalization, pauses, turn switching pauses, and interruptive and noninterruptive simultaneous speech. Results indicated that CWS and their parents showed mutual influence (i.e., CIT in both directions, child to parent and parent to child, or bi-directional influence) for more vocal state behaviors than did CWDNS and their parents. In addition, the CWS exhibited CIT with their parents for the durations of more vocal state behaviors than did the CWDNS (i.e., unidirectional influence). Findings suggest that children who stutter may be more easily influenced by the subtle timing aspects of conversation. Taken further, some of these children may perceive conversations with their parents as either challenging or difficult because of an element of unpredictability brought into conversations by the production of stuttering, the social skills of the child, and the nature of the parent-child relationship. Consequently, these children may be engaging in more pervasive coordination of the temporal characteristics of their speech to those of their conversational partner, as a mechanism by which to more effectively manage verbal interaction. After reading this paper, the learner will be able to: (1) describe the phenomenon of coordinated interpersonal timing (CIT); (2) summarize research findings in CIT as they apply to the verbal interactions of children and their parents; (3) summarize research findings in parent-stuttering child interaction, especially those related to the temporal aspects of both parent and child conversational speech, and (4) discuss the applicability of the findings from the present study to the treatment of childhood stuttering.

How age and linguistic competence alter the interplay of perceptual and cognitive factors when listening to conversations in a noisy environment

PubMed Central

Avivi-Reich, Meital; Daneman, Meredyth; Schneider, Bruce A.

2013-01-01

Multi-talker conversations challenge the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of older adults and those listening in their second language (L2). In older adults these difficulties could reflect declines in the auditory, cognitive, or linguistic processes supporting speech comprehension. The tendency of L2 listeners to invoke some of the semantic and syntactic processes from their first language (L1) may interfere with speech comprehension in L2. These challenges might also force them to reorganize the ways in which they perceive and process speech, thereby altering the balance between the contributions of bottom-up vs. top-down processes to speech comprehension. Younger and older L1s as well as young L2s listened to conversations played against a babble background, with or without spatial separation between the talkers and masker, when the spatial positions of the stimuli were specified either by loudspeaker placements (real location), or through use of the precedence effect (virtual location). After listening to a conversation, the participants were asked to answer questions regarding its content. Individual hearing differences were compensated for by creating the same degree of difficulty in identifying individual words in babble. Once compensation was applied, the number of questions correctly answered increased when a real or virtual spatial separation was introduced between babble and talkers. There was no evidence that performance differed between real and virtual locations. The contribution of vocabulary knowledge to dialog comprehension was found to be larger in the virtual conditions than in the real whereas the contribution of reading comprehension skill did not depend on the listening environment but rather differed as a function of age and language proficiency. The results indicate that the acoustic scene and the cognitive and linguistic competencies of listeners modulate how and when top-down resources are engaged in aid of speech comprehension. PMID:24578684

How age and linguistic competence alter the interplay of perceptual and cognitive factors when listening to conversations in a noisy environment.

PubMed

Avivi-Reich, Meital; Daneman, Meredyth; Schneider, Bruce A

2014-01-01

Multi-talker conversations challenge the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of older adults and those listening in their second language (L2). In older adults these difficulties could reflect declines in the auditory, cognitive, or linguistic processes supporting speech comprehension. The tendency of L2 listeners to invoke some of the semantic and syntactic processes from their first language (L1) may interfere with speech comprehension in L2. These challenges might also force them to reorganize the ways in which they perceive and process speech, thereby altering the balance between the contributions of bottom-up vs. top-down processes to speech comprehension. Younger and older L1s as well as young L2s listened to conversations played against a babble background, with or without spatial separation between the talkers and masker, when the spatial positions of the stimuli were specified either by loudspeaker placements (real location), or through use of the precedence effect (virtual location). After listening to a conversation, the participants were asked to answer questions regarding its content. Individual hearing differences were compensated for by creating the same degree of difficulty in identifying individual words in babble. Once compensation was applied, the number of questions correctly answered increased when a real or virtual spatial separation was introduced between babble and talkers. There was no evidence that performance differed between real and virtual locations. The contribution of vocabulary knowledge to dialog comprehension was found to be larger in the virtual conditions than in the real whereas the contribution of reading comprehension skill did not depend on the listening environment but rather differed as a function of age and language proficiency. The results indicate that the acoustic scene and the cognitive and linguistic competencies of listeners modulate how and when top-down resources are engaged in aid of speech comprehension.

Prosody Production and Perception with Conversational Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mo, Yoonsook

2010-01-01

Speech utterances are more than the linear concatenation of individual phonemes or words. They are organized by prosodic structures comprising phonological units of different sizes (e.g., syllable, foot, word, and phrase) and the prominence relations among them. As the linguistic structure of spoken languages, prosody serves an important function…

Laughter among Deaf Signers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Provine, Robert R.; Emmorey, Karen

2006-01-01

The placement of laughter in the speech of hearing individuals is not random but "punctuates" speech, occurring during pauses and at phrase boundaries where punctuation would be placed in a transcript of a conversation. For speakers, language is dominant in the competition for the vocal tract since laughter seldom interrupts spoken phrases. For…

How Do Chinese Speakers of English Manage Rapport in Extended Concurrent Speech?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhu, Weihua

2017-01-01

Little research has focused on extended concurrent speech, unexpected floor taking, or topic switching, since it has been deemed rare (Schegloff 2000. "Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation." "Language in Society" 29(1). 1-63.) or inappropriate (Goldberg 1990." Interrupting the discourse on…

Listener Reliability in Assigning Utterance Boundaries in Children's Spontaneous Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stockman, Ida J.

2010-01-01

Research and clinical practices often rely on an utterance unit for spoken language analysis. This paper calls attention to the problems encountered when identifying utterance boundaries in young children's spontaneous conversational speech. The results of a reliability study of utterance boundary assignment are described for 20 females with…

Preschoolers Who Do and Do Not Stutter

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walsh, Bridget; Smith, Anne

2013-01-01

Purpose: In this study, the authors determined whether basic patterns of muscle activation for speech were similar in preschool children who stutter and in their fluent peers. Method: Right and left lower lip muscle activity were recorded during conversational speech and sentence repetition in 64 preschool children diagnosed as stuttering (CWS)…

The Great Communicator Files

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cohen, Mira

2007-01-01

American presidents are regularly called upon to share their thoughts, ideas, and sentiments both with the nation and the world. This prompts the questions: How are these speeches written? Who writes them? What other resources, texts, conversations, and experiences do presidents use to help them create these famous speeches? Who helps the…

The Relationship between Psychopathology and Speech and Language Disorders in Neurologic Patients.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sapir, Shimon; Aronson, Arnold E.

1990-01-01

This paper reviews findings that suggest a causal relationship between depression, anxiety, or conversion reaction and voice, speech, and language disorders in neurologic patients. The paper emphasizes the need to consider the psychosocial and psychopathological aspects of neurologic communicative disorders, the link between emotional and…

Toward diagnostic and phenotype markers for genetically transmitted speech delay.

PubMed

Shriberg, Lawrence D; Lewis, Barbara A; Tomblin, J Bruce; McSweeny, Jane L; Karlsson, Heather B; Scheer, Alison R

2005-08-01

Converging evidence supports the hypothesis that the most common subtype of childhood speech sound disorder (SSD) of currently unknown origin is genetically transmitted. We report the first findings toward a set of diagnostic markers to differentiate this proposed etiological subtype (provisionally termed speech delay-genetic) from other proposed subtypes of SSD of unknown origin. Conversational speech samples from 72 preschool children with speech delay of unknown origin from 3 research centers were selected from an audio archive. Participants differed on the number of biological, nuclear family members (0 or 2+) classified as positive for current and/or prior speech-language disorder. Although participants in the 2 groups were found to have similar speech competence, as indexed by their Percentage of Consonants Correct scores, their speech error patterns differed significantly in 3 ways. Compared with children who may have reduced genetic load for speech delay (no affected nuclear family members), children with possibly higher genetic load (2+ affected members) had (a) a significantly higher proportion of relative omission errors on the Late-8 consonants; (b) a significantly lower proportion of relative distortion errors on these consonants, particularly on the sibilant fricatives /s/, /z/, and //; and (c) a significantly lower proportion of backed /s/ distortions, as assessed by both perceptual and acoustic methods. Machine learning routines identified a 3-part classification rule that included differential weightings of these variables. The classification rule had diagnostic accuracy value of 0.83 (95% confidence limits = 0.74-0.92), with positive and negative likelihood ratios of 9.6 (95% confidence limits = 3.1-29.9) and 0.40 (95% confidence limits = 0.24-0.68), respectively. The diagnostic accuracy findings are viewed as promising. The error pattern for this proposed subtype of SSD is viewed as consistent with the cognitive-linguistic processing deficits that have been reported for genetically transmitted verbal disorders.

Speech Outcomes After Clinically Indicated Posterior Pharyngeal Flap Takedown.

PubMed

Katzel, Evan B; Shakir, Sameer; Naran, Sanjay; MacIsaac, Zoe; Camison, Liliana; Greives, Matthew; Goldstein, Jesse A; Grunwaldt, Lorelei J; Ford, Matthew D; Losee, Joseph E

2016-10-01

Velopharyngeal insufficiency affects as many as one in three patients after cleft palate repair. Correction using a posterior pharyngeal flap (PPF) has been shown to improve clinical speech symptomatology; however, PPFs can be complicated by hyponasality and obstructive sleep apnea. The goal of this study was to assess if speech outcomes revert after clinically indicated PPF takedown. The cleft-craniofacial database of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center was retrospectively queried to identify patients with a diagnosis of velopharyngeal insufficiency treated with PPF who ultimately required takedown. Using the Pittsburgh Weighted Speech Score (PWSS), preoperative scores were compared to those after PPF takedown. Outcomes after 2 different methods of PPF takedown (PPF takedown alone or PPF takedown with conversion to Furlow palatoplasty) were stratified and cross-compared. A total of 64 patients underwent takedown of their PPF. Of these, 18 patients underwent PPF takedown alone, and 46 patients underwent PPF takedown with conversion to Furlow Palatoplasty. Patients averaged 12.43 (range, 3.0-22.0)(SD: 3.93) years of age at the time of PPF takedown, and 58% were men. Demographics between groups were not statistically different. The mean duration of follow-up after surgery was 38.09 (range, 1-104) (SD, 27.81) months. For patients undergoing PPF takedown alone, the mean preoperative and postoperative PWSS was 3.83 (range, 0.0-23.0) (SD, 6.13) and 4.11 (range, 0.0-23.0) (SD, 5.31), respectively (P = 0.89). The mean change in PWSS was 0.28 (range, -9.0 to 7.0) (SD, 4.3). For patients undergoing takedown of PPF with conversion to Furlow palatoplasty, the mean preoperative and postoperative PWSS was 6.37 (range, 0-26) (SD, 6.70) and 3.11 (range, 0.0-27.0) (SD, 4.14), respectively (P < 0.01). The mean change in PWSS was -3.26 (range, -23.0 to 4.0) (SD, 4.3). For all patients, the mean preoperative PWSS was 5.66 (range, 0.0-26) (SD, 6.60) and 3.39 (range, 0.0-27) (SD, 4.48), respectively (P < 0.05). The mean change in PWSS was -2.26 (range, -23.0 to 7) (SD, 5.7). There was no statistically significant regression in PWSS for either surgical intervention. Two patients in the PPF takedown alone cohort demonstrated deterioration in PWSS that warranted delayed conversion to Furlow palatoplasty. Approximately 90% of patients, who undergo clinically indicated PPF takedown alone, without conversion to Furlow Palatoplasty, will show no clinically significant reduction in speech. Although there is concern that PPF takedown may degrade speech, this study finds that surgical takedown of PPF, when clinically indicated, does not result in a clinically significant regression of speech.

Self-efficacy and quality of life in adults who stutter.

PubMed

Carter, Alice; Breen, Lauren; Yaruss, J Scott; Beilby, Janet

2017-12-01

Self-efficacy has emerged as a potential predictor of quality of life for adults who stutter. Research has focused primarily on the positive relationship self-efficacy has to treatment outcomes, but little is known about the relationship between self-efficacy and quality of life for adults who stutter. The purpose of this mixed- methods study is to determine the predictive value of self-efficacy and its relationship to quality of life for adults who stutter. The Self-Efficacy Scale for Adult Stutterers and the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience with Stuttering were administered to 39 adults who stutter, aged 18- 77. Percentage of syllables stuttered was calculated from a conversational speech sample as a measure of stuttered speech frequency. Qualitative interviews with semi-structured probes were conducted with 10 adults and analyzed using thematic analysis to explore the lived experience of adults who stutter. Self-efficacy emerged as a strong positive predictor of quality of life for adults living with a stuttered speech disorder. Stuttered speech frequency was a moderate negative predictor of self-efficacy. Major qualitative themes identified from the interviews with the participants were: encumbrance, self-concept, confidence, acceptance, life-long journey, treatment, and support. Results provide clarity on the predictive value of self-efficacy and its relationship to quality of life and stuttered speech frequency. Findings highlight that the unique life experiences of adults who stutter require a multidimensional approach to the assessment and treatment of stuttered speech disorders. Crown Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The role of singing familiar songs in encouraging conversation among people with middle to late stage Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Dassa, Ayelet; Amir, Dorit

2014-01-01

Language deficits in people with Alzheimer's disease (AD) manifest, among other things, in a gradual deterioration of spontaneous speech. People with AD tend to speak less as the disease progresses and their speech becomes confused. However, the ability to sing old tunes sometimes remains intact throughout the disease. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of singing familiar songs in encouraging conversation among people with middle to late stage AD. Six participants attended group music therapy sessions over a one-month period. Using content analysis, we qualitatively examined transcriptions of verbal and sung content during 8 group sessions for the purpose of understanding the relationship between specific songs and conversations that occurred during and following group singing. Content analysis revealed that songs from the participants' past-elicited memories, especially songs related to their social and national identity. Analyses also indicated that conversation related to the singing was extensive and the act of group singing encouraged spontaneous responses. After singing, group members expressed positive feelings, a sense of accomplishment, and belonging. Carefully selecting music from the participants' past can encourage conversation. Considering the failure in spontaneous speech in people with middle to late stage AD, it is important to emphasize that group members' responses to each other occurred spontaneously without the researcher's encouragement. © the American Music Therapy Association 2014. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Echanges, interventions et actes de langage dans la structure de la conversation (Exchanges, Turns at Talk and Speech Acts in the Structure of Conversation).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roulet, Eddy

1981-01-01

Attempts to show how the surface structure of conversation can be described by means of a few principles and simple categories, regardless of its level of complexity. Accordingly, proposes a model that emphasizes the pragmatic functions of certain connectors and markers in the context of conversation exchanges. Societe Nouvelle Didier Erudition,…

Variability and Intelligibility of Clarified Speech to Different Listener Groups

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

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 sentences. Function words were equal to, or more intelligible than, content words. Babytalk functioned as a clear speech style in story sentences but not nonsense sentences. One of the two clear speech styles was clearer than normal speech in adult-directed clarification. However, which style was clearer depended on interactions among the variables. The individual patterns seemed to result from interactions among demand characteristics, baseline intelligibility, materials, and differences in articulatory flexibility.

The Psychologist as an Interlocutor in Autism Spectrum Disorder Assessment: Insights From a Study of Spontaneous Prosody

PubMed Central

Bone, Daniel; Lee, Chi-Chun; Black, Matthew P.; Williams, Marian E.; Lee, Sungbok; Levitt, Pat; Narayanan, Shrikanth

2015-01-01

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between prosodic speech cues and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) severity, hypothesizing a mutually interactive relationship between the speech characteristics of the psychologist and the child. The authors objectively quantified acoustic-prosodic cues of the psychologist and of the child with ASD during spontaneous interaction, establishing a methodology for future large-sample analysis. Method Speech acoustic-prosodic features were semiautomatically derived from segments of semistructured interviews (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, ADOS; Lord, Rutter, DiLavore, & Risi, 1999; Lord et al., 2012) with 28 children who had previously been diagnosed with ASD. Prosody was quantified in terms of intonation, volume, rate, and voice quality. Research hypotheses were tested via correlation as well as hierarchical and predictive regression between ADOS severity and prosodic cues. Results Automatically extracted speech features demonstrated prosodic characteristics of dyadic interactions. As rated ASD severity increased, both the psychologist and the child demonstrated effects for turn-end pitch slope, and both spoke with atypical voice quality. The psychologist’s acoustic cues predicted the child’s symptom severity better than did the child’s acoustic cues. Conclusion The psychologist, acting as evaluator and interlocutor, was shown to adjust his or her behavior in predictable ways based on the child’s social-communicative impairments. The results support future study of speech prosody of both interaction partners during spontaneous conversation, while using automatic computational methods that allow for scalable analysis on much larger corpora. PMID:24686340

Speech Disfluency-dependent Amygdala Activity in Adults Who Stutter: Neuroimaging of Interpersonal Communication in MRI Scanner Environment.

PubMed

Toyomura, Akira; Fujii, Tetsunoshin; Yokosawa, Koichi; Kuriki, Shinya

2018-03-15

Affective states, such as anticipatory anxiety, critically influence speech communication behavior in adults who stutter. However, there is currently little evidence regarding the involvement of the limbic system in speech disfluency during interpersonal communication. We designed this neuroimaging study and experimental procedure to sample neural activity during interpersonal communication between human participants, and to investigate the relationship between the amygdala activity and speech disfluency. Participants were required to engage in live communication with a stranger of the opposite sex in the MRI scanner environment. In the gaze condition, the stranger gazed at the participant without speaking, while in the live conversation condition, the stranger asked questions that the participant was required to answer. The stranger continued to gaze silently at the participant while the participant answered. Adults who stutter reported significantly higher discomfort than fluent controls during the experiment. Activity in the right amygdala, a key anatomical region in the limbic system involved in emotion, was significantly correlated with stuttering occurrences in adults who stutter. Right amygdala activity from pooled data of all participants also showed a significant correlation with discomfort level during the experiment. Activity in the prefrontal cortex, which forms emotion regulation neural circuitry with the amygdala, was decreased in adults who stutter than in fluent controls. This is the first study to demonstrate that amygdala activity during interpersonal communication is involved in disfluent speech in adults who stutter. Copyright © 2018 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Codeswitching, Convergence and Compliance: The Development of Micro-Community Speech Norms.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burt, Susan Meredith

1992-01-01

In conversations between bilinguals, each of whom is a learner of the other's language, two different local patterns of codeswitching may emerge: compliance and mutual convergence. It is argued that a pattern of compliance is ultimately more accommodating that convergence, contrary to the claims of Speech Accommodation Theory. (20 references)…

Development of Displaced Speech in Early Mother--Child Conversations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adamson, Lauren B.; Bakeman, Roger

2006-01-01

This study documents the development of symbolic, spatial, and temporal displacement of toddler's speech. Fifty-six children and their mothers were observed longitudinally 5 times from 18 to 30 months of age during a staged communication play while they engaged in scenes that encouraged interacting, requesting, and commenting and scenes that…

Language and Communication in the Absence of Speech: A Case Study.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rogow, Sally M.

This case study reports on the language development of a child with severe speech and multiple handicaps resulting from "severe epileptic encephalopathy" who is, however, able to competently read, write, and comprehend two languages (English and Cantonese) but does not initiate conversations. Data were gathered as a result of weekly home visits…

Questioning Mechanisms During Tutoring, Conversation, and Human-Computer Interaction

DTIC Science & Technology

1992-10-14

project on the grant, we are analyzing sequences of speech act categories in dialogues between children. The 90 dialogues occur in the context of free ... play , a puzzle task, versus a 20-questions game. Our goal is to assess the extent to which various computational models can predict speech act category N

Executive Functioning and Speech-Language Skills Following Long-Term Use of Cochlear Implants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kronenberger, William G.; Colson, Bethany G.; Henning, Shirley C.; Pisoni, David B.

2014-01-01

Neurocognitive processes such as executive functioning (EF) may influence the development of speech-language skills in deaf children after cochlear implantation in ways that differ from normal-hearing, typically developing children. Conversely, spoken language abilities and experiences may also exert reciprocal effects on the development of EF.…

Cultivating American- and Japanese-Style Relatedness through Mother-Child Conversation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crane, Lauren Shapiro; Fernald, Anne

2017-01-01

This study investigated whether European American and Japanese mothers' speech to preschoolers contained exchange- and alignment-oriented structures that reflect and possibly support culture-specific models of self-other relatedness. In each country 12 mothers were observed in free play with their 3-year-olds. Maternal speech was coded for…

The Listener: No Longer the Silent Partner in Reduced Intelligibility

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zielinski, Beth W.

2008-01-01

In this study I investigate the impact of different characteristics of the L2 speech signal on the intelligibility of L2 speakers of English to native listeners. Three native listeners were observed and questioned as they orthographically transcribed utterances taken from connected conversational speech produced by three L2 speakers from different…

Words from spontaneous conversational speech can be recognized with human-like accuracy by an error-driven learning algorithm that discriminates between meanings straight from smart acoustic features, bypassing the phoneme as recognition unit.

PubMed

Arnold, Denis; Tomaschek, Fabian; Sering, Konstantin; Lopez, Florence; Baayen, R Harald

2017-01-01

Sound units play a pivotal role in cognitive models of auditory comprehension. The general consensus is that during perception listeners break down speech into auditory words and subsequently phones. Indeed, cognitive speech recognition is typically taken to be computationally intractable without phones. Here we present a computational model trained on 20 hours of conversational speech that recognizes word meanings within the range of human performance (model 25%, native speakers 20-44%), without making use of phone or word form representations. Our model also generates successfully predictions about the speed and accuracy of human auditory comprehension. At the heart of the model is a 'wide' yet sparse two-layer artificial neural network with some hundred thousand input units representing summaries of changes in acoustic frequency bands, and proxies for lexical meanings as output units. We believe that our model holds promise for resolving longstanding theoretical problems surrounding the notion of the phone in linguistic theory.

A multimodal spectral approach to characterize rhythm in natural speech.

PubMed

Alexandrou, Anna Maria; Saarinen, Timo; Kujala, Jan; Salmelin, Riitta

2016-01-01

Human utterances demonstrate temporal patterning, also referred to as rhythm. While simple oromotor behaviors (e.g., chewing) feature a salient periodical structure, conversational speech displays a time-varying quasi-rhythmic pattern. Quantification of periodicity in speech is challenging. Unimodal spectral approaches have highlighted rhythmic aspects of speech. However, speech is a complex multimodal phenomenon that arises from the interplay of articulatory, respiratory, and vocal systems. The present study addressed the question of whether a multimodal spectral approach, in the form of coherence analysis between electromyographic (EMG) and acoustic signals, would allow one to characterize rhythm in natural speech more efficiently than a unimodal analysis. The main experimental task consisted of speech production at three speaking rates; a simple oromotor task served as control. The EMG-acoustic coherence emerged as a sensitive means of tracking speech rhythm, whereas spectral analysis of either EMG or acoustic amplitude envelope alone was less informative. Coherence metrics seem to distinguish and highlight rhythmic structure in natural speech.

Effects of disfluencies, predictability, and utterance position on word form variation in English conversation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bell, Alan; Jurafsky, Daniel; Fosler-Lussier, Eric; Girand, Cynthia; Gregory, Michelle; Gildea, Daniel

2003-02-01

Function words, especially frequently occurring ones such as (the, that, and, and of ), vary widely in pronunciation. Understanding this variation is essential both for cognitive modeling of lexical production and for computer speech recognition and synthesis. This study investigates which factors affect the forms of function words, especially whether they have a fuller pronunciation (e.g., edh,eye, edh,æ,tee, æ,en,&dee, vee) or a more reduced or lenited pronunciation (e.g., edh,schwa, edh,bari;t, n, schwa). It is based on over 8000 occurrences of the ten most frequent English function words in a 4-h sample from conversations from the Switchboard corpus. Ordinary linear and logistic regression models were used to examine variation in the length of the words, in the form of their vowel (basic, full, or reduced), and whether final obstruents were present or not. For all these measures, after controlling for segmental context, rate of speech, and other important factors, there are strong independent effects that made high-frequency monosyllabic function words more likely to be longer or have a fuller form (1) when neighboring disfluencies (such as filled pauses uh and um) indicate that the speaker was encountering problems in planning the utterance; (2) when the word is unexpected, i.e., less predictable in context; (3) when the word is either utterance initial or utterance final. Looking at the phenomenon in a different way, frequent function words are more likely to be shorter and to have less-full forms in fluent speech, in predictable positions or multiword collocations, and utterance internally. Also considered are other factors such as sex (women are more likely to use fuller forms, even after controlling for rate of speech, for example), and some of the differences among the ten function words in their response to the factors.

The development of co-speech gesture in the communication of children with autism spectrum disorders.

PubMed

Sowden, Hannah; Clegg, Judy; Perkins, Michael

2013-12-01

Co-speech gestures have a close semantic relationship to speech in adult conversation. In typically developing children co-speech gestures which give additional information to speech facilitate the emergence of multi-word speech. A difficulty with integrating audio-visual information is known to exist for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), which may affect development of the speech-gesture system. A longitudinal observational study was conducted with four children with ASD, aged 2;4 to 3;5 years. Participants were video-recorded for 20 min every 2 weeks during their attendance on an intervention programme. Recording continued for up to 8 months, thus affording a rich analysis of gestural practices from pre-verbal to multi-word speech across the group. All participants combined gesture with either speech or vocalisations. Co-speech gestures providing additional information to speech were observed to be either absent or rare. Findings suggest that children with ASD do not make use of the facilitating communicative effects of gesture in the same way as typically developing children.

a Study of Multiplexing Schemes for Voice and Data.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sriram, Kotikalapudi

Voice traffic variations are characterized by on/off transitions of voice calls, and talkspurt/silence transitions of speakers in conversations. A speaker is known to be in silence for more than half the time during a telephone conversation. In this dissertation, we study some schemes which exploit speaker silences for an efficient utilization of the transmission capacity in integrated voice/data multiplexing and in digital speech interpolation. We study two voice/data multiplexing schemes. In each scheme, any time slots momentarily unutilized by the voice traffic are made available to data. In the first scheme, the multiplexer does not use speech activity detectors (SAD), and hence the voice traffic variations are due to call on/off only. In the second scheme, the multiplexer detects speaker silences using SAD and transmits voice only during talkspurts. The multiplexer with SAD performs digital speech interpolation (DSI) as well as dynamic channel allocation to voice and data. The performance of the two schemes is evaluated using discrete-time modeling and analysis. The data delay performance for the case of English speech is compared with that for the case of Japanese speech. A closed form expression for the mean data message delay is derived for the single-channel single-talker case. In a DSI system, occasional speech losses occur whenever the number of speakers in simultaneous talkspurt exceeds the number of TDM voice channels. In a buffered DSI system, speech loss is further reduced at the cost of delay. We propose a novel fixed-delay buffered DSI scheme. In this scheme, speech fill-in/hangover is not required because there are no variable delays. Hence, all silences that naturally occur in speech are fully utilized. Consequently, a substantial improvement in the DSI performance is made possible. The scheme is modeled and analyzed in discrete -time. Its performance is evaluated in terms of the probability of speech clipping, packet rejection ratio, DSI advantage, and the delay.

Acoustic analysis of speech under stress.

PubMed

Sondhi, Savita; Khan, Munna; Vijay, Ritu; Salhan, Ashok K; Chouhan, Satish

2015-01-01

When a person is emotionally charged, stress could be discerned in his voice. This paper presents a simplified and a non-invasive approach to detect psycho-physiological stress by monitoring the acoustic modifications during a stressful conversation. Voice database consists of audio clips from eight different popular FM broadcasts wherein the host of the show vexes the subjects who are otherwise unaware of the charade. The audio clips are obtained from real-life stressful conversations (no simulated emotions). Analysis is done using PRAAT software to evaluate mean fundamental frequency (F0) and formant frequencies (F1, F2, F3, F4) both in neutral and stressed state. Results suggest that F0 increases with stress; however, formant frequency decreases with stress. Comparison of Fourier and chirp spectra of short vowel segment shows that for relaxed speech, the two spectra are similar; however, for stressed speech, they differ in the high frequency range due to increased pitch modulation.

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

PubMed

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.

Monitoring Progress in Vocal Development in Young Cochlear Implant Recipients: Relationships between Speech Samples and Scores from the Conditioned Assessment of Speech Production (CASP)

PubMed Central

Ertmer, David J.; Jung, Jongmin

2012-01-01

Background Evidence of auditory-guided speech development can be heard as the prelinguistic vocalizations of young cochlear implant recipients become increasingly complex, phonetically diverse, and speech-like. In research settings, these changes are most often documented by collecting and analyzing speech samples. Sampling, however, may be too time-consuming and impractical for widespread use in clinical settings. The Conditioned Assessment of Speech Production (CASP; Ertmer & Stoel-Gammon, 2008) is an easily administered and time-efficient alternative to speech sample analysis. The current investigation examined the concurrent validity of the CASP and data obtained from speech samples recorded at the same intervals. Methods Nineteen deaf children who received CIs before their third birthdays participated in the study. Speech samples and CASP scores were gathered at 6, 12, 18, and 24 months post-activation. Correlation analyses were conducted to assess the concurrent validity of CASP scores and data from samples. Results CASP scores showed strong concurrent validity with scores from speech samples gathered across all recording sessions (6 – 24 months). Conclusions The CASP was found to be a valid, reliable, and time-efficient tool for assessing progress in vocal development during young CI recipient’s first 2 years of device experience. PMID:22628109

Applying and evaluating computer-animated tutors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Massaro, Dominic W.; Bosseler, Alexis; Stone, Patrick S.; Connors, Pamela

2002-05-01

We have developed computer-assisted speech and language tutors for deaf, hard of hearing, and autistic children. Our language-training program utilizes our computer-animated talking head, Baldi, as the conversational agent, who guides students through a variety of exercises designed to teach vocabulary and grammer, to improve speech articulation, and to develop linguistic and phonological awareness. Baldi is an accurate three-dimensional animated talking head appropriately aligned with either synthesized or natural speech. Baldi has a tongue and palate, which can be displayed by making his skin transparent. Two specific language-training programs have been evaluated to determine if they improve word learning and speech articulation. The results indicate that the programs are effective in teaching receptive and productive language. Advantages of utilizing a computer-animated agent as a language tutor are the popularity of computers and embodied conversational agents with autistic kids, the perpetual availability of the program, and individualized instruction. Students enjoy working with Baldi because he offers extreme patience, he doesn't become angry, tired, or bored, and he is in effect a perpetual teaching machine. The results indicate that the psychology and technology of Baldi holds great promise in language learning and speech therapy. [Work supported by NSF Grant Nos. CDA-9726363 and BCS-9905176 and Public Health Service Grant No. PHS R01 DC00236.

Conversing with Computers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

2004-01-01

I/NET, Inc., is making the dream of natural human-computer conversation a practical reality. Through a combination of advanced artificial intelligence research and practical software design, I/NET has taken the complexity out of developing advanced, natural language interfaces. Conversational capabilities like pronoun resolution, anaphora and ellipsis processing, and dialog management that were once available only in the laboratory can now be brought to any application with any speech recognition system using I/NET s conversational engine middleware.

Speech and Ways of Speaking in a Bilingual Puerto Rican Community.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alvarez, Celia; And Others

A collection of papers resulting from a research project on the role of language in the life of a Puerto Rican community in New York City focuses on the discourse of English and Spanish speakers, especially conversational interaction, speech events, and narratives. The papers include: "Toward a Social Theory of Language Variability"…

On the Use of Conversation Analysis and Retrospection in Intervention for Children with Language Impairment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Samuelsson, Christina; Plejert, Charlotta

2015-01-01

Models of speech and language intervention for communicative disabilities vary from structured programmes to more interactive and ecological methods (Fey, 1986). Ideally, a model for intervention should fit the interests and personality of the patient, focus on crucial aspects of speech and language, and be suited to the patient's everyday…

Speaking Rate Characteristics of Elementary-School-Aged Children Who Do and Do Not Stutter

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Logan, Kenneth J.; Byrd, Courtney T.; Mazzocchi, Elizabeth M.; Gillam, Ronald B.

2011-01-01

Purpose: To compare articulation and speech rates of school-aged children who do and do not stutter across sentence priming, structured conversation, and narration tasks and to determine factors that predict children's speech and articulation rates. Method: 34 children who stutter (CWS) and 34 age- and gender-matched children who do not stutter…

Library Automation Design for Visually Impaired People

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yurtay, Nilufer; Bicil, Yucel; Celebi, Sait; Cit, Guluzar; Dural, Deniz

2011-01-01

Speech synthesis is a technology used in many different areas in computer science. This technology can bring a solution to reading activity of visually impaired people due to its text to speech conversion. Based on this problem, in this study, a system is designed needed for a visually impaired person to make use of all the library facilities in…

Understanding Susan Sontag's Critique of Communism and the Democratic Left: Confession? Conversion? Conundrum?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Page, Judy Lynn

Provoking violent controversy, Susan Sontag's speech, "The Lesson of Poland," is an example of subversive rhetoric. Delivered at a February 6, 1982, show of support for the recently oppressed Polish people, Sontag's speech, like other modernist writing, did not seek a consensus with the audience, but challenged its whole scheme of…

Voice and Fluency Changes as a Function of Speech Task and Deep Brain Stimulation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Lancker Sidtis, Diana; Rogers, Tiffany; Godier, Violette; Tagliati, Michele; Sidtis, John J.

2010-01-01

Purpose: Speaking, which naturally occurs in different modes or "tasks" such as conversation and repetition, relies on intact basal ganglia nuclei. Recent studies suggest that voice and fluency parameters are differentially affected by speech task. In this study, the authors examine the effects of subcortical functionality on voice and fluency,…

Self-Repair of Speech by Four-Year-Old Finnish Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Salonen, Tuuli; Laakso, Minna

2009-01-01

The aim of this study was to examine what four-year-old children repair in their speech. For this purpose, conversational self-repairs (N = 316) made by two typically developing Finnish-speaking children (aged 4 ; 8 and 4 ; 11) were examined. The data comprised eight hours of natural interactions videotaped at the children's homes. The tapes were…

Population responses in primary auditory cortex simultaneously represent the temporal envelope and periodicity features in natural speech.

PubMed

Abrams, Daniel A; Nicol, Trent; White-Schwoch, Travis; Zecker, Steven; Kraus, Nina

2017-05-01

Speech perception relies on a listener's ability to simultaneously resolve multiple temporal features in the speech signal. Little is known regarding neural mechanisms that enable the simultaneous coding of concurrent temporal features in speech. Here we show that two categories of temporal features in speech, the low-frequency speech envelope and periodicity cues, are processed by distinct neural mechanisms within the same population of cortical neurons. We measured population activity in primary auditory cortex of anesthetized guinea pig in response to three variants of a naturally produced sentence. Results show that the envelope of population responses closely tracks the speech envelope, and this cortical activity more closely reflects wider bandwidths of the speech envelope compared to narrow bands. Additionally, neuronal populations represent the fundamental frequency of speech robustly with phase-locked responses. Importantly, these two temporal features of speech are simultaneously observed within neuronal ensembles in auditory cortex in response to clear, conversation, and compressed speech exemplars. Results show that auditory cortical neurons are adept at simultaneously resolving multiple temporal features in extended speech sentences using discrete coding mechanisms. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Age-related changes in the anticipatory coarticulation in the speech of young children

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Parson, Mathew; Lloyd, Amanda; Stoddard, Kelly; Nissen, Shawn L.

2003-10-01

This paper investigates the possible patterns of anticipatory coarticulation in the speech of young children. Speech samples were elicited from three groups of children between 3 and 6 years of age and one comparison group of adults. The utterances were recorded online in a quiet room environment using high quality microphones and direct analog-to-digital conversion to computer disk. Formant frequency measures (F1, F2, and F3) were extracted from a centralized and unstressed vowel (schwa) spoken prior to two different sets of productions. The first set of productions consisted of the target vowel followed by a series of real words containing an initial CV(C) syllable (voiceless obstruent-monophthongal vowel) in a range of phonetic contexts, while the second set consisted of a series of nonword productions with a relatively constrained phonetic context. An analysis of variance was utilized to determine if the formant frequencies varied systematically as a function of age, gender, and phonetic context. Results will also be discussed in association with spectral moment measures extracted from the obstruent segment immediately following the target vowel. [Work supported by research funding from Brigham Young University.

Discrepant visual speech facilitates covert selective listening in "cocktail party" conditions.

PubMed

Williams, Jason A

2012-06-01

The presence of congruent visual speech information facilitates the identification of auditory speech, while the addition of incongruent visual speech information often impairs accuracy. This latter arrangement occurs naturally when one is being directly addressed in conversation but listens to a different speaker. Under these conditions, performance may diminish since: (a) one is bereft of the facilitative effects of the corresponding lip motion and (b) one becomes subject to visual distortion by incongruent visual speech; by contrast, speech intelligibility may be improved due to (c) bimodal localization of the central unattended stimulus. Participants were exposed to centrally presented visual and auditory speech while attending to a peripheral speech stream. In some trials, the lip movements of the central visual stimulus matched the unattended speech stream; in others, the lip movements matched the attended peripheral speech. Accuracy for the peripheral stimulus was nearly one standard deviation greater with incongruent visual information, compared to the congruent condition which provided bimodal pattern recognition cues. Likely, the bimodal localization of the central stimulus further differentiated the stimuli and thus facilitated intelligibility. Results are discussed with regard to similar findings in an investigation of the ventriloquist effect, and the relative strength of localization and speech cues in covert listening.

Automatic Intention Recognition in Conversation Processing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holtgraves, Thomas

2008-01-01

A fundamental assumption of many theories of conversation is that comprehension of a speaker's utterance involves recognition of the speaker's intention in producing that remark. However, the nature of intention recognition is not clear. One approach is to conceptualize a speaker's intention in terms of speech acts [Searle, J. (1969). "Speech…

Interaction Training for Conversational Partners of Children with Cerebral Palsy: A Systematic Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pennington, Lindsay; Goldbart, Juliet; Marshall, Julie

2004-01-01

Background: Research has shown that children with cerebral palsy have difficulties acquiring communication skills and that conversation with familiar partners follows restricted patterns, which are characterized by high levels of partner control and children's responsivity. Speech and language therapy often includes training for conversational…

Communicative Skills of Nonspeaking CP-Children: A Study on Interaction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heim, Margriet

This paper presents the results of a study on communicative interaction patterns of three nonspeaking children (ages 8-12) with physical disabilities and their adult speaking conversation partners in three different interaction situations (with a speech therapist in a rehabilitation center, during conversation with their mothers at home, and…

The Use of Conversational Repairs by African American Preschoolers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stockman, Ida J.; Karasinski, Laura; Guillory, Barbara

2008-01-01

Purpose: This study aimed to describe the types and frequency of conversational repairs used by African American (AA) children in relationship to their geographic locations and levels of performance on commonly used speech-language measures. Method: The strategies used to initiate repairs and respond to repair requests were identified in…

Intensive treatment of speech disorders in robin sequence: a case report.

PubMed

Pinto, Maria Daniela Borro; Pegoraro-Krook, Maria Inês; Andrade, Laura Katarine Félix de; Correa, Ana Paula Carvalho; Rosa-Lugo, Linda Iris; Dutka, Jeniffer de Cássia Rillo

2017-10-23

To describe the speech of a patient with Pierre Robin Sequence (PRS) and severe speech disorders before and after participating in an Intensive Speech Therapy Program (ISTP). The ISTP consisted of two daily sessions of therapy over a 36-week period, resulting in a total of 360 therapy sessions. The sessions included the phases of establishment, generalization, and maintenance. A combination of strategies, such as modified contrast therapy and speech sound perception training, were used to elicit adequate place of articulation. The ISTP addressed correction of place of production of oral consonants and maximization of movement of the pharyngeal walls with a speech bulb reduction program. Therapy targets were addressed at the phonetic level with a gradual increase in the complexity of the productions hierarchically (e.g., syllables, words, phrases, conversation) while simultaneously addressing the velopharyngeal hypodynamism with speech bulb reductions. Re-evaluation after the ISTP revealed normal speech resonance and articulation with the speech bulb. Nasoendoscopic assessment indicated consistent velopharyngeal closure for all oral sounds with the speech bulb in place. Intensive speech therapy, combined with the use of the speech bulb, yielded positive outcomes in the rehabilitation of a clinical case with severe speech disorders associated with velopharyngeal dysfunction in Pierre Robin Sequence.

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

PubMed

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.

Relations among questionnaire and experience sampling measures of inner speech: a smartphone app study

PubMed Central

Alderson-Day, Ben; Fernyhough, Charles

2015-01-01

Inner speech is often reported to be a common and central part of inner experience, but its true prevalence is unclear. Many questionnaire-based measures appear to lack convergent validity and it has been claimed that they overestimate inner speech in comparison to experience sampling methods (which involve collecting data at random timepoints). The present study compared self-reporting of inner speech collected via a general questionnaire and experience sampling, using data from a custom-made smartphone app (Inner Life). Fifty-one university students completed a generalized self-report measure of inner speech (the Varieties of Inner Speech Questionnaire, VISQ) and responded to at least seven random alerts to report on incidences of inner speech over a 2-week period. Correlations and pairwise comparisons were used to compare generalized endorsements and randomly sampled scores for each VISQ subscale. Significant correlations were observed between general and randomly sampled measures for only two of the four VISQ subscales, and endorsements of inner speech with evaluative or motivational characteristics did not correlate at all across different measures. Endorsement of inner speech items was significantly lower for random sampling compared to generalized self-report, for all VISQ subscales. Exploratory analysis indicated that specific inner speech characteristics were also related to anxiety and future-oriented thinking. PMID:25964773

Common Schools and Uncommon Conversations: Education, Religious Speech and Public Spaces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Strike, Kenneth A.

2007-01-01

This paper discusses the role of religious speech in the public square and the common school. It argues for more openness to political theology than many liberals are willing to grant and for an educational strategy of engagement over one of avoidance. The paper argues that the exclusion of religious debate from the public square has dysfunctional…

Bilingual Voicing: A Study of Code-Switching in the Reported Speech of Finnish Immigrants in Estonia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frick, Maria; Riionheimo, Helka

2013-01-01

Through a conversation analytic investigation of Finnish-Estonian bilingual (direct) reported speech (i.e., voicing) by Finns who live in Estonia, this study shows how code-switching is used as a double contextualization device. The code-switched voicings are shaped by the on-going interactional situation, serving its needs by opening up a context…

Examining the relationship between speech intensity and self-rated communicative effectiveness in individuals with Parkinson's disease and hypophonia.

PubMed

Dykstra, Allyson D; Adams, Scott G; Jog, Mandar

2015-01-01

To examine the relationship between speech intensity and self-ratings of communicative effectiveness in speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and hypophonia. An additional purpose was to evaluate if self-ratings of communicative effectiveness made by participants with PD differed from ratings made by primary communication partners. Thirty participants with PD and 15 healthy older adults completed the Communication Effectiveness Survey. Thirty primary communication partners rated the communicative effectiveness of his/her partner with PD. Speech intensity was calculated for participants with PD and control participants based on conversational utterances. Results revealed significant differences between groups in conversational speech intensity (p=.001). Participants with PD self-rated communicative effectiveness significantly lower than control participants (p=.000). Correlational analyses revealed a small but non-significant relationship between speech intensity and communicative effectiveness for participants with PD (r=0.298, p=.110) and control participants (r=0.327, p=.234). Self-ratings of communicative effectiveness made participants with PD was not significantly different than ratings made by primary communication partners (p=.20). Obtaining information on communicative effectiveness may help to broaden outcome measurement and may aid in the provision of educational strategies. Findings also suggest that communicative effectiveness may be a separate and a distinct construct that cannot necessarily be predicted from the severity of hypophonia. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Secondary tracheoesophageal puncture in-office using Seldinger technique.

PubMed

Britt, Christopher J; Lippert, Dylan; Kammer, Rachael; Ford, Charles N; Dailey, Seth H; McCulloch, Timothy; Hartig, Gregory

2014-05-01

Evaluate the safety and efficacy of in-office secondary tracheoesophageal puncture (TEP) technique using transnasal esophagoscopy (TNE) and the Seldinger technique in conjunction with a cricothyroidotomy kit for placement. Case series with chart review. Academic medical center. A retrospective chart review was performed on 83 subjects who underwent in-office secondary TEP. Variables that were examined included disease site, staging, histologic diagnosis, extent of resection and reconstruction, chemoradiation, functional voice status (as assessed by speech pathologist in most recent note), and complications directly related to the procedure. Eighty-three individuals from our institution met our criteria for in-office secondary TEP from 2005 to August 2012. Of these, 97.6% (81/83) had no complications of TEP. The overall complication rate was 2.4% (2/83). Complications included bleeding from puncture site and closure of puncture site after dislodgement of prosthesis at the time of puncture. Fluent conversational speech was achieved in 69.9% of all patients (58/83), and an additional 19.3% (16/83) achieved functional/intelligible speech; of those, 3.6% (3/83) were unable to achieve fluent conversational speech due to anatomic defects from previous surgery. An in-office TEP can be safely performed using the Seldinger technique with direct visualization using TNE, despite the extent of resection or reconstruction, with functional speech outcomes comparable to other studies available in the literature.

Language in boys with fragile X syndrome.

PubMed

Levy, Yonata; Gottesman, Riki; Borochowitz, Zvi; Frydman, Moshe; Sagi, Michal

2006-02-01

The current paper reports of language production in 15 Hebrew-speaking boys, aged 9;0-13;0, with fully methylated, non-mosaic fragile X syndrome and no concomitant diagnosis of autism. Contrary to expectations, seven children were non-verbal. Language production in the verbal children was studied in free conversations and in context-bound speech. Despite extra caution in calculating MLU, participants' language level was not predicted by mean utterance length. Context bound speech resulted in grammatically more advanced performance than free conversation, and performance in both contexts differed in important ways from performance of typically developing MLU-matched controls. The relevance of MLU as a predictor of productive grammar in disordered populations is briefly discussed.

Evaluation of the comprehension of noncontinuous sped-up vocoded speech - A strategy for coping with fading HF channels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lynch, John T.

1987-02-01

The present technique for coping with fading and burst noise on HF channels used in digital voice communications transmits digital voice only during high S/N time intervals, and speeds up the speech when necessary to avoid conversation-hindering delays. On the basis of informal listening tests, four test conditions were selected in order to characterize those conditions of speech interruption which would render it comprehensible or incomprehensible. One of the test conditions, 2 secs on and 1/2-sec off, yielded test scores comparable to the reference continuous speech case and is a reasonable match to the temporal variations of a disturbed ionosphere.

How Age, Linguistic Status, and the Nature of the Auditory Scene Alter the Manner in Which Listening Comprehension Is Achieved in Multitalker Conversations.

PubMed

Avivi-Reich, Meital; Jakubczyk, Agnes; Daneman, Meredyth; Schneider, Bruce A

2015-10-01

We investigated how age and linguistic status affected listeners' ability to follow and comprehend 3-talker conversations, and the extent to which individual differences in language proficiency predict speech comprehension under difficult listening conditions. Younger and older L1s as well as young L2s listened to 3-talker conversations, with or without spatial separation between talkers, in either quiet or against moderate or high 12-talker babble background, and were asked to answer questions regarding their contents. After compensating for individual differences in speech recognition, no significant differences in conversation comprehension were found among the groups. As expected, conversation comprehension decreased as babble level increased. Individual differences in reading comprehension skill contributed positively to performance in younger EL1s and in young EL2s to a lesser degree but not in older EL1s. Vocabulary knowledge was significantly and positively related to performance only at the intermediate babble level. The results indicate that the manner in which spoken language comprehension is achieved is modulated by the listeners' age and linguistic status.

Application of advanced speech technology in manned penetration bombers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

North, R.; Lea, W.

1982-03-01

This report documents research on the potential use of speech technology in a manned penetration bomber aircraft (B-52/G and H). The objectives of the project were to analyze the pilot/copilot crewstation tasks over a three-hour-and forty-minute mission and determine the tasks that would benefit the most from conversion to speech recognition/generation, determine the technological feasibility of each of the identified tasks, and prioritize these tasks based on these criteria. Secondary objectives of the program were to enunciate research strategies in the application of speech technologies in airborne environments, and develop guidelines for briefing user commands on the potential of using speech technologies in the cockpit. The results of this study indicated that for the B-52 crewmember, speech recognition would be most beneficial for retrieving chart and procedural data that is contained in the flight manuals. Technological feasibility of these tasks indicated that the checklist and procedural retrieval tasks would be highly feasible for a speech recognition system.

Temporal Context in Speech Processing and Attentional Stream Selection: A Behavioral and Neural perspective

PubMed Central

Zion Golumbic, Elana M.; Poeppel, David; Schroeder, Charles E.

2012-01-01

The human capacity for processing speech is remarkable, especially given that information in speech unfolds over multiple time scales concurrently. Similarly notable is our ability to filter out of extraneous sounds and focus our attention on one conversation, epitomized by the ‘Cocktail Party’ effect. Yet, the neural mechanisms underlying on-line speech decoding and attentional stream selection are not well understood. We review findings from behavioral and neurophysiological investigations that underscore the importance of the temporal structure of speech for achieving these perceptual feats. We discuss the hypothesis that entrainment of ambient neuronal oscillations to speech’s temporal structure, across multiple time-scales, serves to facilitate its decoding and underlies the selection of an attended speech stream over other competing input. In this regard, speech decoding and attentional stream selection are examples of ‘active sensing’, emphasizing an interaction between proactive and predictive top-down modulation of neuronal dynamics and bottom-up sensory input. PMID:22285024

The effects of enactment on communicative competence in aphasic casual conversation: a functional linguistic perspective.

PubMed

Groenewold, Rimke; Armstrong, Elizabeth

2018-05-14

Previous research has shown that speakers with aphasia rely on enactment more often than non-brain-damaged language users. Several studies have been conducted to explain this observed increase, demonstrating that spoken language containing enactment is easier to produce and is more engaging to the conversation partner. This paper describes the effects of the occurrence of enactment in casual conversation involving individuals with aphasia on its level of conversational assertiveness. To evaluate whether and to what extent the occurrence of enactment in speech of individuals with aphasia contributes to its conversational assertiveness. Conversations between a speaker with aphasia and his wife (drawn from AphasiaBank) were analysed in several steps. First, the transcripts were divided into moves, and all moves were coded according to the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) framework. Next, all moves were labelled in terms of their level of conversational assertiveness, as defined in the previous literature. Finally, all enactments were identified and their level of conversational assertiveness was compared with that of non-enactments. Throughout their conversations, the non-brain-damaged speaker was more assertive than the speaker with aphasia. However, the speaker with aphasia produced more enactments than the non-brain-damaged speaker. The moves of the speaker with aphasia containing enactment were more assertive than those without enactment. The use of enactment in the conversations under study positively affected the level of conversational assertiveness of the speaker with aphasia, a competence that is important for speakers with aphasia because it contributes to their floor time, chances to be heard seriously and degree of control over the conversation topic. © 2018 The Authors International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Transcranial direct current stimulation over left inferior frontal cortex improves speech fluency in adults who stutter.

PubMed

Chesters, Jennifer; Möttönen, Riikka; Watkins, Kate E

2018-04-01

See Crinion (doi:10.1093/brain/awy075) for a scientific commentary on this article.Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting 5% of children, and persisting in 1% of adults. Promoting lasting fluency improvement in adults who stutter is a particular challenge. Novel interventions to improve outcomes are of value, therefore. Previous work in patients with acquired motor and language disorders reported enhanced benefits of behavioural therapies when paired with transcranial direct current stimulation. Here, we report the results of the first trial investigating whether transcranial direct current stimulation can improve speech fluency in adults who stutter. We predicted that applying anodal stimulation to the left inferior frontal cortex during speech production with temporary fluency inducers would result in longer-lasting fluency improvements. Thirty male adults who stutter completed a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation over left inferior frontal cortex. Fifteen participants received 20 min of 1-mA stimulation on five consecutive days while speech fluency was temporarily induced using choral and metronome-timed speech. The other 15 participants received the same speech fluency intervention with sham stimulation. Speech fluency during reading and conversation was assessed at baseline, before and after the stimulation on each day of the 5-day intervention, and at 1 and 6 weeks after the end of the intervention. Anodal stimulation combined with speech fluency training significantly reduced the percentage of disfluent speech measured 1 week after the intervention compared with fluency intervention alone. At 6 weeks after the intervention, this improvement was maintained during reading but not during conversation. Outcome scores at both post-intervention time points on a clinical assessment tool (the Stuttering Severity Instrument, version 4) also showed significant improvement in the group receiving transcranial direct current stimulation compared with the sham group, in whom fluency was unchanged from baseline. We conclude that transcranial direct current stimulation combined with behavioural fluency intervention can improve fluency in adults who stutter. Transcranial direct current stimulation thereby offers a potentially useful adjunct to future speech therapy interventions for this population, for whom fluency therapy outcomes are currently limited.

The SpeechEasy device in stuttering and nonstuttering adults: fluency effects while speaking and reading.

PubMed

Foundas, Anne L; Mock, Jeffrey R; Corey, David M; Golob, Edward J; Conture, Edward G

2013-08-01

The SpeechEasy is an electronic device designed to alleviate stuttering by manipulating auditory feedback via time delays and frequency shifts. Device settings (control, default, custom), ear-placement (left, right), speaking task, and cognitive variables were examined in people who stutter (PWS) (n=14) compared to controls (n=10). Among the PWS there was a significantly greater reduction in stuttering (compared to baseline) with custom device settings compared to the non-altered feedback (control) condition. Stuttering was reduced the most during reading, followed by narrative and conversation. For the conversation task, stuttering was reduced more when the device was worn in the left ear. Those individuals with a more severe stuttering rate at baseline had a greater benefit from the use of the device compared to individuals with less severe stuttering. Our results support the view that overt stuttering is associated with defective speech-language monitoring that can be influenced by manipulating auditory feedback. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

PubMed Central

Ben-Aderet, Tobey; Gallego-Abenza, Mario

2017-01-01

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. PMID:28077769

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

PubMed

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).

The Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model: theoretical, empirical, and clinical advances

PubMed Central

Rönnberg, Jerker; Lunner, Thomas; Zekveld, Adriana; Sörqvist, Patrik; Danielsson, Henrik; Lyxell, Björn; Dahlström, Örjan; Signoret, Carine; Stenfelt, Stefan; Pichora-Fuller, M. Kathleen; Rudner, Mary

2013-01-01

Working memory is important for online language processing during conversation. We use it to maintain relevant information, to inhibit or ignore irrelevant information, and to attend to conversation selectively. Working memory helps us to keep track of and actively participate in conversation, including taking turns and following the gist. This paper examines the Ease of Language Understanding model (i.e., the ELU model, Rönnberg, 2003; Rönnberg et al., 2008) in light of new behavioral and neural findings concerning the role of working memory capacity (WMC) in uni-modal and bimodal language processing. The new ELU model is a meaning prediction system that depends on phonological and semantic interactions in rapid implicit and slower explicit processing mechanisms that both depend on WMC albeit in different ways. It is based on findings that address the relationship between WMC and (a) early attention processes in listening to speech, (b) signal processing in hearing aids and its effects on short-term memory, (c) inhibition of speech maskers and its effect on episodic long-term memory, (d) the effects of hearing impairment on episodic and semantic long-term memory, and finally, (e) listening effort. New predictions and clinical implications are outlined. Comparisons with other WMC and speech perception models are made. PMID:23874273

The software for automatic creation of the formal grammars used by speech recognition, computer vision, editable text conversion systems, and some new functions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kardava, Irakli; Tadyszak, Krzysztof; Gulua, Nana; Jurga, Stefan

2017-02-01

For more flexibility of environmental perception by artificial intelligence it is needed to exist the supporting software modules, which will be able to automate the creation of specific language syntax and to make a further analysis for relevant decisions based on semantic functions. According of our proposed approach, of which implementation it is possible to create the couples of formal rules of given sentences (in case of natural languages) or statements (in case of special languages) by helping of computer vision, speech recognition or editable text conversion system for further automatic improvement. In other words, we have developed an approach, by which it can be achieved to significantly improve the training process automation of artificial intelligence, which as a result will give us a higher level of self-developing skills independently from us (from users). At the base of our approach we have developed a software demo version, which includes the algorithm and software code for the entire above mentioned component's implementation (computer vision, speech recognition and editable text conversion system). The program has the ability to work in a multi - stream mode and simultaneously create a syntax based on receiving information from several sources.

Video-Based Interaction, Negotiation for Comprehensibility, and Second Language Speech Learning: A Longitudinal Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saito, Kazuya; Akiyama, Yuka

2017-01-01

This study examined the impact of video-based conversational interaction on the longitudinal development (one academic semester) of second language production by college-level Japanese English-as-a-foreign-language learners. Students in the experimental group engaged in weekly dyadic conversation exchanges with native speakers in the United States…

Personal Pronoun Interchanges in Mandarin Chinese Conversation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hsiao, Chi-hua

2011-01-01

Dynamic and interactive uses of personal pronouns are usually not as neat as traditional grammar describes in that the first and second person pronoun index speakers and addressees in a speech event. Devoted to a prevalent feature of Mandarin Chinese conversation--the switch of the first person singular pronoun "wo", "I", and the second person…

Repair Sequences in Dysarthric Conversational Speech: A Study in Interactional Phonetics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rutter, Ben

2009-01-01

This paper presents some findings from a case study of repair sequences in conversations between a dysarthric speaker, Chris, and her interactional partners. It adopts the methodology of interactional phonetics, where turn design, sequence organization, and variation in phonetic parameters are analysed in unison. The analysis focused on the use of…

Parent-Child Interaction in Nigerian Families: Conversation Analysis, Context and Culture

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burns, Annabel; Radford, Julie

2008-01-01

This paper uses a conversation analysis (CA) approach to explore parent-child interaction (PCI) within Nigerian families. We illustrate how speech and language therapists (SLTs), by using CA, can tailor recommendations according to the interactional style of each individual family that are consonant with the family's cultural beliefs. Three…

The Function of Gesture in Lexically Focused L2 Instructional Conversations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smotrova, Tetyana; Lantolf, James P.

2013-01-01

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the mediational function of the gesture-speech interface in the instructional conversation that emerged as teachers attempted to explain the meaning of English words to their students in two EFL classrooms in the Ukraine. Its analytical framework is provided by Vygotsky's sociocultural psychology…

Writing for the Ear: Strengthening Oral Style in Manuscript Speeches

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bruss, Kristine

2012-01-01

Public speaking texts typically advise speakers to avoid using a manuscript. Speaking from a manuscript can limit eye contact, reduce expressiveness, and bore listeners. The ideal, rather, is to sound conversational. Conversational style is inclusive, suggesting that a speaker is ""of the people," united in understanding, values and purpose." If a…

Ethnicity as Conversational Style. Sociolinguistic Working Paper Number 55.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tannen, Deborah

The relationship of one aspect of conversational style, the degree of directness in the sending and interpretation of messages, to ethnicity was investigated in a comparison of the communication styles of Greeks and Americans. It was hypothesized that Greeks tend to be more indirect in speech than Americans, and that English speakers of Greek…

Learning Conversations: Teacher Researchers Evaluating Dialogic Strategies in Early Years Settings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boyd, Pete

2014-01-01

Learning conversations, dialogic interactions with adults, are important opportunities for children to develop their thinking as well as their speech and language skills. This area of teachers' practice is informed by a well-established body of research evidence and professional guidance literature. The design and facilitation of this practitioner…

Selling the story: narratives and charisma in adults with TBI.

PubMed

Jones, Corinne A; Turkstra, Lyn S

2011-01-01

To examine storytelling performance behaviours in adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and relate these behaviours to perceived charisma and desirability as a conversation partner. Seven adult males with traumatic brain injury (TBI) told their accident narratives to a male confederate. Ten male undergraduate students rated 1-minute video clips from the beginning of each narrative using the Charismatic Leadership Communication Scale (CLCS). Raters also indicated whether or not they would like to engage in conversation with each participant. Of the performative behaviours analysed, gestures alone significantly influenced CLCS ratings and reported likelihood of engaging in future conversation with the participant. Post-hoc analysis revealed that speech rate was significantly correlated with all of the preceding measures. There was a significant correlation between self- and other-ratings of charisma. The findings suggest that aspects of non-verbal performance, namely gesture use and speech rate, influence how charismatic an individual is perceived to be and how likely someone is to engage in conversation with that person. Variability in these performance behaviours may contribute to the variation in social outcomes seen in the TBI population.

Perceptual Learning of Speech under Optimal and Adverse Conditions

PubMed Central

Zhang, Xujin; Samuel, Arthur G.

2014-01-01

Humans have a remarkable ability to understand spoken language despite the large amount of variability in speech. Previous research has shown that listeners can use lexical information to guide their interpretation of atypical sounds in speech (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003). This kind of lexically induced perceptual learning enables people to adjust to the variations in utterances due to talker-specific characteristics, such as individual identity and dialect. The current study investigated perceptual learning in two optimal conditions: conversational speech (Experiment 1) vs. clear speech (Experiment 2), and three adverse conditions: noise (Experiment 3a) vs. two cognitive loads (Experiments 4a & 4b). Perceptual learning occurred in the two optimal conditions and in the two cognitive load conditions, but not in the noise condition. Furthermore, perceptual learning occurred only in the first of two sessions for each participant, and only for atypical /s/ sounds and not for atypical /f/ sounds. This pattern of learning and non-learning reflects a balance between flexibility and stability that the speech system must have to deal with speech variability in the diverse conditions that speech is encountered. PMID:23815478

The Wildcat Corpus of Native- and Foreign-Accented English: Communicative Efficiency across Conversational Dyads with Varying Language Alignment Profiles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Engen, Kristin J.; Baese-Berk, Melissa; Baker, Rachel E.; Choi, Arim; Kim, Midam; Bradlow, Ann R.

2010-01-01

This paper describes the development of the Wildcat Corpus of native- and foreign-accented English, a corpus containing scripted and spontaneous speech recordings from 24 native speakers of American English and 52 non-native speakers of English. The core element of this corpus is a set of spontaneous speech recordings, for which a new method of…

Approaches for Language Identification in Mismatched Environments

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-09-08

different i-vector systems are considered, which differ in their feature extraction mechanism. The first, which we refer to as the standard i-vector, or...both conversational telephone speech and narrowband broadcast speech. Multiple experiments are conducted to assess the performance of the system in...bottleneck features using i-vectors. The proposed system results in a 30% improvement over the baseline result. Index Terms: language identification

Differentiating primary progressive aphasias in a brief sample of connected speech

PubMed Central

Evans, Emily; O'Shea, Jessica; Powers, John; Boller, Ashley; Weinberg, Danielle; Haley, Jenna; McMillan, Corey; Irwin, David J.; Rascovsky, Katya; Grossman, Murray

2013-01-01

Objective: A brief speech expression protocol that can be administered and scored without special training would aid in the differential diagnosis of the 3 principal forms of primary progressive aphasia (PPA): nonfluent/agrammatic PPA, logopenic variant PPA, and semantic variant PPA. Methods: We used a picture-description task to elicit a short speech sample, and we evaluated impairments in speech-sound production, speech rate, lexical retrieval, and grammaticality. We compared the results with those obtained by a longer, previously validated protocol and further validated performance with multimodal imaging to assess the neuroanatomical basis of the deficits. Results: We found different patterns of impaired grammar in each PPA variant, and additional language production features were impaired in each: nonfluent/agrammatic PPA was characterized by speech-sound errors; logopenic variant PPA by dysfluencies (false starts and hesitations); and semantic variant PPA by poor retrieval of nouns. Strong correlations were found between this brief speech sample and a lengthier narrative speech sample. A composite measure of grammaticality and other measures of speech production were correlated with distinct regions of gray matter atrophy and reduced white matter fractional anisotropy in each PPA variant. Conclusions: These findings provide evidence that large-scale networks are required for fluent, grammatical expression; that these networks can be selectively disrupted in PPA syndromes; and that quantitative analysis of a brief speech sample can reveal the corresponding distinct speech characteristics. PMID:23794681

One approach to design of speech emotion database

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Uhrin, Dominik; Chmelikova, Zdenka; Tovarek, Jaromir; Partila, Pavol; Voznak, Miroslav

2016-05-01

This article describes a system for evaluating the credibility of recordings with emotional character. Sound recordings form Czech language database for training and testing systems of speech emotion recognition. These systems are designed to detect human emotions in his voice. The emotional state of man is useful in the security forces and emergency call service. Man in action (soldier, police officer and firefighter) is often exposed to stress. Information about the emotional state (his voice) will help to dispatch to adapt control commands for procedure intervention. Call agents of emergency call service must recognize the mental state of the caller to adjust the mood of the conversation. In this case, the evaluation of the psychological state is the key factor for successful intervention. A quality database of sound recordings is essential for the creation of the mentioned systems. There are quality databases such as Berlin Database of Emotional Speech or Humaine. The actors have created these databases in an audio studio. It means that the recordings contain simulated emotions, not real. Our research aims at creating a database of the Czech emotional recordings of real human speech. Collecting sound samples to the database is only one of the tasks. Another one, no less important, is to evaluate the significance of recordings from the perspective of emotional states. The design of a methodology for evaluating emotional recordings credibility is described in this article. The results describe the advantages and applicability of the developed method.

Affective state and voice: cross-cultural assessment of speaking behavior and voice sound characteristics--a normative multicenter study of 577 + 36 healthy subjects.

PubMed

Braun, Silke; Botella, Cristina; Bridler, René; Chmetz, Florian; Delfino, Juan Pablo; Herzig, Daniela; Kluckner, Viktoria J; Mohr, Christine; Moragrega, Ines; Schrag, Yann; Seifritz, Erich; Soler, Carla; Stassen, Hans H

2014-01-01

Human speech is greatly influenced by the speakers' affective state, such as sadness, happiness, grief, guilt, fear, anger, aggression, faintheartedness, shame, sexual arousal, love, amongst others. Attentive listeners discover a lot about the affective state of their dialog partners with no great effort, and without having to talk about it explicitly during a conversation or on the phone. On the other hand, speech dysfunctions, such as slow, delayed or monotonous speech, are prominent features of affective disorders. This project was comprised of four studies with healthy volunteers from Bristol (English: n = 117), Lausanne (French: n = 128), Zurich (German: n = 208), and Valencia (Spanish: n = 124). All samples were stratified according to gender, age, and education. The specific study design with different types of spoken text along with repeated assessments at 14-day intervals allowed us to estimate the 'natural' variation of speech parameters over time, and to analyze the sensitivity of speech parameters with respect to form and content of spoken text. Additionally, our project included a longitudinal self-assessment study with university students from Zurich (n = 18) and unemployed adults from Valencia (n = 18) in order to test the feasibility of the speech analysis method in home environments. The normative data showed that speaking behavior and voice sound characteristics can be quantified in a reproducible and language-independent way. The high resolution of the method was verified by a computerized assignment of speech parameter patterns to languages at a success rate of 90%, while the correct assignment to texts was 70%. In the longitudinal self-assessment study we calculated individual 'baselines' for each test person along with deviations thereof. The significance of such deviations was assessed through the normative reference data. Our data provided gender-, age-, and language-specific thresholds that allow one to reliably distinguish between 'natural fluctuations' and 'significant changes'. The longitudinal self-assessment study with repeated assessments at 1-day intervals over 14 days demonstrated the feasibility and efficiency of the speech analysis method in home environments, thus clearing the way to a broader range of applications in psychiatry. © 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Interpersonal factors contributing to the stigma of schizophrenia: social skills, perceived attractiveness, and symptoms.

PubMed

Penn, D L; Kohlmaier, J R; Corrigan, P W

2000-09-29

This study investigated the interpersonal factors (i.e., social skills, symptoms, perceived physical attractiveness) which are related to the stigma of schizophrenia. Social skills performance was assessed for 39 individuals with schizophrenia who participated in two role-plays with a confederate. Social skills ratings comprised 'overall social skill', 'meshing', 'clarity', and 'fluency' of speech, 'gaze', 'pleasantness' of conversation, 'involvement' in conversation, 'number of questions asked' during conversation, and 'perceived strangeness'. Symptomatology was assessed with the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale. Ratings of perceived physical attractiveness were obtained by pausing the videotaped role-plays after the first 2s of the interaction. Ratings of 'social distance', based on an independent sample who observed the role-plays, were used as a proxy measure of stigma. The results showed that social distance was best statistically predicted by perceived strangeness, which in turn, was best statistically predicted by ratings of overall social skill. Negative symptoms appeared to have a more robust association with desired social distance than positive symptoms. Interpersonal factors, such as overall social skill, negative symptoms, and perceived strangeness, may contribute to stigma.

Dissociating speech perception and comprehension at reduced levels of awareness

PubMed Central

Davis, Matthew H.; Coleman, Martin R.; Absalom, Anthony R.; Rodd, Jennifer M.; Johnsrude, Ingrid S.; Matta, Basil F.; Owen, Adrian M.; Menon, David K.

2007-01-01

We used functional MRI and the anesthetic agent propofol to assess the relationship among neural responses to speech, successful comprehension, and conscious awareness. Volunteers were scanned while listening to sentences containing ambiguous words, matched sentences without ambiguous words, and signal-correlated noise (SCN). During three scanning sessions, participants were nonsedated (awake), lightly sedated (a slowed response to conversation), and deeply sedated (no conversational response, rousable by loud command). Bilateral temporal-lobe responses for sentences compared with signal-correlated noise were observed at all three levels of sedation, although prefrontal and premotor responses to speech were absent at the deepest level of sedation. Additional inferior frontal and posterior temporal responses to ambiguous sentences provide a neural correlate of semantic processes critical for comprehending sentences containing ambiguous words. However, this additional response was absent during light sedation, suggesting a marked impairment of sentence comprehension. A significant decline in postscan recognition memory for sentences also suggests that sedation impaired encoding of sentences into memory, with left inferior frontal and temporal lobe responses during light sedation predicting subsequent recognition memory. These findings suggest a graded degradation of cognitive function in response to sedation such that “higher-level” semantic and mnemonic processes can be impaired at relatively low levels of sedation, whereas perceptual processing of speech remains resilient even during deep sedation. These results have important implications for understanding the relationship between speech comprehension and awareness in the healthy brain in patients receiving sedation and in patients with disorders of consciousness. PMID:17938125

Speech Acts during Friends' and Non-Friends' Spontaneous Conversations in Preschool Dyads with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder versus Typical Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bauminger-Zviely, Nirit; Golan-Itshaky, Adi; Tubul-Lavy, Gila

2017-01-01

In this study, we videotaped two 10-min. free-play interactions and coded speech acts (SAs) in peer talk of 51 preschoolers (21 ASD, 30 typical), interacting with friend versus non-friend partners. Groups were matched for maternal education, IQ (verbal/nonverbal), and CA. We compared SAs by group (ASD/typical), by partner's friendship status…

The Great Self-Advocacy Wave! Mom Teaches Most Important Lesson: "Explain!"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Resciniti, Joey Lynn

2013-01-01

Joey Lynn Resciniti's first lesson on childhood hearing loss was a speech banana printed on glossy paper with bright red X's and O's. Her daughter, Julia, was almost 3 years old. The speech banana showed that she had not been hearing most of the conversation in the house. She had not heard the birds singing outside or the whoosh of…

Frequency-Shift Hearing Aid

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Weinstein, Leonard M.

1994-01-01

Proposed hearing aid maps spectrum of speech into band of lower frequencies at which ear remains sensitive. By redirecting normal speech frequencies into frequency band from 100 to 1,500 Hz, hearing aid allows people to understand normal conversation, including telephone calls. Principle operation of hearing aid adapted to other uses such as, clearing up noisy telephone or radio communication. In addition, loud-speakers more easily understood in presence of high background noise.

Interactivite, relations entre interlocuteurs et constitution d'unites conversationnelles (Interaction Processes, Participants' Relationships and Definition of Conversation Units).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zenone, Anna

1981-01-01

Analyzes a type of conversational exchange where the participants focus on a given subject or theme contributing personal views to the discussion. Characterizes the relationship among the participants as a "cooperative conflict," examining the internal structure of speech acts and their illocutory functions, particularly the initiatory…

Silence, Words that Wound and Sexual Identity: A Conversation with Applebaum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jackson, Liz

2008-01-01

In this paper, I continue a conversation initiated by Barbara Applebaum on how to manage irreconcilable difference, harmful language or "words that wound" and various implications of power in the classroom. Referencing emerging works on the nature of speech and silence, classroom power and queer identity, I pose three questions to Applebaum in…

The Use of Non-Specific Comments in a Conversation Aid for Non-Speaking People.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Todman, John; Morrison, Zara

1995-01-01

TALK (Talk Aid using pre-Loaded Knowledge) is a computer system linked to a speech synthesizer which enables nonspeaking people to engage in real-time social conversation. TALK provides categories of general comments that can be used whenever a suitable specific response is unavailable. Results are reported of a study evaluating effectiveness of…

Do Children with Social Communication Disorder Have Explicit Knowledge of Pragmatic Rules They Break? A Comparison of Conversational Pragmatic Ability and Metapragmatic Awareness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lockton, Elaine; Adams, Catherine; Collins, Anna

2016-01-01

Background: Children who have social communication disorder (CwSCD) demonstrate persistent difficulties with language pragmatics in conversations and other verbal interactions. Speech-language interventions for these children often include promotion of metapragmatic awareness (MPA); that is, the ability to identify explicitly and reflect upon…

Selective spatial attention modulates bottom-up informational masking of speech

PubMed Central

Carlile, Simon; Corkhill, Caitlin

2015-01-01

To hear out a conversation against other talkers listeners overcome energetic and informational masking. Largely attributed to top-down processes, information masking has also been demonstrated using unintelligible speech and amplitude-modulated maskers suggesting bottom-up processes. We examined the role of speech-like amplitude modulations in information masking using a spatial masking release paradigm. Separating a target talker from two masker talkers produced a 20 dB improvement in speech reception threshold; 40% of which was attributed to a release from informational masking. When across frequency temporal modulations in the masker talkers are decorrelated the speech is unintelligible, although the within frequency modulation characteristics remains identical. Used as a masker as above, the information masking accounted for 37% of the spatial unmasking seen with this masker. This unintelligible and highly differentiable masker is unlikely to involve top-down processes. These data provides strong evidence of bottom-up masking involving speech-like, within-frequency modulations and that this, presumably low level process, can be modulated by selective spatial attention. PMID:25727100

Selective spatial attention modulates bottom-up informational masking of speech.

PubMed

Carlile, Simon; Corkhill, Caitlin

2015-03-02

To hear out a conversation against other talkers listeners overcome energetic and informational masking. Largely attributed to top-down processes, information masking has also been demonstrated using unintelligible speech and amplitude-modulated maskers suggesting bottom-up processes. We examined the role of speech-like amplitude modulations in information masking using a spatial masking release paradigm. Separating a target talker from two masker talkers produced a 20 dB improvement in speech reception threshold; 40% of which was attributed to a release from informational masking. When across frequency temporal modulations in the masker talkers are decorrelated the speech is unintelligible, although the within frequency modulation characteristics remains identical. Used as a masker as above, the information masking accounted for 37% of the spatial unmasking seen with this masker. This unintelligible and highly differentiable masker is unlikely to involve top-down processes. These data provides strong evidence of bottom-up masking involving speech-like, within-frequency modulations and that this, presumably low level process, can be modulated by selective spatial attention.

The Nationwide Speech Project: A multi-talker multi-dialect speech corpus

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Clopper, Cynthia G.; Pisoni, David B.

2004-05-01

Most research on regional phonological variation relies on field recordings of interview speech. Recent research on the perception of dialect variation by naive listeners, however, has relied on read sentence materials in order to control for phonological and lexical content and syntax. The Nationwide Speech Project corpus was designed to obtain a large amount of speech from a number of talkers representing different regional varieties of American English. Five male and five female talkers from each of six different dialect regions in the United States were recorded reading isolated words, sentences, and passages, and in conversations with the experimenter. The talkers ranged in age from 18 and 25 years old and they were all monolingual native speakers of American English. They had lived their entire life in one dialect region and both of their parents were raised in the same region. Results of an acoustic analysis of the vowel spaces of the talkers included in the Nationwide Speech Project will be presented. [Work supported by NIH.

Effortful echolalia.

PubMed

Hadano, K; Nakamura, H; Hamanaka, T

1998-02-01

We report three cases of effortful echolalia in patients with cerebral infarction. The clinical picture of speech disturbance is associated with Type 1 Transcortical Motor Aphasia (TCMA, Goldstein, 1915). The patients always spoke nonfluently with loss of speech initiative, dysarthria, dysprosody, agrammatism, and increased effort and were unable to repeat sentences longer than those containing four or six words. In conversation, they first repeated a few words spoken to them, and then produced self initiated speech. The initial repetition as well as the subsequent self initiated speech, which were realized equally laboriously, can be regarded as mitigated echolalia (Pick, 1924). They were always aware of their own echolalia and tried to control it without effect. These cases demonstrate that neither the ability to repeat nor fluent speech are always necessary for echolalia. The possibility that a lesion in the left medial frontal lobe, including the supplementary motor area, plays an important role in effortful echolalia is discussed.

Dysarthria and broader motor speech deficits in Dravet syndrome.

PubMed

Turner, Samantha J; Brown, Amy; Arpone, Marta; Anderson, Vicki; Morgan, Angela T; Scheffer, Ingrid E

2017-02-21

To analyze the oral motor, speech, and language phenotype in 20 children and adults with Dravet syndrome (DS) associated with mutations in SCN1A . Fifteen verbal and 5 minimally verbal DS patients with SCN1A mutations (aged 15 months-28 years) underwent a tailored assessment battery. Speech was characterized by imprecise articulation, abnormal nasal resonance, voice, and pitch, and prosody errors. Half of verbal patients had moderate to severely impaired conversational speech intelligibility. Oral motor impairment, motor planning/programming difficulties, and poor postural control were typical. Nonverbal individuals had intentional communication. Cognitive skills varied markedly, with intellectual functioning ranging from the low average range to severe intellectual disability. Language impairment was congruent with cognition. We describe a distinctive speech, language, and oral motor phenotype in children and adults with DS associated with mutations in SCN1A. Recognizing this phenotype will guide therapeutic intervention in patients with DS. © 2017 American Academy of Neurology.

Dysarthria and broader motor speech deficits in Dravet syndrome

PubMed Central

Turner, Samantha J.; Brown, Amy; Arpone, Marta; Anderson, Vicki; Morgan, Angela T.

2017-01-01

Objective: To analyze the oral motor, speech, and language phenotype in 20 children and adults with Dravet syndrome (DS) associated with mutations in SCN1A. Methods: Fifteen verbal and 5 minimally verbal DS patients with SCN1A mutations (aged 15 months-28 years) underwent a tailored assessment battery. Results: Speech was characterized by imprecise articulation, abnormal nasal resonance, voice, and pitch, and prosody errors. Half of verbal patients had moderate to severely impaired conversational speech intelligibility. Oral motor impairment, motor planning/programming difficulties, and poor postural control were typical. Nonverbal individuals had intentional communication. Cognitive skills varied markedly, with intellectual functioning ranging from the low average range to severe intellectual disability. Language impairment was congruent with cognition. Conclusions: We describe a distinctive speech, language, and oral motor phenotype in children and adults with DS associated with mutations in SCN1A. Recognizing this phenotype will guide therapeutic intervention in patients with DS. PMID:28148630

Interactional convergence in conversational storytelling: when reported speech is a cue of alignment and/or affiliation.

PubMed

Guardiola, Mathilde; Bertrand, Roxane

2013-01-01

This paper investigates how and when interactional convergence is established by participants in conversation. We analyze sequences of storytelling using an original method that combines Conversation Analysis and a corpus-based approach. In storytelling, the participant in the position of "listener" is expected to produce either generic or specific responses adapted to the storyteller's narrative. The listener's behavior produced within the current activity is a cue of his/her interactional alignment. We show here that the listener can produce a specific type of (aligned) response, which we term a reported speech utterance in echo. The participant who is not telling the story is nonetheless able to animate the characters, while reversing the usual asymmetric roles of storyteller and listener. The use of this device is a way for the listener to display his/her stance toward the events told by the storyteller. If the listener's stance is congruent with that of the storyteller, this reveals a high degree of affiliation between the participants. We present seventeen excerpts from a collection of 94 instances of Echo Reported Speech (ERS) which we examined using the concepts of alignment and affiliation in order to show how different kinds of convergent sequences are constructed. We demonstrate that this phenomenon is mainly used by the listener to align and affiliate with the storyteller by means of reformulative, enumerative, or overbidding ERS. We also show that in affiliative sequences, reported speech can be used by the listener in a humorous way in order to temporarily disalign. This disalignment constitutes a potential starting point for an oblique sequence, which, if accepted and continued by the storyteller, gives rise to a highly convergent sequence.

Interactional convergence in conversational storytelling: when reported speech is a cue of alignment and/or affiliation

PubMed Central

Guardiola, Mathilde; Bertrand, Roxane

2013-01-01

This paper investigates how and when interactional convergence is established by participants in conversation. We analyze sequences of storytelling using an original method that combines Conversation Analysis and a corpus-based approach. In storytelling, the participant in the position of “listener” is expected to produce either generic or specific responses adapted to the storyteller's narrative. The listener's behavior produced within the current activity is a cue of his/her interactional alignment. We show here that the listener can produce a specific type of (aligned) response, which we term a reported speech utterance in echo. The participant who is not telling the story is nonetheless able to animate the characters, while reversing the usual asymmetric roles of storyteller and listener. The use of this device is a way for the listener to display his/her stance toward the events told by the storyteller. If the listener's stance is congruent with that of the storyteller, this reveals a high degree of affiliation between the participants. We present seventeen excerpts from a collection of 94 instances of Echo Reported Speech (ERS) which we examined using the concepts of alignment and affiliation in order to show how different kinds of convergent sequences are constructed. We demonstrate that this phenomenon is mainly used by the listener to align and affiliate with the storyteller by means of reformulative, enumerative, or overbidding ERS. We also show that in affiliative sequences, reported speech can be used by the listener in a humorous way in order to temporarily disalign. This disalignment constitutes a potential starting point for an oblique sequence, which, if accepted and continued by the storyteller, gives rise to a highly convergent sequence. PMID:24115939

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

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

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.

Perceptual learning of speech under optimal and adverse conditions.

PubMed

Zhang, Xujin; Samuel, Arthur G

2014-02-01

Humans have a remarkable ability to understand spoken language despite the large amount of variability in speech. Previous research has shown that listeners can use lexical information to guide their interpretation of atypical sounds in speech (Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2003). This kind of lexically induced perceptual learning enables people to adjust to the variations in utterances due to talker-specific characteristics, such as individual identity and dialect. The current study investigated perceptual learning in two optimal conditions: conversational speech (Experiment 1) versus clear speech (Experiment 2), and three adverse conditions: noise (Experiment 3a) versus two cognitive loads (Experiments 4a and 4b). Perceptual learning occurred in the two optimal conditions and in the two cognitive load conditions, but not in the noise condition. Furthermore, perceptual learning occurred only in the first of two sessions for each participant, and only for atypical /s/ sounds and not for atypical /f/ sounds. This pattern of learning and nonlearning reflects a balance between flexibility and stability that the speech system must have to deal with speech variability in the diverse conditions that speech is encountered. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

The Prevalence of Speech Disorders among University Students in Jordan

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

Role of Binaural Temporal Fine Structure and Envelope Cues in Cocktail-Party Listening.

PubMed

Swaminathan, Jayaganesh; Mason, Christine R; Streeter, Timothy M; Best, Virginia; Roverud, Elin; Kidd, Gerald

2016-08-03

While conversing in a crowded social setting, a listener is often required to follow a target speech signal amid multiple competing speech signals (the so-called "cocktail party" problem). In such situations, separation of the target speech signal in azimuth from the interfering masker signals can lead to an improvement in target intelligibility, an effect known as spatial release from masking (SRM). This study assessed the contributions of two stimulus properties that vary with separation of sound sources, binaural envelope (ENV) and temporal fine structure (TFS), to SRM in normal-hearing (NH) human listeners. Target speech was presented from the front and speech maskers were either colocated with or symmetrically separated from the target in azimuth. The target and maskers were presented either as natural speech or as "noise-vocoded" speech in which the intelligibility was conveyed only by the speech ENVs from several frequency bands; the speech TFS within each band was replaced with noise carriers. The experiments were designed to preserve the spatial cues in the speech ENVs while retaining/eliminating them from the TFS. This was achieved by using the same/different noise carriers in the two ears. A phenomenological auditory-nerve model was used to verify that the interaural correlations in TFS differed across conditions, whereas the ENVs retained a high degree of correlation, as intended. Overall, the results from this study revealed that binaural TFS cues, especially for frequency regions below 1500 Hz, are critical for achieving SRM in NH listeners. Potential implications for studying SRM in hearing-impaired listeners are discussed. Acoustic signals received by the auditory system pass first through an array of physiologically based band-pass filters. Conceptually, at the output of each filter, there are two principal forms of temporal information: slowly varying fluctuations in the envelope (ENV) and rapidly varying fluctuations in the temporal fine structure (TFS). The importance of these two types of information in everyday listening (e.g., conversing in a noisy social situation; the "cocktail-party" problem) has not been established. This study assessed the contributions of binaural ENV and TFS cues for understanding speech in multiple-talker situations. Results suggest that, whereas the ENV cues are important for speech intelligibility, binaural TFS cues are critical for perceptually segregating the different talkers and thus for solving the cocktail party problem. Copyright © 2016 the authors 0270-6474/16/368250-08$15.00/0.

Conversation, development, and gender: a study of changes in children's concepts of punishment.

PubMed

Leman, Patrick J; Björnberg, Marina

2010-01-01

One hundred thirty-three children, average age 9.58 years, were read vignettes describing a moral transgression and then discussed what would constitute a fair punishment. Children's gender influenced conversation dynamics (use of interruption and other simultaneous speech) but not conversation content (justifications for judgments). All children who engaged in conversation showed development in judgments after 8 weeks compared with a control (no interaction) group. However, there was no relation between conversation dynamics or content and development, or any effects of gender, on the developmental process. The benefits of peer collaboration were general rather than specific to the stimulus story.

Structure & Coupling of Semiotic Sets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Orsucci, Franco; Giuliani, Alessandro; Zbilut, Joseph

2004-12-01

We investigated the informational structure of written texts (also in the form of speech transcriptions) using Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA). RQA technique provides a quantitative description of text sequences at the orthographic level in terms of structuring, and may be useful for a variety of linguistics-related studies. We used RQA to measure differences in linguistic samples from different subjects. They were divided in subgroups based on personality and culture differences. We used RQA and KRQA (Cross Recurrence) to measure the coupling and synchronization during the conversation (semiotic interaction) of different subjects. We discuss results both for the improvement of methodology and some general implications for neurocognitive science.

Methodological Choices in Rating Speech Samples

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Brien, Mary Grantham

2016-01-01

Much pronunciation research critically relies upon listeners' judgments of speech samples, but researchers have rarely examined the impact of methodological choices. In the current study, 30 German native listeners and 42 German L2 learners (L1 English) rated speech samples produced by English-German L2 learners along three continua: accentedness,…

How Spoken Language Comprehension is Achieved by Older Listeners in Difficult Listening Situations.

PubMed

Schneider, Bruce A; Avivi-Reich, Meital; Daneman, Meredyth

2016-01-01

Comprehending spoken discourse in noisy situations is likely to be more challenging to older adults than to younger adults due to potential declines in the auditory, cognitive, or linguistic processes supporting speech comprehension. These challenges might force older listeners to reorganize the ways in which they perceive and process speech, thereby altering the balance between the contributions of bottom-up versus top-down processes to speech comprehension. The authors review studies that investigated the effect of age on listeners' ability to follow and comprehend lectures (monologues), and two-talker conversations (dialogues), and the extent to which individual differences in lexical knowledge and reading comprehension skill relate to individual differences in speech comprehension. Comprehension was evaluated after each lecture or conversation by asking listeners to answer multiple-choice questions regarding its content. Once individual differences in speech recognition for words presented in babble were compensated for, age differences in speech comprehension were minimized if not eliminated. However, younger listeners benefited more from spatial separation than did older listeners. Vocabulary knowledge predicted the comprehension scores of both younger and older listeners when listening was difficult, but not when it was easy. However, the contribution of reading comprehension to listening comprehension appeared to be independent of listening difficulty in younger adults but not in older adults. The evidence suggests (1) that most of the difficulties experienced by older adults are due to age-related auditory declines, and (2) that these declines, along with listening difficulty, modulate the degree to which selective linguistic and cognitive abilities are engaged to support listening comprehension in difficult listening situations. When older listeners experience speech recognition difficulties, their attentional resources are more likely to be deployed to facilitate lexical access, making it difficult for them to fully engage higher-order cognitive abilities in support of listening comprehension.

Laughter Among Deaf Signers

PubMed Central

Provine, Robert R.; Emmorey, Karen

2008-01-01

The placement of laughter in the speech of hearing individuals is not random but “punctuates” speech, occurring during pauses and at phrase boundaries where punctuation would be placed in a transcript of a conversation. For speakers, language is dominant in the competition for the vocal tract since laughter seldom interrupts spoken phrases. For users of American Sign Language, however, laughter and language do not compete in the same way for a single output channel. This study investigated whether laughter occurs simultaneously with signing, or punctuates signing, as it does speech, in 11 signed conversations (with two to five participants) that had at least one instance of audible, vocal laughter. Laughter occurred 2.7 times more often during pauses and at phrase boundaries than simultaneously with a signed utterance. Thus, the production of laughter involves higher order cognitive or linguistic processes rather than the low-level regulation of motor processes competing for a single vocal channel. In an examination of other variables, the social dynamics of deaf and hearing people were similar, with “speakers” (those signing) laughing more than their audiences and females laughing more than males. PMID:16891353

Laughter among deaf signers.

PubMed

Provine, Robert R; Emmorey, Karen

2006-01-01

The placement of laughter in the speech of hearing individuals is not random but "punctuates" speech, occurring during pauses and at phrase boundaries where punctuation would be placed in a transcript of a conversation. For speakers, language is dominant in the competition for the vocal tract since laughter seldom interrupts spoken phrases. For users of American Sign Language, however, laughter and language do not compete in the same way for a single output channel. This study investigated whether laughter occurs simultaneously with signing, or punctuates signing, as it does speech, in 11 signed conversations (with two to five participants) that had at least one instance of audible, vocal laughter. Laughter occurred 2.7 times more often during pauses and at phrase boundaries than simultaneously with a signed utterance. Thus, the production of laughter involves higher order cognitive or linguistic processes rather than the low-level regulation of motor processes competing for a single vocal channel. In an examination of other variables, the social dynamics of deaf and hearing people were similar, with "speakers" (those signing) laughing more than their audiences and females laughing more than males.

Acoustic and Perceptual Measurement of Expressive Prosody in High-Functioning Autism: Increased Pitch Range and What it Means to Listeners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nadig, Aparna; Shaw, Holly

2012-01-01

Are there consistent markers of atypical prosody in speakers with high functioning autism (HFA) compared to typically-developing speakers? We examined: (1) acoustic measurements of pitch range, mean pitch and speech rate in conversation, (2) perceptual ratings of conversation for these features and overall prosody, and (3) acoustic measurements of…

Selling the story: Narratives and charisma in adults with TBI

PubMed Central

JONES, CORINNE A.; TURKSTRA, LYN S.

2015-01-01

Objective To examine storytelling performance behaviours in adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and relate these behaviours to perceived charisma and desirability as a conversation partner. Design and methods Seven adult males with traumatic brain injury (TBI) told their accident narratives to a male confederate. Ten male undergraduate students rated 1-minute video clips from the beginning of each narrative using the Charismatic Leadership Communication Scale (CLCS). Raters also indicated whether or not they would like to engage in conversation with each participant. Results Of the performative behaviours analysed, gestures alone significantly influenced CLCS ratings and reported likelihood of engaging in future conversation with the participant. Post-hoc analysis revealed that speech rate was significantly correlated with all of the preceding measures. There was a significant correlation between self- and other-ratings of charisma. Conclusions The findings suggest that aspects of non-verbal performance, namely gesture use and speech rate, influence how charismatic an individual is perceived to be and how likely someone is to engage in conversation with that person. Variability in these performance behaviours may contribute to the variation in social outcomes seen in the TBI population. PMID:21714624

Children with Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder Fitted with Hearing Aids Applying the American Academy of Audiology Pediatric Amplification Guideline: Current Practice and Outcomes.

PubMed

Walker, Elizabeth; McCreery, Ryan; Spratford, Meredith; Roush, Patricia

2016-03-01

Up to 15% of children with permanent hearing loss (HL) have auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD), which involves normal outer hair cell function and disordered afferent neural activity in the auditory nerve or brainstem. Given the varying presentations of ANSD in children, there is a need for more evidence-based research on appropriate clinical interventions for this population. This study compared the speech production, speech perception, and language outcomes of children with ANSD, who are hard of hearing, to children with similar degrees of mild-to-moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), all of whom were fitted with bilateral hearing aids (HAs) based on the American Academy of Audiology pediatric amplification guidelines. Speech perception and communication outcomes data were gathered in a prospective accelerated longitudinal design, with entry into the study between six mo and seven yr of age. Three sites were involved in participant recruitment: Boys Town National Research Hospital, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Iowa. The sample consisted of 12 children with ANSD and 22 children with SNHL. The groups were matched based on better-ear pure-tone average, better-ear aided speech intelligibility index, gender, maternal education level, and newborn hearing screening result (i.e., pass or refer). Children and their families participated in an initial baseline visit, followed by visits twice a year for children <2 yr of age and once a yr for children >2 yr of age. Paired-sample t-tests were used to compare children with ANSD to children with SNHL. Paired t-tests indicated no significant differences between the ANSD and SNHL groups on language and articulation measures. Children with ANSD displayed functional speech perception skills in quiet. Although the number of participants was too small to conduct statistical analyses for speech perception testing, there appeared to be a trend in which the ANSD group performed more poorly in background noise with HAs, compared to the SNHL group. The American Academy of Audiology Pediatric Amplification Guidelines recommend that children with ANSD receive an HA trial if their behavioral thresholds are sufficiently high enough to impede speech perception at conversational levels. For children with ANSD in the mild-to-severe HL range, the current results support this recommendation, as children with ANSD can achieve functional outcomes similar to peers with SNHL. American Academy of Audiology.

Fifty years of progress in speech and speaker recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Furui, Sadaoki

2004-10-01

Speech and speaker recognition technology has made very significant progress in the past 50 years. The progress can be summarized by the following changes: (1) from template matching to corpus-base statistical modeling, e.g., HMM and n-grams, (2) from filter bank/spectral resonance to Cepstral features (Cepstrum + DCepstrum + DDCepstrum), (3) from heuristic time-normalization to DTW/DP matching, (4) from gdistanceh-based to likelihood-based methods, (5) from maximum likelihood to discriminative approach, e.g., MCE/GPD and MMI, (6) from isolated word to continuous speech recognition, (7) from small vocabulary to large vocabulary recognition, (8) from context-independent units to context-dependent units for recognition, (9) from clean speech to noisy/telephone speech recognition, (10) from single speaker to speaker-independent/adaptive recognition, (11) from monologue to dialogue/conversation recognition, (12) from read speech to spontaneous speech recognition, (13) from recognition to understanding, (14) from single-modality (audio signal only) to multi-modal (audio/visual) speech recognition, (15) from hardware recognizer to software recognizer, and (16) from no commercial application to many practical commercial applications. Most of these advances have taken place in both the fields of speech recognition and speaker recognition. The majority of technological changes have been directed toward the purpose of increasing robustness of recognition, including many other additional important techniques not noted above.

Temporal plasticity in auditory cortex improves neural discrimination of speech sounds

PubMed Central

Engineer, Crystal T.; Shetake, Jai A.; Engineer, Navzer D.; Vrana, Will A.; Wolf, Jordan T.; Kilgard, Michael P.

2017-01-01

Background Many individuals with language learning impairments exhibit temporal processing deficits and degraded neural responses to speech sounds. Auditory training can improve both the neural and behavioral deficits, though significant deficits remain. Recent evidence suggests that vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) paired with rehabilitative therapies enhances both cortical plasticity and recovery of normal function. Objective/Hypothesis We predicted that pairing VNS with rapid tone trains would enhance the primary auditory cortex (A1) response to unpaired novel speech sounds. Methods VNS was paired with tone trains 300 times per day for 20 days in adult rats. Responses to isolated speech sounds, compressed speech sounds, word sequences, and compressed word sequences were recorded in A1 following the completion of VNS-tone train pairing. Results Pairing VNS with rapid tone trains resulted in stronger, faster, and more discriminable A1 responses to speech sounds presented at conversational rates. Conclusion This study extends previous findings by documenting that VNS paired with rapid tone trains altered the neural response to novel unpaired speech sounds. Future studies are necessary to determine whether pairing VNS with appropriate auditory stimuli could potentially be used to improve both neural responses to speech sounds and speech perception in individuals with receptive language disorders. PMID:28131520

Speech Characteristics of Patients with Pallido-Ponto-Nigral Degeneration and Their Application to Presymptomatic Detection in At-Risk Relatives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liss, Julie M.; Krein-Jones, Kari; Wszolek, Zbigniew K.; Caviness, John N.

2006-01-01

Purpose: This report describes the speech characteristics of individuals with a neurodegenerative syndrome called pallido-ponto-nigral degeneration (PPND) and examines the speech samples of at-risk, but asymptomatic, relatives for possible preclinical detection. Method: Speech samples of 9 members of a PPND kindred were subjected to perceptual…

Getting the cocktail party started: masking effects in speech perception

PubMed Central

Evans, S; McGettigan, C; Agnew, ZK; Rosen, S; Scott, SK

2016-01-01

Spoken conversations typically take place in noisy environments and different kinds of masking sounds place differing demands on cognitive resources. Previous studies, examining the modulation of neural activity associated with the properties of competing sounds, have shown that additional speech streams engage the superior temporal gyrus. However, the absence of a condition in which target speech was heard without additional masking made it difficult to identify brain networks specific to masking and to ascertain the extent to which competing speech was processed equivalently to target speech. In this study, we scanned young healthy adults with continuous functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), whilst they listened to stories masked by sounds that differed in their similarity to speech. We show that auditory attention and control networks are activated during attentive listening to masked speech in the absence of an overt behavioural task. We demonstrate that competing speech is processed predominantly in the left hemisphere within the same pathway as target speech but is not treated equivalently within that stream, and that individuals who perform better in speech in noise tasks activate the left mid-posterior superior temporal gyrus more. Finally, we identify neural responses associated with the onset of sounds in the auditory environment, activity was found within right lateralised frontal regions consistent with a phasic alerting response. Taken together, these results provide a comprehensive account of the neural processes involved in listening in noise. PMID:26696297

Are individuals with Parkinson's disease capable of speech-motor learning? - A preliminary evaluation.

PubMed

Kaipa, Ramesh; Jones, Richard D; Robb, Michael P

2016-07-01

The benefits of different practice conditions in limb-based rehabilitation of motor disorders are well documented. Conversely, the role of practice structure in the treatment of motor-based speech disorders has only been minimally investigated. Considering this limitation, the current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of selected practice conditions in spatial and temporal learning of novel speech utterances in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Participants included 16 individuals with PD who were randomly and equally assigned to constant, variable, random, and blocked practice conditions. Participants in all four groups practiced a speech phrase for two consecutive days, and reproduced the speech phrase on the third day without further practice or feedback. There were no significant differences (p > 0.05) between participants across the four practice conditions with respect to either spatial or temporal learning of the speech phrase. Overall, PD participants demonstrated diminished spatial and temporal learning in comparison to healthy controls. Tests of strength of association between participants' demographic/clinical characteristics and speech-motor learning outcomes did not reveal any significant correlations. The findings from the current study suggest that repeated practice facilitates speech-motor learning in individuals with PD irrespective of the type of practice. Clinicians need to be cautious in applying practice conditions to treat speech deficits associated with PD based on the findings of non-speech-motor learning tasks. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Auditory/Verbal hallucinations, speech perception neurocircuitry, and the social deafferentation hypothesis.

PubMed

Hoffman, Ralph E

2008-04-01

Auditory/verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are comprised of spoken conversational speech seeming to arise from specific, nonself speakers. One hertz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) reduces excitability in the brain region stimulated. Studies utilizing 1-Hz rTMS delivered to the left temporoparietal cortex, a brain area critical to speech perception, have demonstrated statistically significant improvements in AVHs relative to sham simulation. A novel mechanism of AVHs is proposed whereby dramatic pre-psychotic social withdrawal prompts neuroplastic reorganization by the "social brain" to produce spurious social meaning via hallucinations of conversational speech. Preliminary evidence supporting this hypothesis includes a very high rate of social withdrawal emerging prior to the onset of frank psychosis in patients who develop schizophrenia and AVHs. Moreover, reduced AVHs elicited by temporoparietal 1-Hz rTMS are likely to reflect enhanced long-term depression. Some evidence suggests a loss of long-term depression following experimentally-induced deafferentation. Finally, abnormal cortico-cortical coupling is associated with AVHs and also is a common outcome of deafferentation. Auditory/verbal hallucinations (AVHs) of spoken speech or "voices" are reported by 60-80% of persons with schizophrenia at various times during the course of illness. AVHs are associated with high levels of distress, functional disability, and can lead to violent acts. Among patients with AVHs, these symptoms remain poorly or incompletely responsive to currently available treatments in approximately 25% of cases. For patients with AVHs who do respond to antipsychotic drugs, there is a very high likelihood that these experiences will recur in subsequent episodes. A more precise characterization of underlying pathophysiology may lead to more efficacious treatments.

A Dynamic Speech Comprehension Test for Assessing Real-World Listening Ability.

PubMed

Best, Virginia; Keidser, Gitte; Freeston, Katrina; Buchholz, Jörg M

2016-07-01

Many listeners with hearing loss report particular difficulties with multitalker communication situations, but these difficulties are not well predicted using current clinical and laboratory assessment tools. The overall aim of this work is to create new speech tests that capture key aspects of multitalker communication situations and ultimately provide better predictions of real-world communication abilities and the effect of hearing aids. A test of ongoing speech comprehension introduced previously was extended to include naturalistic conversations between multiple talkers as targets, and a reverberant background environment containing competing conversations. In this article, we describe the development of this test and present a validation study. Thirty listeners with normal hearing participated in this study. Speech comprehension was measured for one-, two-, and three-talker passages at three different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), and working memory ability was measured using the reading span test. Analyses were conducted to examine passage equivalence, learning effects, and test-retest reliability, and to characterize the effects of number of talkers and SNR. Although we observed differences in difficulty across passages, it was possible to group the passages into four equivalent sets. Using this grouping, we achieved good test-retest reliability and observed no significant learning effects. Comprehension performance was sensitive to the SNR but did not decrease as the number of talkers increased. Individual performance showed associations with age and reading span score. This new dynamic speech comprehension test appears to be valid and suitable for experimental purposes. Further work will explore its utility as a tool for predicting real-world communication ability and hearing aid benefit. American Academy of Audiology.

Modulations of 'late' event-related brain potentials in humans by dynamic audiovisual speech stimuli.

PubMed

Lebib, Riadh; Papo, David; Douiri, Abdel; de Bode, Stella; Gillon Dowens, Margaret; Baudonnière, Pierre-Marie

2004-11-30

Lipreading reliably improve speech perception during face-to-face conversation. Within the range of good dubbing, however, adults tolerate some audiovisual (AV) discrepancies and lipreading, then, can give rise to confusion. We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to study the perceptual strategies governing the intermodal processing of dynamic and bimodal speech stimuli, either congruently dubbed or not. Electrophysiological analyses revealed that non-coherent audiovisual dubbings modulated in amplitude an endogenous ERP component, the N300, we compared to a 'N400-like effect' reflecting the difficulty to integrate these conflicting pieces of information. This result adds further support for the existence of a cerebral system underlying 'integrative processes' lato sensu. Further studies should take advantage of this 'N400-like effect' with AV speech stimuli to open new perspectives in the domain of psycholinguistics.

Underwater speech communications with a modulated laser

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Woodward, B.; Sari, H.

2008-04-01

A novel speech communications system using a modulated laser beam has been developed for short-range applications in which high directionality is an exploitable feature. Although it was designed for certain underwater applications, such as speech communications between divers or between a diver and the surface, it may equally be used for air applications. With some modification it could be used for secure diver-to-diver communications in the situation where untethered divers are swimming close together and do not want their conversations monitored by intruders. Unlike underwater acoustic communications, where the transmitted speech may be received at ranges of hundreds of metres omnidirectionally, a laser communication link is very difficult to intercept and also obviates the need for cables that become snagged or broken. Further applications include the transmission of speech and data, including the short message service (SMS), from a fixed installation such as a sea-bed habitat; and data transmission to and from an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), particularly during docking manoeuvres. The performance of the system has been assessed subjectively by listening tests, which revealed that the speech was intelligible, although of poor quality due to the speech algorithm used.

Trajectory and outcomes of speech language therapy in the Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS): case report.

PubMed

Misquiatti, Andréa Regina Nunes; Cristovão, Melina Pavini; Brito, Maria Claudia

2011-03-01

The aim of this study was to describe the trajectory and the outcomes of speech-language therapy in Prader-Willi syndrome through a longitudinal study of the case of an 8 year-old boy, along four years of speech-language therapy follow-up. The therapy sessions were filmed and documental analysis of information from the child's records regarding anamnesis, evaluation and speech-language therapy reports and multidisciplinary evaluations were carried out. The child presented typical characteristics of Prader-Willi syndrome, such as obesity, hyperfagia, anxiety, behavioral problems and self aggression episodes. Speech-language pathology evaluation showed orofacial hypotony, sialorrhea, hypernasal voice, cognitive deficits, oral comprehension difficulties, communication using gestures and unintelligible isolated words. Initially, speech-language therapy had the aim to promote the language development emphasizing social interaction through recreational activities. With the evolution of the case, the main focus became the development of conversation and narrative abilities. It were observed improvements in attention, symbolic play, social contact and behavior. Moreover, there was an increase in vocabulary, and evolution in oral comprehension and the development of narrative abilities. Hence, speech-language pathology intervention in the case described was effective in different linguistic levels, regarding phonological, syntactic, lexical and pragmatic abilities.

Politeness, emotion, and gender: A sociophonetic study of voice pitch modulation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yuasa, Ikuko

The present dissertation is a cross-gender and cross-cultural sociophonetic exploration of voice pitch characteristics utilizing speech data derived from Japanese and American speakers in natural conversations. The roles of voice pitch modulation in terms of the concepts of politeness and emotion as they pertain to culture and gender will be investigated herein. The research interprets the significance of my findings based on the acoustic measurements of speech data as they are presented in the ERB-rate scale (the most appropriate scale for human speech perception). The investigation reveals that pitch range modulation displayed by Japanese informants in two types of conversations is closely linked to types of politeness adopted by those informants. The degree of the informants' emotional involvement and expressions reflected in differing pitch range widths plays an important role in determining the relationship between pitch range modulation and politeness. The study further correlates the Japanese cultural concept of enryo ("self-restraint") with this phenomenon. When median values were examined, male and female pitch ranges across cultures did not conspicuously differ. However, sporadically occurring women's pitch characteristics which culturally differ in width and height of pitch ranges may create an 'emotional' perception of women's speech style. The salience of these pitch characteristics appears to be the source of the stereotypically linked sound of women's speech being identified as 'swoopy' or 'shrill' and thus 'emotional'. Such women's salient voice characteristics are interpreted in light of camaraderie/positive politeness. Women's use of conspicuous paralinguistic features helps to create an atmosphere of camaraderie. These voice pitch characteristics promote the establishment of a sense of camaraderie since they act to emphasize such feelings as concern, support, and comfort towards addressees, Moreover, men's wide pitch ranges are discussed in view of politeness (rather than gender). Japanese men's use of wide pitch ranges during conversations with familiar interlocutors demonstrate the extent to which male speakers can increase their pitch ranges if there is an authentic socio-cultural inspiration (other than a gender-related one) to do so. The findings suggest the necessity of interpreting research data in consideration of how the notion of gender interacts with other socio-cultural behavioral norms.

Evaluation of NASA speech encoder

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1976-01-01

Techniques developed by NASA for spaceflight instrumentation were used in the design of a quantizer for speech-decoding. Computer simulation of the actions of the quantizer was tested with synthesized and real speech signals. Results were evaluated by a phometician. Topics discussed include the relationship between the number of quantizer levels and the required sampling rate; reconstruction of signals; digital filtering; speech recording, sampling, and storage, and processing results.

Frontal and temporal contributions to understanding the iconic co-speech gestures that accompany speech.

PubMed

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.

Speech and Communication Changes Reported by People with Parkinson's Disease.

PubMed

Schalling, Ellika; Johansson, Kerstin; Hartelius, Lena

2017-01-01

Changes in communicative functions are common in Parkinson's disease (PD), but there are only limited data provided by individuals with PD on how these changes are perceived, what their consequences are, and what type of intervention is provided. To present self-reported information about speech and communication, the impact on communicative participation, and the amount and type of speech-language pathology services received by people with PD. Respondents with PD recruited via the Swedish Parkinson's Disease Society filled out a questionnaire accessed via a Web link or provided in a paper version. Of 188 respondents, 92.5% reported at least one symptom related to communication; the most common symptoms were weak voice, word-finding difficulties, imprecise articulation, and getting off topic in conversation. The speech and communication problems resulted in restricted communicative participation for between a quarter and a third of the respondents, and their speech caused embarrassment sometimes or more often to more than half. Forty-five percent of the respondents had received speech-language pathology services. Most respondents reported both speech and language symptoms, and many experienced restricted communicative participation. Access to speech-language pathology services is still inadequate. Services should also address cognitive/linguistic aspects to meet the needs of people with PD. © 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Auditory Processing Disorder (For Parents)

MedlinePlus

... or other speech-language difficulties? Are verbal (word) math problems difficult for your child? Is your child ... inferences from conversations, understanding riddles, or comprehending verbal math problems — require heightened auditory processing and language levels. ...

Correlations between self-assessed hearing handicap and standard audiometric tests in elderly persons.

PubMed

Pedersen, K; Rosenhall, U

1991-01-01

The relationship between self-assessed hearing handicap and audiometric measures using pure-tone and speech audiometry was studied in a group of elderly persons representative of an urban Swedish population. The study population consisted of two cohorts, one of which was followed longitudinally. Significant correlations between measured and self-assessed hearing were found. Speech discrimination scores showed lower correlations with the self-estimated hearing than pure-tone averages and speech reception threshold. Questions concerning conversation with one person and concerning difficulty in hearing the doorbell showed lower correlations with measured hearing than the other questions. The discrimination score test is an inadequate tool for measuring hearing handicap.

Gesture and speech during shared book reading with preschoolers with specific language impairment.

PubMed

Lavelli, Manuela; Barachetti, Chiara; Florit, Elena

2015-11-01

This study examined (a) the relationship between gesture and speech produced by children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children, and their mothers, during shared book-reading, and (b) the potential effectiveness of gestures accompanying maternal speech on the conversational responsiveness of children. Fifteen preschoolers with expressive SLI were compared with fifteen age-matched and fifteen language-matched TD children. Child and maternal utterances were coded for modality, gesture type, gesture-speech informational relationship, and communicative function. Relative to TD peers, children with SLI used more bimodal utterances and gestures adding unique information to co-occurring speech. Some differences were mirrored in maternal communication. Sequential analysis revealed that only in the SLI group maternal reading accompanied by gestures was significantly followed by child's initiatives, and when maternal non-informative repairs were accompanied by gestures, they were more likely to elicit adequate answers from children. These findings support the 'gesture advantage' hypothesis in children with SLI, and have implications for educational and clinical practice.

Can you hear me yet? An intracranial investigation of speech and non-speech audiovisual interactions in human cortex.

PubMed

Rhone, Ariane E; Nourski, Kirill V; Oya, Hiroyuki; Kawasaki, Hiroto; Howard, Matthew A; McMurray, Bob

In everyday conversation, viewing a talker's face can provide information about the timing and content of an upcoming speech signal, resulting in improved intelligibility. Using electrocorticography, we tested whether human auditory cortex in Heschl's gyrus (HG) and on superior temporal gyrus (STG) and motor cortex on precentral gyrus (PreC) were responsive to visual/gestural information prior to the onset of sound and whether early stages of auditory processing were sensitive to the visual content (speech syllable versus non-speech motion). Event-related band power (ERBP) in the high gamma band was content-specific prior to acoustic onset on STG and PreC, and ERBP in the beta band differed in all three areas. Following sound onset, we found with no evidence for content-specificity in HG, evidence for visual specificity in PreC, and specificity for both modalities in STG. These results support models of audio-visual processing in which sensory information is integrated in non-primary cortical areas.

Promoting lexical learning in the speech and language therapy of children with cochlear implants.

PubMed

Ronkainen, Riitta; Laakso, Minna; Lonka, Eila; Tykkyläinen, Tuula

2017-01-01

This study examines lexical intervention sessions in speech and language therapy for children with cochlear implants (CIs). Particular focus is on the therapist's professional practices in doing the therapy. The participants in this study are three congenitally deaf children with CIs together with their speech and language therapist. The video recorded therapy sessions of these children are studied using conversation analysis. The analysis reveals the ways in which the speech and language therapist formulates her speaking turns to support the children's lexical learning in task interaction. The therapist's multimodal practices, for example linguistic and acoustic highlighting, focus both on the lexical meaning and the phonological form of the words. Using these means, the therapist expands the child's lexical networks, specifies and corrects the meaning of the target words, and models the correct phonological form of the words. The findings of this study are useful in providing information for clinicians and speech and language therapy students working with children who have CIs as well as for the children's parents.

'All the better for not seeing you': effects of communicative context on the speech of an individual with acquired communication difficulties.

PubMed

Bruce, Carolyn; Braidwood, Ursula; Newton, Caroline

2013-01-01

Evidence shows that speakers adjust their speech depending on the demands of the listener. However, it is unclear whether people with acquired communication disorders can and do make similar adaptations. This study investigated the impact of different conversational settings on the intelligibility of a speaker with acquired communication difficulties. Twenty-eight assessors listened to recordings of the speaker reading aloud 40 words and 32 sentences to a listener who was either face-to-face or unseen. The speaker's ability to convey information was measured by the accuracy of assessors' orthographic transcriptions of the words and sentences. Assessors' scores were significantly higher in the unseen condition for the single word task particularly if they had heard the face-to-face condition first. Scores for the sentence task were significantly higher in the second presentation regardless of the condition. The results from this study suggest that therapy conducted in situations where the client is not able to see their conversation partner may encourage them to perform at a higher level and increase the clarity of their speech. Readers will be able to describe: (1) the range of conversational adjustments made by speakers without communication difficulties; (2) differences between these tasks in offering contextual information to the listener; and (3) the potential for using challenging communicative situations to improve the performance of adults with communication disorders. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Prediction and constraint in audiovisual speech perception

PubMed Central

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 by distinct neuroanatomical mechanisms. PMID:25890390

Lexical tone and stuttering loci in Mandarin: evidence from preschool children who stutter.

PubMed

Chou, Fang-Chi; Zebrowski, Patricia; Yang, Shu-Lan

2015-02-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between stuttering loci and lexical tone in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers. Conversational samples from 20 Taiwanese children who stutter (CWS; M = 4:9; range = 3:2-6:4) were analysed for frequency and type of speech disfluency and lexical tone associated with stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs). Results indicated that SLDs were significantly more likely to be produced on Mandarin syllables carrying Tone 3 and Tone 4 syllables compared to syllables carrying either Tone 1 or Tone 2. Post-hoc analyses revealed: (1) no significant differences in the stuttering frequencies between Tone 1 and Tone 2, or between Tone 3 and Tone 4, and (2) a higher incidence of stuttering on syllables carrying Tone 3 and Tone 4 embedded in conflicting (as opposed to compatible) tonal contexts. Results suggest that the higher incidence of stuttering on Mandarin syllables carrying either Tone 3 or 4 may be attributed to the increased level of speech motor demand underlying rapid F0 change both within and across syllables.

An evaluation of the performance of two binaural beamformers in complex and dynamic multitalker environments

PubMed Central

Best, Virginia; Mejia, Jorge; Freeston, Katrina; van Hoesel, Richard J.; Dillon, Harvey

2016-01-01

Objective Binaural beamformers are super-directional hearing aids created by combining microphone outputs from each side of the head. While they offer substantial improvements in SNR over conventional directional hearing aids, the benefits (and possible limitations) of these devices in realistic, complex listening situations have not yet been fully explored. In this study we evaluated the performance of two experimental binaural beamformers. Design Testing was carried out using a horizontal loudspeaker array. Background noise was created using recorded conversations. Performance measures included speech intelligibility, localisation in noise, acceptable noise level, subjective ratings, and a novel dynamic speech intelligibility measure. Study sample Participants were 27 listeners with bilateral hearing loss, fitted with BTE prototypes that could be switched between conventional directional or binaural beamformer microphone modes. Results Relative to the conventional directional microphones, both binaural beamformer modes were generally superior for tasks involving fixed frontal targets, but not always for situations involving dynamic target locations. Conclusions Binaural beamformers show promise for enhancing listening in complex situations when the location of the source of interest is predictable. PMID:26140298

[Combining speech sample and feature bilateral selection algorithm for classification of Parkinson's disease].

PubMed

Zhang, Xiaoheng; Wang, Lirui; Cao, Yao; Wang, Pin; Zhang, Cheng; Yang, Liuyang; Li, Yongming; Zhang, Yanling; Cheng, Oumei

2018-02-01

Diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD) based on speech data has been proved to be an effective way in recent years. However, current researches just care about the feature extraction and classifier design, and do not consider the instance selection. Former research by authors showed that the instance selection can lead to improvement on classification accuracy. However, no attention is paid on the relationship between speech sample and feature until now. Therefore, a new diagnosis algorithm of PD is proposed in this paper by simultaneously selecting speech sample and feature based on relevant feature weighting algorithm and multiple kernel method, so as to find their synergy effects, thereby improving classification accuracy. Experimental results showed that this proposed algorithm obtained apparent improvement on classification accuracy. It can obtain mean classification accuracy of 82.5%, which was 30.5% higher than the relevant algorithm. Besides, the proposed algorithm detected the synergy effects of speech sample and feature, which is valuable for speech marker extraction.

Asynchronous sampling of speech with some vocoder experimental results

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Babcock, M. L.

1972-01-01

The method of asynchronously sampling speech is based upon the derivatives of the acoustical speech signal. The following results are apparent from experiments to date: (1) It is possible to represent speech by a string of pulses of uniform amplitude, where the only information contained in the string is the spacing of the pulses in time; (2) the string of pulses may be produced in a simple analog manner; (3) the first derivative of the original speech waveform is the most important for the encoding process; (4) the resulting pulse train can be utilized to control an acoustical signal production system to regenerate the intelligence of the original speech.

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

PubMed

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.

Investigation of habitual pitch during free play activities for preschool-aged children.

PubMed

Chen, Yang; Kimelman, Mikael D Z; Micco, Katie

2009-01-01

This study is designed to compare the habitual pitch measured in two different speech activities (free play activity and traditionally used structured speech activity) for normally developing preschool-aged children to explore to what extent preschoolers vary their vocal pitch among different speech environments. Habitual pitch measurements were conducted for 10 normally developing children (2 boys, 8 girls) between the ages of 31 months and 71 months during two different activities: (1) free play; and (2) structured speech. Speech samples were recorded using a throat microphone connected with a wireless transmitter in both activities. The habitual pitch (in Hz) was measured for all collected speech samples by using voice analysis software (Real-Time Pitch). Significantly higher habitual pitch is found during free play in contrast to structured speech activities. In addition, there is no showing of significant difference of habitual pitch elicited across a variety of structured speech activities. Findings suggest that the vocal usage of preschoolers appears to be more effortful during free play than during structured activities. It is recommended that a comprehensive evaluation for young children's voice needs to be based on the speech/voice samples collected from both free play and structured activities.

The Body That Speaks: Recombining Bodies and Speech Sources in Unscripted Face-to-Face Communication.

PubMed

Gillespie, Alex; Corti, Kevin

2016-01-01

This article examines advances in research methods that enable experimental substitution of the speaking body in unscripted face-to-face communication. A taxonomy of six hybrid social agents is presented by combining three types of bodies (mechanical, virtual, and human) with either an artificial or human speech source. Our contribution is to introduce and explore the significance of two particular hybrids: (1) the cyranoid method that enables humans to converse face-to-face through the medium of another person's body, and (2) the echoborg method that enables artificial intelligence to converse face-to-face through the medium of a human body. These two methods are distinct in being able to parse the unique influence of the human body when combined with various speech sources. We also introduce a new framework for conceptualizing the body's role in communication, distinguishing three levels: self's perspective on the body, other's perspective on the body, and self's perspective of other's perspective on the body. Within each level the cyranoid and echoborg methodologies make important research questions tractable. By conceptualizing and synthesizing these methods, we outline a novel paradigm of research on the role of the body in unscripted face-to-face communication.

The Body That Speaks: Recombining Bodies and Speech Sources in Unscripted Face-to-Face Communication

PubMed Central

Gillespie, Alex; Corti, Kevin

2016-01-01

This article examines advances in research methods that enable experimental substitution of the speaking body in unscripted face-to-face communication. A taxonomy of six hybrid social agents is presented by combining three types of bodies (mechanical, virtual, and human) with either an artificial or human speech source. Our contribution is to introduce and explore the significance of two particular hybrids: (1) the cyranoid method that enables humans to converse face-to-face through the medium of another person's body, and (2) the echoborg method that enables artificial intelligence to converse face-to-face through the medium of a human body. These two methods are distinct in being able to parse the unique influence of the human body when combined with various speech sources. We also introduce a new framework for conceptualizing the body's role in communication, distinguishing three levels: self's perspective on the body, other's perspective on the body, and self's perspective of other's perspective on the body. Within each level the cyranoid and echoborg methodologies make important research questions tractable. By conceptualizing and synthesizing these methods, we outline a novel paradigm of research on the role of the body in unscripted face-to-face communication. PMID:27660616

[Speech fluency developmental profile in Brazilian Portuguese speakers].

PubMed

Martins, Vanessa de Oliveira; Andrade, Claudia Regina Furquim de

2008-01-01

speech fluency varies from one individual to the next, fluent or stutterer, depending on several factors. Studies that investigate the influence of age on fluency patterns have been identified; however these differences were investigated in isolated age groups. Studies about life span fluency variations were not found. to verify the speech fluency developmental profile. speech samples of 594 fluent participants of both genders, with ages between 2:0 and 99:11 years, speakers of the Brazilian Portuguese language, were analyzed. Participants were grouped as follows: pre-scholars, scholars, early adolescence, late adolescence, adults and elderlies. Speech samples were analyzed according to the Speech Fluency Profile variables and were compared regarding: typology of speech disruptions (typical and less typical), speech rate (words and syllables per minute) and frequency of speech disruptions (percentage of speech discontinuity). although isolated variations were identified, overall there was no significant difference between the age groups for the speech disruption indexes (typical and less typical speech disruptions and percentage of speech discontinuity). Significant differences were observed between the groups when considering speech rate. the development of the neurolinguistic system for speech fluency, in terms of speech disruptions, seems to stabilize itself during the first years of life, presenting no alterations during the life span. Indexes of speech rate present variations in the age groups, indicating patterns of acquisition, development, stabilization and degeneration.

Prosodic alignment in human-computer interaction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Suzuki, N.; Katagiri, Y.

2007-06-01

Androids that replicate humans in form also need to replicate them in behaviour to achieve a high level of believability or lifelikeness. We explore the minimal social cues that can induce in people the human tendency for social acceptance, or ethopoeia, toward artifacts, including androids. It has been observed that people exhibit a strong tendency to adjust to each other, through a number of speech and language features in human-human conversational interactions, to obtain communication efficiency and emotional engagement. We investigate in this paper the phenomena related to prosodic alignment in human-computer interactions, with particular focus on human-computer alignment of speech characteristics. We found that people exhibit unidirectional and spontaneous short-term alignment of loudness and response latency in their speech in response to computer-generated speech. We believe this phenomenon of prosodic alignment provides one of the key components for building social acceptance of androids.

The McGurk effect in children with autism and Asperger syndrome.

PubMed

Bebko, James M; Schroeder, Jessica H; Weiss, Jonathan A

2014-02-01

Children with autism may have difficulties in audiovisual speech perception, which has been linked to speech perception and language development. However, little has been done to examine children with Asperger syndrome as a group on tasks assessing audiovisual speech perception, despite this group's often greater language skills. Samples of children with autism, Asperger syndrome, and Down syndrome, as well as a typically developing sample, were presented with an auditory-only condition, a speech-reading condition, and an audiovisual condition designed to elicit the McGurk effect. Children with autism demonstrated unimodal performance at the same level as the other groups, yet showed a lower rate of the McGurk effect compared with the Asperger, Down and typical samples. These results suggest that children with autism may have unique intermodal speech perception difficulties linked to their representations of speech sounds. © 2013 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Language Sampling for Preschoolers With Severe Speech Impairments

PubMed Central

Ragsdale, Jamie; Bustos, Aimee

2016-01-01

Purpose The purposes of this investigation were to determine if measures such as mean length of utterance (MLU) and percentage of comprehensible words can be derived reliably from language samples of children with severe speech impairments and if such measures correlate with tools that measure constructs assumed to be related. Method Language samples of 15 preschoolers with severe speech impairments (but receptive language within normal limits) were transcribed independently by 2 transcribers. Nonparametric statistics were used to determine which measures, if any, could be transcribed reliably and to determine if correlations existed between language sample measures and standardized measures of speech, language, and cognition. Results Reliable measures were extracted from the majority of the language samples, including MLU in words, mean number of syllables per utterance, and percentage of comprehensible words. Language sample comprehensibility measures were correlated with a single word comprehensibility task. Also, language sample MLUs and mean length of the participants' 3 longest sentences from the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson et al., 2006) were correlated. Conclusion Language sampling, given certain modifications, may be used for some 3-to 5-year-old children with normal receptive language who have severe speech impairments to provide reliable expressive language and comprehensibility information. PMID:27552110

Language Sampling for Preschoolers With Severe Speech Impairments.

PubMed

Binger, Cathy; Ragsdale, Jamie; Bustos, Aimee

2016-11-01

The purposes of this investigation were to determine if measures such as mean length of utterance (MLU) and percentage of comprehensible words can be derived reliably from language samples of children with severe speech impairments and if such measures correlate with tools that measure constructs assumed to be related. Language samples of 15 preschoolers with severe speech impairments (but receptive language within normal limits) were transcribed independently by 2 transcribers. Nonparametric statistics were used to determine which measures, if any, could be transcribed reliably and to determine if correlations existed between language sample measures and standardized measures of speech, language, and cognition. Reliable measures were extracted from the majority of the language samples, including MLU in words, mean number of syllables per utterance, and percentage of comprehensible words. Language sample comprehensibility measures were correlated with a single word comprehensibility task. Also, language sample MLUs and mean length of the participants' 3 longest sentences from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson et al., 2006) were correlated. Language sampling, given certain modifications, may be used for some 3-to 5-year-old children with normal receptive language who have severe speech impairments to provide reliable expressive language and comprehensibility information.

Speech Characteristics Associated with Three Genotypes of Ataxia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sidtis, John J.; Ahn, Ji Sook; Gomez, Christopher; Sidtis, Diana

2011-01-01

Purpose: Advances in neurobiology are providing new opportunities to investigate the neurological systems underlying motor speech control. This study explores the perceptual characteristics of the speech of three genotypes of spino-cerebellar ataxia (SCA) as manifest in four different speech tasks. Methods: Speech samples from 26 speakers with SCA…

Automated Speech Rate Measurement in Dysarthria

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

A Window into the Intoxicated Mind? Speech as an Index of Psychoactive Drug Effects

PubMed Central

Bedi, Gillinder; Cecchi, Guillermo A; Slezak, Diego F; Carrillo, Facundo; Sigman, Mariano; de Wit, Harriet

2014-01-01

Abused drugs can profoundly alter mental states in ways that may motivate drug use. These effects are usually assessed with self-report, an approach that is vulnerable to biases. Analyzing speech during intoxication may present a more direct, objective measure, offering a unique ‘window' into the mind. Here, we employed computational analyses of speech semantic and topological structure after ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA; ‘ecstasy') and methamphetamine in 13 ecstasy users. In 4 sessions, participants completed a 10-min speech task after MDMA (0.75 and 1.5 mg/kg), methamphetamine (20 mg), or placebo. Latent Semantic Analyses identified the semantic proximity between speech content and concepts relevant to drug effects. Graph-based analyses identified topological speech characteristics. Group-level drug effects on semantic distances and topology were assessed. Machine-learning analyses (with leave-one-out cross-validation) assessed whether speech characteristics could predict drug condition in the individual subject. Speech after MDMA (1.5 mg/kg) had greater semantic proximity than placebo to the concepts friend, support, intimacy, and rapport. Speech on MDMA (0.75 mg/kg) had greater proximity to empathy than placebo. Conversely, speech on methamphetamine was further from compassion than placebo. Classifiers discriminated between MDMA (1.5 mg/kg) and placebo with 88% accuracy, and MDMA (1.5 mg/kg) and methamphetamine with 84% accuracy. For the two MDMA doses, the classifier performed at chance. These data suggest that automated semantic speech analyses can capture subtle alterations in mental state, accurately discriminating between drugs. The findings also illustrate the potential for automated speech-based approaches to characterize clinically relevant alterations to mental state, including those occurring in psychiatric illness. PMID:24694926

A window into the intoxicated mind? Speech as an index of psychoactive drug effects.

PubMed

Bedi, Gillinder; Cecchi, Guillermo A; Slezak, Diego F; Carrillo, Facundo; Sigman, Mariano; de Wit, Harriet

2014-09-01

Abused drugs can profoundly alter mental states in ways that may motivate drug use. These effects are usually assessed with self-report, an approach that is vulnerable to biases. Analyzing speech during intoxication may present a more direct, objective measure, offering a unique 'window' into the mind. Here, we employed computational analyses of speech semantic and topological structure after ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA; 'ecstasy') and methamphetamine in 13 ecstasy users. In 4 sessions, participants completed a 10-min speech task after MDMA (0.75 and 1.5 mg/kg), methamphetamine (20 mg), or placebo. Latent Semantic Analyses identified the semantic proximity between speech content and concepts relevant to drug effects. Graph-based analyses identified topological speech characteristics. Group-level drug effects on semantic distances and topology were assessed. Machine-learning analyses (with leave-one-out cross-validation) assessed whether speech characteristics could predict drug condition in the individual subject. Speech after MDMA (1.5 mg/kg) had greater semantic proximity than placebo to the concepts friend, support, intimacy, and rapport. Speech on MDMA (0.75 mg/kg) had greater proximity to empathy than placebo. Conversely, speech on methamphetamine was further from compassion than placebo. Classifiers discriminated between MDMA (1.5 mg/kg) and placebo with 88% accuracy, and MDMA (1.5 mg/kg) and methamphetamine with 84% accuracy. For the two MDMA doses, the classifier performed at chance. These data suggest that automated semantic speech analyses can capture subtle alterations in mental state, accurately discriminating between drugs. The findings also illustrate the potential for automated speech-based approaches to characterize clinically relevant alterations to mental state, including those occurring in psychiatric illness.

Speech serial control in healthy speakers and speakers with hypokinetic or ataxic dysarthria: effects of sequence length and practice

PubMed Central

Reilly, Kevin J.; Spencer, Kristie A.

2013-01-01

The current study investigated the processes responsible for selection of sounds and syllables during production of speech sequences in 10 adults with hypokinetic dysarthria from Parkinson’s disease, five adults with ataxic dysarthria, and 14 healthy control speakers. Speech production data from a choice reaction time task were analyzed to evaluate the effects of sequence length and practice on speech sound sequencing. Speakers produced sequences that were between one and five syllables in length over five experimental runs of 60 trials each. In contrast to the healthy speakers, speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria demonstrated exaggerated sequence length effects for both inter-syllable intervals (ISIs) and speech error rates. Conversely, speakers with ataxic dysarthria failed to demonstrate a sequence length effect on ISIs and were also the only group that did not exhibit practice-related changes in ISIs and speech error rates over the five experimental runs. The exaggerated sequence length effects in the hypokinetic speakers with Parkinson’s disease are consistent with an impairment of action selection during speech sequence production. The absent length effects observed in the speakers with ataxic dysarthria is consistent with previous findings that indicate a limited capacity to buffer speech sequences in advance of their execution. In addition, the lack of practice effects in these speakers suggests that learning-related improvements in the production rate and accuracy of speech sequences involves processing by structures of the cerebellum. Together, the current findings inform models of serial control for speech in healthy speakers and support the notion that sequencing deficits contribute to speech symptoms in speakers with hypokinetic or ataxic dysarthria. In addition, these findings indicate that speech sequencing is differentially impaired in hypokinetic and ataxic dysarthria. PMID:24137121

Prediction and constraint in audiovisual speech perception.

PubMed

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, supported by distinct neuroanatomical mechanisms. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Analog-to-digital conversion to accommodate the dynamics of live music in hearing instruments.

PubMed

Hockley, Neil S; Bahlmann, Frauke; Fulton, Bernadette

2012-09-01

Hearing instrument design focuses on the amplification of speech to reduce the negative effects of hearing loss. Many amateur and professional musicians, along with music enthusiasts, also require their hearing instruments to perform well when listening to the frequent, high amplitude peaks of live music. One limitation, in most current digital hearing instruments with 16-bit analog-to-digital (A/D) converters, is that the compressor before the A/D conversion is limited to 95 dB (SPL) or less at the input. This is more than adequate for the dynamic range of speech; however, this does not accommodate the amplitude peaks present in live music. The hearing instrument input compression system can be adjusted to accommodate for the amplitudes present in music that would otherwise be compressed before the A/D converter in the hearing instrument. The methodology behind this technological approach will be presented along with measurements to demonstrate its effectiveness.

Speech and Language Development in 2 Year Old Children with Cerebral Palsy

PubMed Central

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

2013-01-01

Objective 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. Methods Speech and language assessments were completed on 27 children with CP who were between the ages of 24-30 months (mean age 27.1 months; SD 1.8). We examined several measures of expressive and receptive language, along with speech intelligibility. Results 2-step cluster analysis was used to identify homogeneous groups of children based on their performance on the 7 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. Conclusion 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 to identify and treat those with delays at or before 2 years of age. PMID:23627373

Research on the optoacoustic communication system for speech transmission by variable laser-pulse repetition rates

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiang, Hongyan; Qiu, Hongbing; He, Ning; Liao, Xin

2018-06-01

For the optoacoustic communication from in-air platforms to submerged apparatus, a method based on speech recognition and variable laser-pulse repetition rates is proposed, which realizes character encoding and transmission for speech. Firstly, the theories and spectrum characteristics of the laser-generated underwater sound are analyzed; and moreover character conversion and encoding for speech as well as the pattern of codes for laser modulation is studied; lastly experiments to verify the system design are carried out. Results show that the optoacoustic system, where laser modulation is controlled by speech-to-character baseband codes, is beneficial to improve flexibility in receiving location for underwater targets as well as real-time performance in information transmission. In the overwater transmitter, a pulse laser is controlled to radiate by speech signals with several repetition rates randomly selected in the range of one to fifty Hz, and then in the underwater receiver laser pulse repetition rate and data can be acquired by the preamble and information codes of the corresponding laser-generated sound. When the energy of the laser pulse is appropriate, real-time transmission for speaker-independent speech can be realized in that way, which solves the problem of underwater bandwidth resource and provides a technical approach for the air-sea communication.

An integrated analysis of speech and gestural characteristics in conversational child-computer interactions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yildirim, Serdar; Montanari, Simona; Andersen, Elaine; Narayanan, Shrikanth S.

2003-10-01

Understanding the fine details of children's speech and gestural characteristics helps, among other things, in creating natural computer interfaces. We analyze the acoustic, lexical/non-lexical and spoken/gestural discourse characteristics of young children's speech using audio-video data gathered using a Wizard of Oz technique from 4 to 6 year old children engaged in resolving a series of age-appropriate cognitive challenges. Fundamental and formant frequencies exhibited greater variations between subjects consistent with previous results on read speech [Lee et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 105, 1455-1468 (1999)]. Also, our analysis showed that, in a given bandwidth, phonemic information contained in the speech of young child is significantly less than that of older ones and adults. To enable an integrated analysis, a multi-track annotation board was constructed using the ANVIL tool kit [M. Kipp, Eurospeech 1367-1370 (2001)]. Along with speech transcriptions and acoustic analysis, non-lexical and discourse characteristics, and child's gesture (facial expressions, body movements, hand/head movements) were annotated in a synchronized multilayer system. Initial results showed that younger children rely more on gestures to emphasize their verbal assertions. Younger children use non-lexical speech (e.g., um, huh) associated with frustration and pondering/reflecting more frequently than older ones. Younger children also repair more with humans than with computer.

Intracranial mapping of auditory perception: event-related responses and electrocortical stimulation.

PubMed

Sinai, A; Crone, N E; Wied, H M; Franaszczuk, P J; Miglioretti, D; Boatman-Reich, D

2009-01-01

We compared intracranial recordings of auditory event-related responses with electrocortical stimulation mapping (ESM) to determine their functional relationship. Intracranial recordings and ESM were performed, using speech and tones, in adult epilepsy patients with subdural electrodes implanted over lateral left cortex. Evoked N1 responses and induced spectral power changes were obtained by trial averaging and time-frequency analysis. ESM impaired perception and comprehension of speech, not tones, at electrode sites in the posterior temporal lobe. There was high spatial concordance between ESM sites critical for speech perception and the largest spectral power (100% concordance) and N1 (83%) responses to speech. N1 responses showed good sensitivity (0.75) and specificity (0.82), but poor positive predictive value (0.32). Conversely, increased high-frequency power (>60Hz) showed high specificity (0.98), but poorer sensitivity (0.67) and positive predictive value (0.67). Stimulus-related differences were observed in the spatial-temporal patterns of event-related responses. Intracranial auditory event-related responses to speech were associated with cortical sites critical for auditory perception and comprehension of speech. These results suggest that the distribution and magnitude of intracranial auditory event-related responses to speech reflect the functional significance of the underlying cortical regions and may be useful for pre-surgical functional mapping.

Intracranial mapping of auditory perception: Event-related responses and electrocortical stimulation

PubMed Central

Sinai, A.; Crone, N.E.; Wied, H.M.; Franaszczuk, P.J.; Miglioretti, D.; Boatman-Reich, D.

2010-01-01

Objective We compared intracranial recordings of auditory event-related responses with electrocortical stimulation mapping (ESM) to determine their functional relationship. Methods Intracranial recordings and ESM were performed, using speech and tones, in adult epilepsy patients with subdural electrodes implanted over lateral left cortex. Evoked N1 responses and induced spectral power changes were obtained by trial averaging and time-frequency analysis. Results ESM impaired perception and comprehension of speech, not tones, at electrode sites in the posterior temporal lobe. There was high spatial concordance between ESM sites critical for speech perception and the largest spectral power (100% concordance) and N1 (83%) responses to speech. N1 responses showed good sensitivity (0.75) and specificity (0.82), but poor positive predictive value (0.32). Conversely, increased high-frequency power (>60 Hz) showed high specificity (0.98), but poorer sensitivity (0.67) and positive predictive value (0.67). Stimulus-related differences were observed in the spatial-temporal patterns of event-related responses. Conclusions Intracranial auditory event-related responses to speech were associated with cortical sites critical for auditory perception and comprehension of speech. Significance These results suggest that the distribution and magnitude of intracranial auditory event-related responses to speech reflect the functional significance of the underlying cortical regions and may be useful for pre-surgical functional mapping. PMID:19070540

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

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

Applications of Text Analysis Tools for Spoken Response Grading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crossley, Scott; McNamara, Danielle

2013-01-01

This study explores the potential for automated indices related to speech delivery, language use, and topic development to model human judgments of TOEFL speaking proficiency in second language (L2) speech samples. For this study, 244 transcribed TOEFL speech samples taken from 244 L2 learners were analyzed using automated indices taken from…

Frontal and temporal contributions to understanding the iconic co-speech gestures that accompany speech

PubMed Central

Dick, Anthony Steven; Mok, Eva H.; Beharelle, Anjali Raja; Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Small, Steven L.

2013-01-01

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 to 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 non-specific language, compared to 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 non-specific 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. PMID:23238964

Breathing for answering: the time course of response planning in conversation

PubMed Central

Torreira, Francisco; Bögels, Sara; Levinson, Stephen C.

2015-01-01

We investigate the timing of pre-answer inbreaths in order to shed light on the time course of response planning and execution in conversational turn-taking. Using acoustic and inductive plethysmography recordings of seven dyadic conversations in Dutch, we show that pre-answer inbreaths in conversation typically begin briefly after the end of questions. We also show that the presence of a pre-answer inbreath usually co-occurs with substantially delayed answers, with a modal latency of 576 vs. 100 ms for answers not preceded by an inbreath. Based on previously reported minimal latencies for internal intercostal activation and the production of speech sounds, we propose that vocal responses, either in the form of a pre-utterance inbreath or of speech proper when an inbreath is not produced, are typically launched in reaction to information present in the last portion of the interlocutor's turn. We also show that short responses are usually made on residual breath, while longer responses are more often preceded by an inbreath. This relation of inbreaths to answer length suggests that by the time an inbreath is launched, typically during the last few hundred milliseconds of the question, the length of the answer is often prepared to some extent. Together, our findings are consistent with a two-stage model of response planning in conversational turn-taking: early planning of content often carried out in overlap with the incoming turn, and late launching of articulation based on the identification of turn-final cues. PMID:25814976

HUMAN SPEECH: A RESTRICTED USE OF THE MAMMALIAN LARYNX

PubMed Central

Titze, Ingo R.

2016-01-01

Purpose Speech has been hailed as unique to human evolution. While the inventory of distinct sounds producible with vocal tract articulators is a great advantage in human oral communication, it is argued here that the larynx as a sound source in speech is limited in its range and capability because a low fundamental frequency is ideal for phonemic intelligibility and source-filter independence. Method Four existing data sets were combined to make an argument regarding exclusive use of the larynx for speech: (1) range of fundamental frequency, (2) laryngeal muscle activation, (3) vocal fold length in relation to sarcomere length of the major laryngeal muscles, and (4) vocal fold morphological development. Results Limited data support the notion that speech tends to produce a contracture of the larynx. The morphological design of the human vocal folds, like that of primates and other mammals, is optimized for vocal communication over distances for which higher fundamental frequency, higher intensity, and fewer unvoiced segments are utilized than in conversational speech. Conclusion The positive message is that raising one’s voice to call, shout, or sing, or executing pitch glides to stretch the vocal folds, can counteract this trend toward a contracted state. PMID:27397113

Children's views of communication and speech-language pathology.

PubMed

Merrick, Rosalind; Roulstone, Sue

2011-08-01

Children have the right to express their views and influence decisions in matters that affect them. Yet decisions regarding speech-language pathology are often made on their behalf, and research into the perspectives of children who receive speech-language pathology intervention is currently limited. This paper reports a qualitative study which explored experiences of communication and of speech-language pathology from the perspectives of children with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN). The aim was to explore their perspectives of communication, communication impairment, and assistance. Eleven school-children participated in the study, aged between 7-10 years. They were recruited through a speech-language pathology service in south west England, to include a range of ages and severity of difficulties. The study used open-ended interviews within which non-verbal activities such as drawing, taking photographs, and compiling a scrapbook were used to create a context for supported conversations. Findings were analysed according to the principles of grounded theory. Three ways of talking about communication emerged. These were in terms of impairment, learning, and behaviour. Findings offer insight into dialogue between children with SLCN and adults; the way communication is talked about has implications for children's view of themselves, their skills, and their participation.

Developing a corpus of spoken language variability

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Carmichael, Lesley; Wright, Richard; Wassink, Alicia Beckford

2003-10-01

We are developing a novel, searchable corpus as a research tool for investigating phonetic and phonological phenomena across various speech styles. Five speech styles have been well studied independently in previous work: reduced (casual), careful (hyperarticulated), citation (reading), Lombard effect (speech in noise), and ``motherese'' (child-directed speech). Few studies to date have collected a wide range of styles from a single set of speakers, and fewer yet have provided publicly available corpora. The pilot corpus includes recordings of (1) a set of speakers participating in a variety of tasks designed to elicit the five speech styles, and (2) casual peer conversations and wordlists to illustrate regional vowels. The data include high-quality recordings and time-aligned transcriptions linked to text files that can be queried. Initial measures drawn from the database provide comparison across speech styles along the following acoustic dimensions: MLU (changes in unit duration); relative intra-speaker intensity changes (mean and dynamic range); and intra-speaker pitch values (minimum, maximum, mean, range). The corpus design will allow for a variety of analyses requiring control of demographic and style factors, including hyperarticulation variety, disfluencies, intonation, discourse analysis, and detailed spectral measures.

Result on speech perception after conversion from Spectra® to Freedom®.

PubMed

Magalhães, Ana Tereza de Matos; Goffi-Gomez, Maria Valéria Schmidt; Hoshino, Ana Cristina; Tsuji, Robinson Koji; Bento, Ricardo Ferreira; Brito, Rubens

2012-04-01

New technology in the Freedom® speech processor for cochlear implants was developed to improve how incoming acoustic sound is processed; this applies not only for new users, but also for previous generations of cochlear implants. To identify the contribution of this technology-- the Nucleus 22®--on speech perception tests in silence and in noise, and on audiometric thresholds. A cross-sectional cohort study was undertaken. Seventeen patients were selected. The last map based on the Spectra® was revised and optimized before starting the tests. Troubleshooting was used to identify malfunction. To identify the contribution of the Freedom® technology for the Nucleus22®, auditory thresholds and speech perception tests were performed in free field in sound-proof booths. Recorded monosyllables and sentences in silence and in noise (SNR = 0dB) were presented at 60 dBSPL. The nonparametric Wilcoxon test for paired data was used to compare groups. Freedom® applied for the Nucleus22® showed a statistically significant difference in all speech perception tests and audiometric thresholds. The Freedom® technology improved the performance of speech perception and audiometric thresholds of patients with Nucleus 22®.

[George Herbert Mead. Thought as the conversation of interior gestures].

PubMed

Quéré, Louis

2010-01-01

For George Herbert Mead, thinking amounts to holding an "inner conversation of gestures ". Such a conception does not seem especially original at first glance. What makes it truly original is the "social-behavioral" approach of which it is a part, and, particularly, two ideas. The first is that the conversation in question is a conversation of gestures or attitudes, and the second, that thought and reflexive intelligence arise from the internalization of an external process supported by the social mechanism of communication: that of conduct organization. It imports then to understand what distinguishes such ideas from those of the founder of behavioral psychology, John B. Watson, for whom thinking amounts to nothing other than subvocal speech.

Automated Speech Rate Measurement in Dysarthria.

PubMed

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

2015-06-01

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. The new algorithm was trained and tested using Dutch speech samples of 36 speakers with no history of speech impairment and 40 speakers with mild to moderate dysarthria. We tested the algorithm under various conditions: according to speech task type (sentence reading, passage reading, and storytelling) and algorithm optimization method (speaker group optimization and individual speaker optimization). Correlations between automated and human SR determination were calculated for each condition. High correlations between automated and human SR determination were found in the various testing conditions. The new algorithm measures SR in a sufficiently reliable manner. It is currently being integrated in a clinical software tool for assessing and managing prosody in dysarthric speech. Further research is needed to fine-tune the algorithm to severely dysarthric speech, to make the algorithm less sensitive to background noise, and to evaluate how the algorithm deals with syllabic consonants.

Using on-line altered auditory feedback treating Parkinsonian speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Emily; Verhagen, Leo; de Vries, Meinou H.

2005-09-01

Patients with advanced Parkinson's disease tend to have dysarthric speech that is hesitant, accelerated, and repetitive, and that is often resistant to behavior speech therapy. In this pilot study, the speech disturbances were treated using on-line altered feedbacks (AF) provided by SpeechEasy (SE), an in-the-ear device registered with the FDA for use in humans to treat chronic stuttering. Eight PD patients participated in the study. All had moderate to severe speech disturbances. In addition, two patients had moderate recurring stuttering at the onset of PD after long remission since adolescence, two had bilateral STN DBS, and two bilateral pallidal DBS. An effective combination of delayed auditory feedback and frequency-altered feedback was selected for each subject and provided via SE worn in one ear. All subjects produced speech samples (structured-monologue and reading) under three conditions: baseline, with SE without, and with feedbacks. The speech samples were randomly presented and rated for speech intelligibility goodness using UPDRS-III item 18 and the speaking rate. The results indicted that SpeechEasy is well tolerated and AF can improve speech intelligibility in spontaneous speech. Further investigational use of this device for treating speech disorders in PD is warranted [Work partially supported by Janus Dev. Group, Inc.].

Introducing social cues in multimedia learning: The role of pedagogic agents' image and language in a scientific lesson

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moreno, Roxana Arleen

The present dissertation tested the hypothesis that software pedagogical agents can promote constructivist learning in a discovery-based multimedia environment. In a preliminary study, students who received a computer-based lesson on environmental science performed better on subsequent tests of problem solving and motivation when they learned with the mediation of a fictional agent compared to when they learned the same material from text. In order to investigate further the basis for this personal agent effect, I varied whether the agent's words were presented as speech or on-screen text and whether or not the agent's image appeared on the screen. Both with a fictional agent (Experiment 1) and a video of a human face (Experiment 2), students performed better on tests of retention, problem-solving transfer, and program ratings when words were presented as speech rather than on-screen text (producing a modality effect) but visual presence of the agent did not affect test performance (producing no image effect). Next, I varied whether or not the agent's words were presented in conversational style (i.e., as dialogue) or formal style (i.e., as monologue) both using speech (Experiment 3) and on-screen text (Experiment 4). In both experiments, there was a dialogue effect in which conversational-style produced better retention and transfer performance. Students who learned with conversational-style text rated the program more favorably than those who learned with monologue-style text. The results support cognitive principles of multimedia learning which underlie the understanding of a computer lesson about a complex scientific system.

Passenger and cell phone conversations in simulated driving.

PubMed

Drews, Frank A; Pasupathi, Monisha; Strayer, David L

2008-12-01

This study examines how conversing with passengers in a vehicle differs from conversing on a cell phone while driving. We compared how well drivers were able to deal with the demands of driving when conversing on a cell phone, conversing with a passenger, and when driving without any distraction. In the conversation conditions, participants were instructed to converse with a friend about past experiences in which their life was threatened. The results show that the number of driving errors was highest in the cell phone condition; in passenger conversations more references were made to traffic, and the production rate of the driver and the complexity of speech of both interlocutors dropped in response to an increase in the demand of the traffic. The results indicate that passenger conversations differ from cell phone conversations because the surrounding traffic not only becomes a topic of the conversation, helping driver and passenger to share situation awareness, but the driving condition also has a direct influence on the complexity of the conversation, thereby mitigating the potential negative effects of a conversation on driving. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.

Is Presurgery and Early Postsurgery Performance Related to Speech and Language Outcomes at 3 Years of Age for Children with Cleft Palate?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chapman, Kathy L.

2004-01-01

This study examined the relationship between presurgery speech measures and speech and language performance at 39 months as well as the relationship between early postsurgery speech measures and speech and language performance at 39 months of age. Fifteen children with cleft lip and palate participated in the study. Spontaneous speech samples were…

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

DTIC Science & Technology

1981-03-01

adjusting the metronome beats to coincide with the stressed syllables. The sentences were constructed to have a regular rhythm. They were: "I think’ that it...rate was 92 beats per minute, the conversational rate was 120 beats per minute, and the fast rate was 160 beats per minute. Both sentences were recorded...shown in Figure 6 also suggests amplitude modulation (von Holst’s superimposition effect). Thus on some coinciding cycles a " beat " phenomenon can be

Imposing Cognitive Constraints on Reference Production: The Interplay Between Speech and Gesture During Grounding.

PubMed

Masson-Carro, Ingrid; Goudbeek, Martijn; Krahmer, Emiel

2016-10-01

Past research has sought to elucidate how speakers and addressees establish common ground in conversation, yet few studies have focused on how visual cues such as co-speech gestures contribute to this process. Likewise, the effect of cognitive constraints on multimodal grounding remains to be established. This study addresses the relationship between the verbal and gestural modalities during grounding in referential communication. We report data from a collaborative task where repeated references were elicited, and a time constraint was imposed to increase cognitive load. Our results reveal no differential effects of repetition or cognitive load on the semantic-based gesture rate, suggesting that representational gestures and speech are closely coordinated during grounding. However, gestures and speech differed in their execution, especially under time pressure. We argue that speech and gesture are two complementary streams that might be planned in conjunction but that unfold independently in later stages of language production, with speakers emphasizing the form of their gestures, but not of their words, to better meet the goals of the collaborative task. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Measurement of trained speech patterns in stuttering: interjudge and intrajudge agreement of experts by means of modified time-interval analysis.

PubMed

Alpermann, Anke; Huber, Walter; Natke, Ulrich; Willmes, Klaus

2010-09-01

Improved fluency after stuttering therapy is usually measured by the percentage of stuttered syllables. However, outcome studies rarely evaluate the use of trained speech patterns that speakers use to manage stuttering. This study investigated whether the modified time interval analysis can distinguish between trained speech patterns, fluent speech, and stuttered speech. Seventeen German experts on stuttering judged a speech sample on two occasions. Speakers of the sample were stuttering adults, who were not undergoing therapy, as well as participants in a fluency shaping and a stuttering modification therapy. Results showed satisfactory inter-judge and intra-judge agreement above 80%. Intervals with trained speech patterns were identified as consistently as stuttered and fluent intervals. We discuss limitations of the study, as well as implications of our findings for the development of training for identification of trained speech patterns and future outcome studies. The reader will be able to (a) explain different methods to measure the use of trained speech patterns, (b) evaluate whether German experts are able to discriminate intervals with trained speech patterns reliably from fluent and stuttered intervals and (c) describe how the measurement of trained speech patterns can contribute to outcome studies.

The effect of instantaneous input dynamic range setting on the speech perception of children with the nucleus 24 implant.

PubMed

Davidson, Lisa S; Skinner, Margaret W; Holstad, Beth A; Fears, Beverly T; Richter, Marie K; Matusofsky, Margaret; Brenner, Christine; Holden, Timothy; Birath, Amy; Kettel, Jerrica L; Scollie, Susan

2009-06-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a wider instantaneous input dynamic range (IIDR) setting on speech perception and comfort in quiet and noise for children wearing the Nucleus 24 implant system and the Freedom speech processor. In addition, children's ability to understand soft and conversational level speech in relation to aided sound-field thresholds was examined. Thirty children (age, 7 to 17 years) with the Nucleus 24 cochlear implant system and the Freedom speech processor with two different IIDR settings (30 versus 40 dB) were tested on the Consonant Nucleus Consonant (CNC) word test at 50 and 60 dB SPL, the Bamford-Kowal-Bench Speech in Noise Test, and a loudness rating task for four-talker speech noise. Aided thresholds for frequency-modulated tones, narrowband noise, and recorded Ling sounds were obtained with the two IIDRs and examined in relation to CNC scores at 50 dB SPL. Speech Intelligibility Indices were calculated using the long-term average speech spectrum of the CNC words at 50 dB SPL measured at each test site and aided thresholds. Group mean CNC scores at 50 dB SPL with the 40 IIDR were significantly higher (p < 0.001) than with the 30 IIDR. Group mean CNC scores at 60 dB SPL, loudness ratings, and the signal to noise ratios-50 for Bamford-Kowal-Bench Speech in Noise Test were not significantly different for the two IIDRs. Significantly improved aided thresholds at 250 to 6000 Hz as well as higher Speech Intelligibility Indices afforded improved audibility for speech presented at soft levels (50 dB SPL). These results indicate that an increased IIDR provides improved word recognition for soft levels of speech without compromising comfort of higher levels of speech sounds or sentence recognition in noise.

Improving speech outcomes after failed palate repair: evaluating the safety and efficacy of conversion Furlow palatoplasty.

PubMed

Nayar, Harry S; Cray, James J; MacIsaac, Zoe M; Argenta, Anne E; Ford, Matthew D; Fenton, Regina A; Losee, Joseph E; Grunwaldt, Lorelei J

2014-03-01

Velopharyngeal insufficiency occurs in a nontrivial number of cases following cleft palate repair. We hypothesize that a conversion Furlow palatoplasty allows for long-term correction of VPI resulting from a failed primary palate repair, obviating the need for pharyngoplasty and its attendant comorbidities. A retrospective review of patients undergoing a conversion Furlow palatoplasty between 2003 and 2010 was performed. Patients were grouped according to the type of preceding palatal repair. Velopharyngeal insufficiency was assessed using Pittsburgh Weighted Speech Scale (PWSS). Scores were recorded and compared preoperatively and postoperatively at 3 sequential visits. Sixty-two patients met inclusion criteria and were grouped by preceding repair (straight-line repair (n = 37), straight-line repair with subsequent oronasal fistula (n = 14), or pharyngeal flap (n = 11). Median PWSS scores at individual visits were as follows: preoperative = 11, first postoperative = 3 (mean, 114.0 ± 6.7 days), second postoperative = 1 (mean, 529.0 ± 29.1 days), and most recent postoperative = 3 (mean, 1368.6 ± 76.9 days). There was a significant difference between preoperative and postoperative PWSS scores in the entire cohort (P < 0.001) with overall improvement, and post hoc analysis showed improvement between each postoperative visit (P < 0.05) with the exception of the second to the most recent visit. There were no differences between postoperative PWSS scores in the operative subgroupings (P > 0.05). Eight patients failed to improve and showed no differences in PWSS scores over time (P > 0.05). Patients with a PWSS score of 7 or greater (n = 8) at the first postoperative visit (0-6 months) displayed improvement at the most recent visit (P< 0.05). Conversion Furlow palatoplasty is an effective means for salvaging speech. Future studies should elucidate which factors predict the success of this technique following failed palate repair.

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

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

Speech-Language Pathologists' Assessment Practices for Children with Suspected Speech Sound Disorders: Results of a National Survey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Skahan, Sarah M.; Watson, Maggie; Lof, Gregory L.

2007-01-01

Purpose: This study examined assessment procedures used by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) when assessing children suspected of having speech sound disorders (SSD). This national survey also determined the information participants obtained from clients' speech samples, evaluation of non-native English speakers, and time spent on assessment.…

Attitudes toward Speech Disorders: Sampling the Views of Cantonese-Speaking Americans.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bebout, Linda; Arthur, Bradford

1997-01-01

A study of 60 Chinese Americans and 46 controls found the Chinese Americans were more likely to believe persons with speech disorders could improve speech by "trying hard," to view people using deaf speech and people with cleft palates as perhaps being emotionally disturbed, and to regard deaf speech as a limitation. (Author/CR)

Use of speech-to-text technology for documentation by healthcare providers.

PubMed

Ajami, Sima

2016-01-01

Medical records are a critical component of a patient's treatment. However, documentation of patient-related information is considered a secondary activity in the provision of healthcare services, often leading to incomplete medical records and patient data of low quality. Advances in information technology (IT) in the health system and registration of information in electronic health records (EHR) using speechto- text conversion software have facilitated service delivery. This narrative review is a literature search with the help of libraries, books, conference proceedings, databases of Science Direct, PubMed, Proquest, Springer, SID (Scientific Information Database), and search engines such as Yahoo, and Google. I used the following keywords and their combinations: speech recognition, automatic report documentation, voice to text software, healthcare, information, and voice recognition. Due to lack of knowledge of other languages, I searched all texts in English or Persian with no time limits. Of a total of 70, only 42 articles were selected. Speech-to-text conversion technology offers opportunities to improve the documentation process of medical records, reduce cost and time of recording information, enhance the quality of documentation, improve the quality of services provided to patients, and support healthcare providers in legal matters. Healthcare providers should recognize the impact of this technology on service delivery.

Noise Robust Speech Recognition Applied to Voice-Driven Wheelchair

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sasou, Akira; Kojima, Hiroaki

2009-12-01

Conventional voice-driven wheelchairs usually employ headset microphones that are capable of achieving sufficient recognition accuracy, even in the presence of surrounding noise. However, such interfaces require users to wear sensors such as a headset microphone, which can be an impediment, especially for the hand disabled. Conversely, it is also well known that the speech recognition accuracy drastically degrades when the microphone is placed far from the user. In this paper, we develop a noise robust speech recognition system for a voice-driven wheelchair. This system can achieve almost the same recognition accuracy as the headset microphone without wearing sensors. We verified the effectiveness of our system in experiments in different environments, and confirmed that our system can achieve almost the same recognition accuracy as the headset microphone without wearing sensors.

Changes in Speech Production Associated with Alphabet Supplementation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hustad, Katherine C.; Lee, Jimin

2008-01-01

Purpose: This study examined the effect of alphabet supplementation (AS) on temporal and spectral features of speech production in individuals with cerebral palsy and dysarthria. Method: Twelve speakers with dysarthria contributed speech samples using habitual speech and while using AS. One hundred twenty listeners orthographically transcribed…

Effects of cognitive impairment on prosodic parameters of speech production planning in multiple sclerosis.

PubMed

De Looze, Céline; Moreau, Noémie; Renié, Laurent; Kelly, Finnian; Ghio, Alain; Rico, Audrey; Audoin, Bertrand; Viallet, François; Pelletier, Jean; Petrone, Caterina

2017-05-24

Cognitive impairment (CI) affects 40-65% of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). CI can have a negative impact on a patient's everyday activities, such as engaging in conversations. Speech production planning ability is crucial for successful verbal interactions and thus for preserving social and occupational skills. This study investigates the effect of cognitive-linguistic demand and CI on speech production planning in MS, as reflected in speech prosody. A secondary aim is to explore the clinical potential of prosodic features for the prediction of an individual's cognitive status in MS. A total of 45 subjects, that is 22 healthy controls (HC) and 23 patients in early stages of relapsing-remitting MS, underwent neuropsychological tests probing specific cognitive processes involved in speech production planning. All subjects also performed a read speech task, in which they had to read isolated sentences manipulated as for phonological length. Results show that the speech of MS patients with CI is mainly affected at the temporal level (articulation and speech rate, pause duration). Regression analyses further indicate that rate measures are correlated with working memory scores. In addition, linear discriminant analysis shows the ROC AUC of identifying MS patients with CI is 0.70 (95% confidence interval: 0.68-0.73). Our findings indicate that prosodic planning is deficient in patients with MS-CI and that the scope of planning depends on patients' cognitive abilities. We discuss how speech-based approaches could be used as an ecological method for the assessment and monitoring of CI in MS. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

Association between speech-language, general cognitive functioning and behaviour problems in individuals with Williams syndrome.

PubMed

Rossi, N F; Giacheti, C M

2017-07-01

Williams syndrome (WS) phenotype is described as unique and intriguing. The aim of this study was to investigate the associations between speech-language abilities, general cognitive functioning and behavioural problems in individuals with WS, considering age effects and speech-language characteristics of WS sub-groups. The study's participants were 26 individuals with WS and their parents. General cognitive functioning was assessed with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Token Test and the Cookie Theft Picture test were used as speech-language measures. Five speech-language characteristics were evaluated from a 30-min conversation (clichés, echolalia, perseverative speech, exaggerated prosody and monotone intonation). The Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL 6-18) was used to assess behavioural problems. Higher single-word receptive vocabulary and narrative vocabulary were negatively associated with CBCL T-scores for Social Problems, Aggressive Behaviour and Total Problems. Speech rate was negatively associated with the CBCL Withdrawn/Depressed T-score. Monotone intonation was associated with shy behaviour, as well as exaggerated prosody with talkative behaviour. WS with perseverative speech and exaggerated prosody presented higher scores on Thought Problems. Echolalia was significantly associated with lower Verbal IQ. No significant association was found between IQ and behaviour problems. Age-associated effects were observed only for the Aggressive Behaviour scale. Associations reported in the present study may represent an insightful background for future predictive studies of speech-language, cognition and behaviour problems in WS. © 2017 MENCAP and International Association of the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Valence-specific conflict moderation in the dorso-medial PFC and the caudate head in emotional speech.

PubMed

Kotz, Sonja A; Dengler, Reinhard; Wittfoth, Matthias

2015-02-01

Emotional speech comprises of complex multimodal verbal and non-verbal information that allows deducting others' emotional states or thoughts in social interactions. While the neural correlates of verbal and non-verbal aspects and their interaction in emotional speech have been identified, there is very little evidence on how we perceive and resolve incongruity in emotional speech, and whether such incongruity extends to current concepts of task-specific prediction errors as a consequence of unexpected action outcomes ('negative surprise'). Here, we explored this possibility while participants listened to congruent and incongruent angry, happy or neutral utterances and categorized the expressed emotions by their verbal (semantic) content. Results reveal valence-specific incongruity effects: negative verbal content expressed in a happy tone of voice increased activation in the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) extending its role from conflict moderation to appraisal of valence-specific conflict in emotional speech. Conversely, the caudate head bilaterally responded selectively to positive verbal content expressed in an angry tone of voice broadening previous accounts of the caudate head in linguistic control to moderating valence-specific control in emotional speech. Together, these results suggest that control structures of the human brain (dmPFC and subcompartments of the basal ganglia) impact emotional speech differentially when conflict arises. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Loudness and pitch of Kunqu opera.

PubMed

Dong, Li; Sundberg, Johan; Kong, Jiangping

2014-01-01

Equivalent sound level (Leq), sound pressure level (SPL), and fundamental frequency (F0) are analyzed in each of five Kunqu Opera roles, Young girl and Young woman, Young man, Old man, and Colorful face. Their pitch ranges are similar to those of some western opera singers (alto, alto, tenor, baritone, and baritone, respectively). Differences among tasks, conditions (stage speech, singing, and reading lyrics), singers, and roles are examined. For all singers, Leq of stage speech and singing were considerably higher than that of conversational speech. Interrole differences of Leq among tasks and singers were larger than the intrarole differences. For most roles, time domain variation of SPL differed between roles both in singing and stage speech. In singing, as compared with stage speech, SPL distribution was more concentrated and variation of SPL with time was smaller. With regard to gender and age, male roles had higher mean Leq and lower average F0, MF0, as compared with female roles. Female singers showed a wider F0 distribution for singing than for stage speech, whereas the opposite was true for male singers. The Leq of stage speech was higher than in singing for young personages. Younger female personages showed higher Leq, whereas older male personages had higher Leq. The roles performed with higher Leq tended to be sung at a lower MF0. Copyright © 2014 The Voice Foundation. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Minimal Pair Distinctions and Intelligibility in Preschool Children with and without Speech Sound Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hodge, Megan M.; Gotzke, Carrie L.

2011-01-01

Listeners' identification of young children's productions of minimally contrastive words and predictive relationships between accurately identified words and intelligibility scores obtained from a 100-word spontaneous speech sample were determined for 36 children with typically developing speech (TDS) and 36 children with speech sound disorders…

Accurate visible speech synthesis based on concatenating variable length motion capture data.

PubMed

Ma, Jiyong; Cole, Ron; Pellom, Bryan; Ward, Wayne; Wise, Barbara

2006-01-01

We present a novel approach to synthesizing accurate visible speech based on searching and concatenating optimal variable-length units in a large corpus of motion capture data. Based on a set of visual prototypes selected on a source face and a corresponding set designated for a target face, we propose a machine learning technique to automatically map the facial motions observed on the source face to the target face. In order to model the long distance coarticulation effects in visible speech, a large-scale corpus that covers the most common syllables in English was collected, annotated and analyzed. For any input text, a search algorithm to locate the optimal sequences of concatenated units for synthesis is desrcribed. A new algorithm to adapt lip motions from a generic 3D face model to a specific 3D face model is also proposed. A complete, end-to-end visible speech animation system is implemented based on the approach. This system is currently used in more than 60 kindergarten through third grade classrooms to teach students to read using a lifelike conversational animated agent. To evaluate the quality of the visible speech produced by the animation system, both subjective evaluation and objective evaluation are conducted. The evaluation results show that the proposed approach is accurate and powerful for visible speech synthesis.

Brain potentials to native phoneme discrimination reveal the origin of individual differences in learning the sounds of a second language

PubMed Central

Díaz, Begoña; Baus, Cristina; Escera, Carles; Costa, Albert; Sebastián-Gallés, Núria

2008-01-01

Human beings differ in their ability to master the sounds of their second language (L2). Phonetic training studies have proposed that differences in phonetic learning stem from differences in psychoacoustic abilities rather than speech-specific capabilities. We aimed at finding the origin of individual differences in L2 phonetic acquisition in natural learning contexts. We consider two alternative explanations: a general psychoacoustic origin vs. a speech-specific one. For this purpose, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from two groups of early, proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals who differed in their mastery of the Catalan (L2) phonetic contrast /e-ε/. Brain activity in response to acoustic change detection was recorded in three different conditions involving tones of different length (duration condition), frequency (frequency condition), and presentation order (pattern condition). In addition, neural correlates of speech change detection were also assessed for both native (/o/-/e/) and nonnative (/o/-/ö/) phonetic contrasts (speech condition). Participants' discrimination accuracy, reflected electrically as a mismatch negativity (MMN), was similar between the two groups of participants in the three acoustic conditions. Conversely, the MMN was reduced in poor perceivers (PP) when they were presented with speech sounds. Therefore, our results support a speech-specific origin of individual variability in L2 phonetic mastery. PMID:18852470

An investigation of the effects of a speech-restructuring treatment for stuttering on the distribution of intervals of phonation.

PubMed

Brown, Lisa; Wilson, Linda; Packman, Ann; Halaki, Mark; Onslow, Mark; Menzies, Ross

2016-12-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether stuttering reductions following the instatement phase of a speech-restructuring treatment for adults were accompanied by reductions in the frequency of short intervals of phonation (PIs). The study was prompted by the possibility that reductions in the frequency of short PIs is the mechanism underlying such reductions in stuttering. The distribution of PIs was determined for seven adults who stutter, before and immediately after the intensive phase of a speech-restructuring treatment program. Audiovisual recordings of conversational speech were made on both assessment occasions, with PIs recorded with an accelerometer. All seven participants had much lower levels of stuttering after treatment but these were associated with reductions in the frequency of short PIs for only four of them. For the other three participants, two showed no change in frequency of short PIs, while for the other participant the frequency of short PIs actually increased. Stuttering reduction with speech-restructuring treatment can co-occur with reduction in the frequency of short PIs. However, the latter does not appear necessary for this reduction in stuttering to occur. Thus, speech-restructuring treatment must have other, or additional, treatment agents for stuttering to reduce. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Articulatory-acoustic vowel space: application to clear speech in individuals with Parkinson's disease.

PubMed

Whitfield, Jason A; Goberman, Alexander M

2014-01-01

Individuals with Parkinson disease (PD) often exhibit decreased range of movement secondary to the disease process, which has been shown to affect articulatory movements. A number of investigations have failed to find statistically significant differences between control and disordered groups, and between speaking conditions, using traditional vowel space area measures. The purpose of the current investigation was to evaluate both between-group (PD versus control) and within-group (habitual versus clear) differences in articulatory function using a novel vowel space measure, the articulatory-acoustic vowel space (AAVS). The novel AAVS is calculated from continuously sampled formant trajectories of connected speech. In the current study, habitual and clear speech samples from twelve individuals with PD along with habitual control speech samples from ten neurologically healthy adults were collected and acoustically analyzed. In addition, a group of listeners completed perceptual rating of speech clarity for all samples. Individuals with PD were perceived to exhibit decreased speech clarity compared to controls. Similarly, the novel AAVS measure was significantly lower in individuals with PD. In addition, the AAVS measure significantly tracked changes between the habitual and clear conditions that were confirmed by perceptual ratings. In the current study, the novel AAVS measure is shown to be sensitive to disease-related group differences and within-person changes in articulatory function of individuals with PD. Additionally, these data confirm that individuals with PD can modulate the speech motor system to increase articulatory range of motion and speech clarity when given a simple prompt. The reader will be able to (i) describe articulatory behavior observed in the speech of individuals with Parkinson disease; (ii) describe traditional measures of vowel space area and how they relate to articulation; (iii) describe a novel measure of vowel space, the articulatory-acoustic vowel space and its relationship to articulation and the perception of speech clarity. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Variability and Diagnostic Accuracy of Speech Intelligibility Scores in Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hustad, Katherine C.; Oakes, Ashley; Allison, Kristen

2015-01-01

Purpose: We examined variability of speech intelligibility scores and how well intelligibility scores predicted group membership among 5-year-old children with speech motor impairment (SMI) secondary to cerebral palsy and an age-matched group of typically developing (TD) children. Method: Speech samples varying in length from 1-4 words were…

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

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

Speech recognition systems on the Cell Broadband Engine

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Liu, Y; Jones, H; Vaidya, S

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 thousandsmore » 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.« less

IDEA: Stimulating Oral Production.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Easley, Jacob J.

1995-01-01

Presents daily activities that facilitate complete sentence response, promote oral production, and aid the learning of vocabulary in foreign-language classes. Because speech is the primary form of communication in the foreign-language classroom, it is important to stimulate students to converse as soon as possible. (Author/CK)

Characterizing Social Communication Changes in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fisher, Fiona; Philpott, April; Andrews, Sophie C.; Maule, Roxanne; Douglas, Jacinta

2017-01-01

Background: Speech and language impairments are well-established in individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). However, knowledge about particular aspects of social communication and everyday conversational abilities is limited. Aims: To investigate self- and informant-report ratings of social communicative abilities in ALS participants…

The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tannen, Deborah

1995-01-01

Conversational style often overrides what is said, affecting who gets heard and what gets done. Women's linguistic styles often make them seem less competent and self-assured than they are. Better understanding of speech styles will make managers better listeners and communicators. (SK)

Analog-to-Digital Conversion to Accommodate the Dynamics of Live Music in Hearing Instruments

PubMed Central

Bahlmann, Frauke; Fulton, Bernadette

2012-01-01

Hearing instrument design focuses on the amplification of speech to reduce the negative effects of hearing loss. Many amateur and professional musicians, along with music enthusiasts, also require their hearing instruments to perform well when listening to the frequent, high amplitude peaks of live music. One limitation, in most current digital hearing instruments with 16-bit analog-to-digital (A/D) converters, is that the compressor before the A/D conversion is limited to 95 dB (SPL) or less at the input. This is more than adequate for the dynamic range of speech; however, this does not accommodate the amplitude peaks present in live music. The hearing instrument input compression system can be adjusted to accommodate for the amplitudes present in music that would otherwise be compressed before the A/D converter in the hearing instrument. The methodology behind this technological approach will be presented along with measurements to demonstrate its effectiveness. PMID:23258618

Describing Speech Usage in Daily Activities in Typical Adults.

PubMed

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.

Neural Systems Involved When Attending to a Speaker

PubMed Central

Kamourieh, Salwa; Braga, Rodrigo M.; Leech, Robert; Newbould, Rexford D.; Malhotra, Paresh; Wise, Richard J. S.

2015-01-01

Remembering what a speaker said depends on attention. During conversational speech, the emphasis is on working memory, but listening to a lecture encourages episodic memory encoding. With simultaneous interference from background speech, the need for auditory vigilance increases. We recreated these context-dependent demands on auditory attention in 2 ways. The first was to require participants to attend to one speaker in either the absence or presence of a distracting background speaker. The second was to alter the task demand, requiring either an immediate or delayed recall of the content of the attended speech. Across 2 fMRI studies, common activated regions associated with segregating attended from unattended speech were the right anterior insula and adjacent frontal operculum (aI/FOp), the left planum temporale, and the precuneus. In contrast, activity in a ventral right frontoparietal system was dependent on both the task demand and the presence of a competing speaker. Additional multivariate analyses identified other domain-general frontoparietal systems, where activity increased during attentive listening but was modulated little by the need for speech stream segregation in the presence of 2 speakers. These results make predictions about impairments in attentive listening in different communicative contexts following focal or diffuse brain pathology. PMID:25596592

Development of coffee maker service robot using speech and face recognition systems using POMDP

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Budiharto, Widodo; Meiliana; Santoso Gunawan, Alexander Agung

2016-07-01

There are many development of intelligent service robot in order to interact with user naturally. This purpose can be done by embedding speech and face recognition ability on specific tasks to the robot. In this research, we would like to propose Intelligent Coffee Maker Robot which the speech recognition is based on Indonesian language and powered by statistical dialogue systems. This kind of robot can be used in the office, supermarket or restaurant. In our scenario, robot will recognize user's face and then accept commands from the user to do an action, specifically in making a coffee. Based on our previous work, the accuracy for speech recognition is about 86% and face recognition is about 93% in laboratory experiments. The main problem in here is to know the intention of user about how sweetness of the coffee. The intelligent coffee maker robot should conclude the user intention through conversation under unreliable automatic speech in noisy environment. In this paper, this spoken dialog problem is treated as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). We describe how this formulation establish a promising framework by empirical results. The dialog simulations are presented which demonstrate significant quantitative outcome.

Cleft audit protocol for speech (CAPS-A): a comprehensive training package for speech analysis.

PubMed

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

2009-01-01

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 paid to this issue. To design, execute, and evaluate a training programme for speech and language therapists on the systematic and reliable use of the Cleft Audit Protocol for Speech-Augmented (CAPS-A), addressing issues of standardized speech samples, data acquisition, recording, playback, and listening guidelines. Thirty-six specialist speech and language therapists undertook the training programme over four days. This consisted of two days' training on the CAPS-A tool followed by a third day, making independent ratings and transcriptions on ten new cases which had been previously recorded during routine audit data collection. This task was repeated on day 4, a minimum of one month later. Ratings were made using the CAPS-A record form with the CAPS-A definition table. An analysis was made of the speech and language therapists' CAPS-A ratings at occasion 1 and occasion 2 and the intra- and inter-rater reliability calculated. Trained therapists showed consistency in individual judgements on specific sections of the tool. Intraclass correlation coefficients were calculated for each section with good agreement on eight of 13 sections. There were only fair levels of agreement on anterior oral cleft speech characteristics, non-cleft errors/immaturities and voice. This was explained, at least in part, by their low prevalence which affects the calculation of the intraclass correlation coefficient statistic. Speech and language therapists benefited from training on the CAPS-A, focusing on specific aspects of speech using definitions of parameters and scalar points, in order to apply the tool systematically and reliably. Ratings are enhanced by ensuring a high degree of attention to the nature of the data, standardizing the speech sample, data acquisition, the listening process together with the use of high-quality recording and playback equipment. In addition, a method is proposed for maintaining listening skills following training as part of an individual's continuing education.

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

PubMed Central

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

2010-01-01

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, respectively, were modestly and substantially more prevalent in participants with ASD than reported population estimates. Double dissociations in speech, prosody, and voice impairments in ASD were interpreted as consistent with a speech attunement framework, rather than with the motor speech impairments that define CAS. Key Words: apraxia, dyspraxia, motor speech disorder, speech sound disorder PMID:20972615

A characterization of verb use in Turkish agrammatic narrative speech.

PubMed

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.

Advancements in robust algorithm formulation for speaker identification of whispered speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fan, Xing

Whispered speech is an alternative speech production mode from neutral speech, which is used by talkers intentionally in natural conversational scenarios to protect privacy and to avoid certain content from being overheard/made public. Due to the profound differences between whispered and neutral speech in production mechanism and the absence of whispered adaptation data, the performance of speaker identification systems trained with neutral speech degrades significantly. This dissertation therefore focuses on developing a robust closed-set speaker recognition system for whispered speech by using no or limited whispered adaptation data from non-target speakers. This dissertation proposes the concept of "High''/"Low'' performance whispered data for the purpose of speaker identification. A variety of acoustic properties are identified that contribute to the quality of whispered data. An acoustic analysis is also conducted to compare the phoneme/speaker dependency of the differences between whispered and neutral data in the feature domain. The observations from those acoustic analysis are new in this area and also serve as a guidance for developing robust speaker identification systems for whispered speech. This dissertation further proposes two systems for speaker identification of whispered speech. One system focuses on front-end processing. A two-dimensional feature space is proposed to search for "Low''-quality performance based whispered utterances and separate feature mapping functions are applied to vowels and consonants respectively in order to retain the speaker's information shared between whispered and neutral speech. The other system focuses on speech-mode-independent model training. The proposed method generates pseudo whispered features from neutral features by using the statistical information contained in a whispered Universal Background model (UBM) trained from extra collected whispered data from non-target speakers. Four modeling methods are proposed for the transformation estimation in order to generate the pseudo whispered features. Both of the above two systems demonstrate a significant improvement over the baseline system on the evaluation data. This dissertation has therefore contributed to providing a scientific understanding of the differences between whispered and neutral speech as well as improved front-end processing and modeling method for speaker identification of whispered speech. Such advancements will ultimately contribute to improve the robustness of speech processing systems.

Classification of Parkinson's disease utilizing multi-edit nearest-neighbor and ensemble learning algorithms with speech samples.

PubMed

Zhang, He-Hua; Yang, Liuyang; Liu, Yuchuan; Wang, Pin; Yin, Jun; Li, Yongming; Qiu, Mingguo; Zhu, Xueru; Yan, Fang

2016-11-16

The use of speech based data in the classification of Parkinson disease (PD) has been shown to provide an effect, non-invasive mode of classification in recent years. Thus, there has been an increased interest in speech pattern analysis methods applicable to Parkinsonism for building predictive tele-diagnosis and tele-monitoring models. One of the obstacles in optimizing classifications is to reduce noise within the collected speech samples, thus ensuring better classification accuracy and stability. While the currently used methods are effect, the ability to invoke instance selection has been seldomly examined. In this study, a PD classification algorithm was proposed and examined that combines a multi-edit-nearest-neighbor (MENN) algorithm and an ensemble learning algorithm. First, the MENN algorithm is applied for selecting optimal training speech samples iteratively, thereby obtaining samples with high separability. Next, an ensemble learning algorithm, random forest (RF) or decorrelated neural network ensembles (DNNE), is used to generate trained samples from the collected training samples. Lastly, the trained ensemble learning algorithms are applied to the test samples for PD classification. This proposed method was examined using a more recently deposited public datasets and compared against other currently used algorithms for validation. Experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm obtained the highest degree of improved classification accuracy (29.44%) compared with the other algorithm that was examined. Furthermore, the MENN algorithm alone was found to improve classification accuracy by as much as 45.72%. Moreover, the proposed algorithm was found to exhibit a higher stability, particularly when combining the MENN and RF algorithms. This study showed that the proposed method could improve PD classification when using speech data and can be applied to future studies seeking to improve PD classification methods.

Speech comprehension and emotional/behavioral problems in children with specific language impairment (SLI).

PubMed

Gregl, Ana; Kirigin, Marin; Bilać, Snjeiana; Sućeska Ligutić, Radojka; Jaksić, Nenad; Jakovljević, Miro

2014-09-01

This research aims to investigate differences in speech comprehension between children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their developmentally normal peers, and the relationship between speech comprehension and emotional/behavioral problems on Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Caregiver Teacher's Report Form (C-TRF) according to the DSMIV The clinical sample comprised 97preschool children with SLI, while the peer sample comprised 60 developmentally normal preschool children. Children with SLI had significant delays in speech comprehension and more emotional/behavioral problems than peers. In children with SLI, speech comprehension significantly correlated with scores on Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Problems (CBCL and C-TRF), and Pervasive Developmental Problems scales (CBCL)(p<0.05). In the peer sample, speech comprehension significantly correlated with scores on Affective Problems and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Problems (C-TRF) scales. Regression analysis showed that 12.8% of variance in speech comprehension is saturated with 5 CBCL variables, of which Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity (beta = -0.281) and Pervasive Developmental Problems (beta = -0.280) are statistically significant (p < 0.05). In the reduced regression model Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity explains 7.3% of the variance in speech comprehension, (beta = -0.270, p < 0.01). It is possible that, to a certain degree, the same neurodevelopmental process lies in the background of problems with speech comprehension, problems with attention and hyperactivity, and pervasive developmental problems. This study confirms the importance of triage for behavioral problems and attention training in the rehabilitation of children with SLI and children with normal language development that exhibit ADHD symptoms.

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

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

The Effect of Background Noise on Intelligibility of Dysphonic Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

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

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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,…

The Effectiveness of SpeechEasy during Situations of Daily Living

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Donnell, Jennifer J.; Armson, Joy; Kiefte, Michael

2008-01-01

A multiple single-subject design was used to examine the effects of SpeechEasy on stuttering frequency in the laboratory and in longitudinal samples of speech produced in situations of daily living (SDL). Seven adults who stutter participated, all of whom had exhibited at least 30% reduction in stuttering frequency while using SpeechEasy during…

The role of temporal speech cues in facilitating the fluency of adults who stutter.

PubMed

Park, Jin; Logan, Kenneth J

2015-12-01

Adults who stutter speak more fluently during choral speech contexts than they do during solo speech contexts. The underlying mechanisms for this effect remain unclear, however. In this study, we examined the extent to which the choral speech effect depended on presentation of intact temporal speech cues. We also examined whether speakers who stutter followed choral signals more closely than typical speakers did. 8 adults who stuttered and 8 adults who did not stutter read 60 sentences aloud during a solo speaking condition and three choral speaking conditions (240 total sentences), two of which featured either temporally altered or indeterminate word duration patterns. Effects of these manipulations on speech fluency, rate, and temporal entrainment with the choral speech signal were assessed. Adults who stutter spoke more fluently in all choral speaking conditions than they did when speaking solo. They also spoke slower and exhibited closer temporal entrainment with the choral signal during the mid- to late-stages of sentence production than the adults who did not stutter. Both groups entrained more closely with unaltered choral signals than they did with altered choral signals. Findings suggest that adults who stutter make greater use of speech-related information in choral signals when talking than adults with typical fluency do. The presence of fluency facilitation during temporally altered choral speech and conversation babble, however, suggests that temporal/gestural cueing alone cannot account for fluency facilitation in speakers who stutter. Other potential fluency enhancing mechanisms are discussed. The reader will be able to (a) summarize competing views on stuttering as a speech timing disorder, (b) describe the extent to which adults who stutter depend on an accurate rendering of temporal information in order to benefit from choral speech, and (c) discuss possible explanations for fluency facilitation in the presence of inaccurate or indeterminate temporal cues. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

PubMed

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.

Effects of Neurological Damage on Production of Formulaic Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sidtis, Diana; Canterucci, Gina; Katsnelson, Dora

2009-01-01

Early studies reported preserved formulaic language in left hemisphere damaged subjects and reduced incidence of formulaic expressions in the conversational speech of stroke patients with right hemispheric damage. Clinical observations suggest a possible role also of subcortical nuclei. This study examined formulaic language in the spontaneous…

Multiple Repair Sequences in Everyday Conversations Involving People with Parkinson's Disease

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Griffiths, Sarah; Barnes, Rebecca; Britten, Nicky; Wilkinson, Ray

2015-01-01

Background: Features of dysarthria associated with Parkinson's disease (PD), such as low volume, variable rate of speech and increased pauses, impact speaker intelligibility. Those affected report restricted interactional participation, although this area is under explored. Aims: To examine naturally occurring instances of problems with…

Solutions. Conversation Games, Volume III.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fordham Univ., Bronx, NY. Graduate School of Education.

This is one of three volumes of instructional games devised to further the development of children's listening, logical thinking, problem solving, and oral communication skills. The games are designed to create a relaxed, informal setting in which teachers can encourage and support children's natural speech and provide language activities that…

Preparing for a Metric America

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Willenbrock, F. Karl

1975-01-01

In this speech before the Sixtieth National Conference on Weights and Measures, the Director of the Institute for Applied Technology, National Bureau of Standards, presented his view of the imminent conversion to the metric system, outlined some issues related to metrication, and announced appointments related to the change-over. (SD)

Issues and Developments in English and Applied Linguistics (IDEAL), 1994.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dickerson, Wayne B., Ed.; Kachru, Yamuna, Ed.

1994-01-01

Seven papers on topics of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction, language research, and applied linguistics are presented: "ESL Students and Common L2 Conversation-Making Expressions" (Eli Hinkel); "Thematic Options in Reporting Previous Research" (Sarah Thomas, Thomas Hawes); "Connected Speech Modifications in…

Sound frequency affects speech emotion perception: results from congenital amusia

PubMed Central

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. PMID:26441718

Speech segregation based-on binaural cue: interaural time difference (itd) and interaural level difference (ild)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nur Farid, Mifta; Arifianto, Dhany

2016-11-01

A person who is suffering from hearing loss can be helped by using hearing aids and the most optimal performance of hearing aids are binaural hearing aids because it has similarities to human auditory system. In a conversation at a cocktail party, a person can focus on a single conversation even though the background sound and other people conversation is quite loud. This phenomenon is known as the cocktail party effect. In an early study, has been explained that binaural hearing have an important contribution to the cocktail party effect. So in this study, will be performed separation on the input binaural sound with 2 microphone sensors of two sound sources based on both the binaural cue, interaural time difference (ITD) and interaural level difference (ILD) using binary mask. To estimate value of ITD, is used cross-correlation method which the value of ITD represented as time delay of peak shifting at time-frequency unit. Binary mask is estimated based on pattern of ITD and ILD to relative strength of target that computed statistically using probability density estimation. Results of sound source separation performing well with the value of speech intelligibility using the percent correct word by 86% and 3 dB by SNR.

Speech acquisition predicts regions of enhanced cortical response to auditory stimulation in autism spectrum individuals.

PubMed

Samson, F; Zeffiro, T A; Doyon, J; Benali, H; Mottron, L

2015-09-01

A continuum of phenotypes makes up the autism spectrum (AS). In particular, individuals show large differences in language acquisition, ranging from precocious speech to severe speech onset delay. However, the neurological origin of this heterogeneity remains unknown. Here, we sought to determine whether AS individuals differing in speech acquisition show different cortical responses to auditory stimulation and morphometric brain differences. Whole-brain activity following exposure to non-social sounds was investigated. Individuals in the AS were classified according to the presence or absence of Speech Onset Delay (AS-SOD and AS-NoSOD, respectively) and were compared with IQ-matched typically developing individuals (TYP). AS-NoSOD participants displayed greater task-related activity than TYP in the inferior frontal gyrus and peri-auditory middle and superior temporal gyri, which are associated with language processing. Conversely, the AS-SOD group only showed enhanced activity in the vicinity of the auditory cortex. We detected no differences in brain structure between groups. This is the first study to demonstrate the existence of differences in functional brain activity between AS individuals divided according to their pattern of speech development. These findings support the Trigger-threshold-target model and indicate that the occurrence of speech onset delay in AS individuals depends on the location of cortical functional reallocation, which favors perception in AS-SOD and language in AS-NoSOD. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Use of Language Sample Analysis by School-Based SLPs: Results of a Nationwide Survey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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'…

Neural decoding of attentional selection in multi-speaker environments without access to clean sources

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

O'Sullivan, James; Chen, Zhuo; Herrero, Jose; McKhann, Guy M.; Sheth, Sameer A.; Mehta, Ashesh D.; Mesgarani, Nima

2017-10-01

Objective. People who suffer from hearing impairments can find it difficult to follow a conversation in a multi-speaker environment. Current hearing aids can suppress background noise; however, there is little that can be done to help a user attend to a single conversation amongst many without knowing which speaker the user is attending to. Cognitively controlled hearing aids that use auditory attention decoding (AAD) methods are the next step in offering help. Translating the successes in AAD research to real-world applications poses a number of challenges, including the lack of access to the clean sound sources in the environment with which to compare with the neural signals. We propose a novel framework that combines single-channel speech separation algorithms with AAD. Approach. We present an end-to-end system that (1) receives a single audio channel containing a mixture of speakers that is heard by a listener along with the listener’s neural signals, (2) automatically separates the individual speakers in the mixture, (3) determines the attended speaker, and (4) amplifies the attended speaker’s voice to assist the listener. Main results. Using invasive electrophysiology recordings, we identified the regions of the auditory cortex that contribute to AAD. Given appropriate electrode locations, our system is able to decode the attention of subjects and amplify the attended speaker using only the mixed audio. Our quality assessment of the modified audio demonstrates a significant improvement in both subjective and objective speech quality measures. Significance. Our novel framework for AAD bridges the gap between the most recent advancements in speech processing technologies and speech prosthesis research and moves us closer to the development of cognitively controlled hearable devices for the hearing impaired.

Spectro-temporal characteristics of speech at high frequencies, and the potential for restoration of audibility to people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss.

PubMed

Moore, Brian C J; Stone, Michael A; Füllgrabe, Christian; Glasberg, Brian R; Puria, Sunil

2008-12-01

It is possible for auditory prostheses to provide amplification for frequencies above 6 kHz. However, most current hearing-aid fitting procedures do not give recommended gains for such high frequencies. This study was intended to provide information that could be useful in quantifying appropriate high-frequency gains, and in establishing the population of hearing-impaired people who might benefit from such amplification. The study had two parts. In the first part, wide-bandwidth recordings of normal conversational speech were obtained from a sample of male and female talkers. The recordings were used to determine the mean spectral shape over a wide frequency range, and to determine the distribution of levels (the speech dynamic range) as a function of center frequency. In the second part, audiometric thresholds were measured for frequencies of 0.125, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12.5 kHz for both ears of 31 people selected to have mild or moderate cochlear hearing loss. The hearing loss was never greater than 70 dB for any frequency up to 4 kHz. The mean spectrum level of the speech fell progressively with increasing center frequency above about 0.5 kHz. For speech with an overall level of 65 dB SPL, the mean 1/3-octave level was 49 and 37 dB SPL for center frequencies of 1 and 10 kHz, respectively. The dynamic range of the speech was similar for center frequencies of 1 and 10 kHz. The part of the dynamic range below the root-mean-square level was larger than reported in previous studies. The mean audiometric thresholds at high frequencies (10 and 12.5 kHz) were relatively high (69 and 77 dB HL, respectively), even though the mean thresholds for frequencies below 4 kHz were 41 dB HL or better. To partially restore audibility for a hearing loss of 65 dB at 10 kHz would require an effective insertion gain of about 36 dB at 10 kHz. With this gain, audibility could be (partly) restored for 25 of the 62 ears assessed.

Communication acoustics in Bell Labs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Flanagan, J. L.

2004-05-01

Communication aoustics has been a central theme in Bell Labs research since its inception. Telecommunication serves human information exchange. And, humans favor spoken language as a principal mode. The atmospheric medium typically provides the link between articulation and hearing. Creation, control and detection of sound, and the human's facility for generation and perception are basic ingredients of telecommunication. Electronics technology of the 1920s ushered in great advances in communication at a distance, a strong economical impetus being to overcome bandwidth limitations of wireline and cable. Early research established criteria for speech transmission with high quality and intelligibility. These insights supported exploration of means for efficient transmission-obtaining the greatest amount of speech information over a given bandwidth. Transoceanic communication was initiated by undersea cables for telegraphy. But these long cables exhibited very limited bandwidth (order of few hundred Hz). The challenge of sending voice across the oceans spawned perhaps the best known speech compression technique of history-the Vocoder, which parametrized the signal for transmission in about 300 Hz bandwidth, one-tenth that required for the typical waveform channel. Quality and intelligibility were grave issues (and they still are). At the same time parametric representation offered possibilities for encryption and privacy inside a traditional voice bandwidth. Confidential conversations between Roosevelt and Churchill during World War II were carried over high-frequency radio by an encrypted vocoder system known as Sigsaly. Major engineering advances in the late 1940s and early 1950s moved telecommunications into a new regime-digital technology. These key advances were at least three: (i) new understanding of time-discrete (sampled) representation of signals, (ii) digital computation (especially binary based), and (iii) evolving capabilities in microelectronics that ultimately provided circuits of enormous complexity with low cost and power. Digital transmission (as exemplified in pulse code modulation-PCM, and its many derivatives) became a telecommunication mainstay, along with switches to control and route information in digital form. Concomitantly, storage means for digital information advanced, providing another impetus for speech compression. More and more, humans saw the need to exchange speech information with machines, as well as with other humans. Human-machine speech communication came to full stride in the early 1990s, and now has expanded to multimodal domains that begin to support enhanced naturalness, using contemporaneous sight, sound and touch signaling. Packet transmission is supplanting circuit switching, and voice and video are commonly being carried by Internet protocol.

Long-Term Trajectories of the Development of Speech Sound Production in Pediatric Cochlear Implant Recipients

PubMed Central

Tomblin, J. Bruce; Peng, Shu-Chen; Spencer, Linda J.; Lu, Nelson

2011-01-01

Purpose This study characterized the development of speech sound production in prelingually deaf children with a minimum of 8 years of cochlear implant (CI) experience. Method Twenty-seven pediatric CI recipients' spontaneous speech samples from annual evaluation sessions were phonemically transcribed. Accuracy for these speech samples was evaluated in piecewise regression models. Results As a group, pediatric CI recipients showed steady improvement in speech sound production following implantation, but the improvement rate declined after 6 years of device experience. Piecewise regression models indicated that the slope estimating the participants' improvement rate was statistically greater than 0 during the first 6 years postimplantation, but not after 6 years. The group of pediatric CI recipients' accuracy of speech sound production after 4 years of device experience reasonably predicts their speech sound production after 5–10 years of device experience. Conclusions The development of speech sound production in prelingually deaf children stabilizes after 6 years of device experience, and typically approaches a plateau by 8 years of device use. Early growth in speech before 4 years of device experience did not predict later rates of growth or levels of achievement. However, good predictions could be made after 4 years of device use. PMID:18695018

The influence of speaking rate on nasality in the speech of hearing-impaired individuals.

PubMed

Dwyer, Claire H; Robb, Michael P; O'Beirne, Greg A; Gilbert, Harvey R

2009-10-01

The purpose of this study was to determine whether deliberate increases in speaking rate would serve to decrease the amount of nasality in the speech of severely hearing-impaired individuals. The participants were 11 severely to profoundly hearing-impaired students, ranging in age from 12 to 19 years (M = 16 years). Each participant provided a baseline speech sample (R1) followed by 3 training sessions during which participants were trained to increase their speaking rate. Following the training sessions, a second speech sample was obtained (R2). Acoustic and perceptual analyses of the speech samples obtained at R1 and R2 were undertaken. The acoustic analysis focused on changes in first (F(1)) and second (F(2)) formant frequency and formant bandwidths. The perceptual analysis involved listener ratings of the speech samples (at R1 and R2) for perceived nasality. Findings indicated a significant increase in speaking rate at R2. In addition, significantly narrower F(2) bandwidth and lower perceptual rating scores of nasality were obtained at R2 across all participants, suggesting a decrease in nasality as speaking rate increases. The nasality demonstrated by hearing-impaired individuals is amenable to change when speaking rate is increased. The influences of speaking rate changes on the perception and production of nasality in hearing-impaired individuals are discussed.

Investigation of Preservice Teachers' Speech Anxiety with Different Points of View

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kana, Fatih

2015-01-01

The purpose of this study is to find out the level of speech anxiety of last year students at Education Faculties and the effects of speech anxiety. For this purpose, speech anxiety inventory was delivered to 540 pre-service teachers at 2013-2014 academic year using stratified sampling method. Relational screening model was used in the study. To…

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

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

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

PubMed

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.

Scenario-Based Spoken Interaction with Virtual Agents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morton, Hazel; Jack, Mervyn A.

2005-01-01

This paper describes a CALL approach which integrates software for speaker independent continuous speech recognition with embodied virtual agents and virtual worlds to create an immersive environment in which learners can converse in the target language in contextualised scenarios. The result is a self-access learning package: SPELL (Spoken…

Teachers, Social Media, and Free Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vasek, Mandy; Hendricks, Randy

2016-01-01

Teachers across the United States routinely use social media to improve communication with students and parents, enrich the classroom curriculum, and engage in professional conversations with peers. However, teacher use of social media also has a dark side. Media reports are replete with stories of teachers engaging in inappropriate social…

Adaptive Dialogue Systems for Assistive Living Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Papangelis, Alexandros

2013-01-01

Adaptive Dialogue Systems (ADS) are intelligent systems, able to interact with users via multiple modalities, such as speech, gestures, facial expressions and others. Such systems are able to make conversation with their users, usually on a specific, narrow topic. Assistive Living Environments are environments where the users are by definition not…

Semi-Spontaneous Oral Text Production: Measurements in Clinical Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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

2009-01-01

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…

Speech Accommodation and the Influence of Dyad Sexual Compositions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sherblom, John

A study investigated the influence of conversational dyads' sexual composition upon the accommodation of speaking characteristics--turn duration, speaking rate, and vocal jitter. Subjects, 130 undergraduate students, were assigned to 65 dyads (with control for male-male, male-female, and female-female). In a sound studio, each participant in the…

DISCUSS: Toward a Domain Independent Representation of Dialogue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Becker, Lee

2012-01-01

While many studies have demonstrated that conversational tutoring systems have a positive effect on learning, the amount of manual effort required to author, design, and tune dialogue behaviors remains a major barrier to widespread deployment and adoption of these systems. Such dialogue systems must not only understand student speech, but must…

How to Use Telecommunications Relay Service. NETAC Teacher Tipsheet

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mothersell, Mary Beth, Comp.

1999-01-01

Telecommunications Relay Service provides full telephone accessibility to people who are deaf, hard of hearing, deaf-blind, or speech-disabled. Specially trained Communication Assistants (CAs) serve as intermediaries, relaying conversations between hearing persons and persons using a text telephone device (TTY). Relay Service is available 24 hours…

Communicative Effectiveness of Pantomime Gesture in People with Aphasia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rose, Miranda L.; Mok, Zaneta; Sekine, Kazuki

2017-01-01

Background: Human communication occurs through both verbal and visual/motoric modalities. Simultaneous conversational speech and gesture occurs across all cultures and age groups. When verbal communication is compromised, more of the communicative load can be transferred to the gesture modality. Although people with aphasia produce meaning-laden…

Women's Speech, Women's Strength?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coates, Jennifer

A discussion of women's oral discourse patterns focuses on the uses made of minimal responses, hedges, and tag questions. The analysis draws on transcriptions of conversations among a group of women friends over a period of months. It is proposed that the conventional treatment of these forms as "weak" is inappropriate in all-female…

A Closer Look at Formulaic Language: Prosodic Characteristics of Swedish Proverbs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hallin, Anna Eva; Van Lancker Sidtis, Diana

2017-01-01

Formulaic expressions (such as idioms, proverbs, and conversational speech formulas) are currently a topic of interest. Examination of prosody in formulaic utterances, a less explored property of formulaic expressions, has yielded controversial views. The present study investigates prosodic characteristics of proverbs, as one type of formulaic…

Nonverbal Effects in Memory for Dialogue.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Narvaez, Alice; Hertel, Paula T.

Memory for everyday conversational speech may be influenced by the nonverbally communicated emotion of the speaker. In order to investigate this premise, three videotaped scenes with bipolar emotional perspectives (joy/fear about going away to college, fear/anger about having been robbed, and disgust/interest regarding a friend's infidelity) were…

Prosody and Formulaic Language in Treatment-Resistant Depression: Effects of Deep Brain Stimulation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bridges, Kelly A.

2014-01-01

Communication, specifically the elements crucial for normal social interaction, can be significantly affected in psychiatric illness, especially depression. Of specific importance are prosody (an aspect of speech that carries emotional valence) and formulaic language (non-novel linguistic segments that are prevalent in naturalistic conversation).…

Audiovisual Speech Integration in Pervasive Developmental Disorder: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Magnee, Maurice J. C. M.; de Gelder, Beatrice; van Engeland, Herman; Kemner, Chantal

2008-01-01

Background: Integration of information from multiple sensory sources is an important prerequisite for successful social behavior, especially during face-to-face conversation. It has been suggested that communicative impairments among individuals with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) might be caused by an inability to integrate synchronously…

Speech rate and fluency in children with phonological disorder.

PubMed

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.

Assessing Disfluencies in School-Age Children Who Stutter: How Much Speech Is Enough?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gregg, Brent A.; Sawyer, Jean

2015-01-01

The question of what size speech sample is sufficient to accurately identify stuttering and its myriad characteristics is a valid one. Short samples have a risk of over- or underrepresenting disfluency types or characteristics. In recent years, there has been a trend toward using shorter samples because they are less time-consuming for…

Speech Rhythms and Multiplexed Oscillatory Sensory Coding in the Human Brain

PubMed Central

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

A keyword spotting model using perceptually significant energy features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Umakanthan, Padmalochini

The task of a keyword recognition system is to detect the presence of certain words in a conversation based on the linguistic information present in human speech. Such keyword spotting systems have applications in homeland security, telephone surveillance and human-computer interfacing. General procedure of a keyword spotting system involves feature generation and matching. In this work, new set of features that are based on the psycho-acoustic masking nature of human speech are proposed. After developing these features a time aligned pattern matching process was implemented to locate the words in a set of unknown words. A word boundary detection technique based on frame classification using the nonlinear characteristics of speech is also addressed in this work. Validation of this keyword spotting model was done using widely acclaimed Cepstral features. The experimental results indicate the viability of using these perceptually significant features as an augmented feature set in keyword spotting.

A retrospective study of long-term treatment outcomes for reduced vocal intensity in hypokinetic dysarthria.

PubMed

Watts, Christopher R

2016-01-01

Reduced vocal intensity is a core impairment of hypokinetic dysarthria in Parkinson's disease (PD). Speech treatments have been developed to rehabilitate the vocal subsystems underlying this impairment. Intensive treatment programs requiring high-intensity voice and speech exercises with clinician-guided prompting and feedback have been established as effective for improving vocal function. Less is known, however, regarding long-term outcomes of clinical benefit in speakers with PD who receive these treatments. A retrospective cohort design was utilized. Data from 78 patient files across a three year period were analyzed. All patients received a structured, intensive program of voice therapy focusing on speaking intent and loudness. The dependent variable for all analyses was vocal intensity in decibels (dBSPL). Vocal intensity during sustained vowel production, reading, and novel conversational speech was compared at pre-treatment, post-treatment, six month follow-up, and twelve month follow-up periods. Statistically significant increases in vocal intensity were found at post-treatment, 6 months, and 12 month follow-up periods with intensity gains ranging from 5 to 17 dB depending on speaking condition and measurement period. Significant treatment effects were found in all three speaking conditions. Effect sizes for all outcome measures were large, suggesting a strong degree of practical significance. Significant increases in vocal intensity measured at 6 and 12 moth follow-up periods suggested that the sample of patients maintained treatment benefit for up to a year. These findings are supported by outcome studies reporting treatment outcomes within a few months post-treatment, in addition to prior studies that have reported long-term outcome results. The positive treatment outcomes experienced by the PD cohort in this study are consistent with treatment responses subsequent to other treatment approaches which focus on high-intensity, clinician guided motor learning for voice and speech production in PD. Theories regarding the underlying neurophysiological response to treatment will be discussed.

Measuring word complexity in speech screening: single-word sampling to identify phonological delay/disorder in preschool children.

PubMed

Anderson, Carolyn; Cohen, Wendy

2012-01-01

Children's speech sound development is assessed by comparing speech production with the typical development of speech sounds based on a child's age and developmental profile. One widely used method of sampling is to elicit a single-word sample along with connected speech. Words produced spontaneously rather than imitated may give a more accurate indication of a child's speech development. A published word complexity measure can be used to score later-developing speech sounds and more complex word patterns. There is a need for a screening word list that is quick to administer and reliably differentiates children with typically developing speech from children with patterns of delayed/disordered speech. To identify a short word list based on word complexity that could be spontaneously named by most typically developing children aged 3;00-5;05 years. One hundred and five children aged between 3;00 and 5;05 years from three local authority nursery schools took part in the study. Items from a published speech assessment were modified and extended to include a range of phonemic targets in different word positions in 78 monosyllabic and polysyllabic words. The 78 words were ranked both by phonemic/phonetic complexity as measured by word complexity and by ease of spontaneous production. The ten most complex words (hereafter Triage 10) were named spontaneously by more than 90% of the children. There was no significant difference between the complexity measures for five identified age groups when the data were examined in 6-month groups. A qualitative analysis revealed eight children with profiles of phonological delay or disorder. When these children were considered separately, there was a statistically significant difference (p < 0.005) between the mean word complexity measure of the group compared with the mean for the remaining children in all other age groups. The Triage 10 words reliably differentiated children with typically developing speech from those with delayed or disordered speech patterns. The Triage 10 words can be used as a screening tool for triage and general assessment and have the potential to monitor progress during intervention. Further testing is being undertaken to establish reliability with children referred to speech and language therapy services. © 2012 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Prediction Errors but Not Sharpened Signals Simulate Multivoxel fMRI Patterns during Speech Perception

PubMed Central

Davis, Matthew H.

2016-01-01

Successful perception depends on combining sensory input with prior knowledge. However, the underlying mechanism by which these two sources of information are combined is unknown. In speech perception, as in other domains, two functionally distinct coding schemes have been proposed for how expectations influence representation of sensory evidence. Traditional models suggest that expected features of the speech input are enhanced or sharpened via interactive activation (Sharpened Signals). Conversely, Predictive Coding suggests that expected features are suppressed so that unexpected features of the speech input (Prediction Errors) are processed further. The present work is aimed at distinguishing between these two accounts of how prior knowledge influences speech perception. By combining behavioural, univariate, and multivariate fMRI measures of how sensory detail and prior expectations influence speech perception with computational modelling, we provide evidence in favour of Prediction Error computations. Increased sensory detail and informative expectations have additive behavioural and univariate neural effects because they both improve the accuracy of word report and reduce the BOLD signal in lateral temporal lobe regions. However, sensory detail and informative expectations have interacting effects on speech representations shown by multivariate fMRI in the posterior superior temporal sulcus. When prior knowledge was absent, increased sensory detail enhanced the amount of speech information measured in superior temporal multivoxel patterns, but with informative expectations, increased sensory detail reduced the amount of measured information. Computational simulations of Sharpened Signals and Prediction Errors during speech perception could both explain these behavioural and univariate fMRI observations. However, the multivariate fMRI observations were uniquely simulated by a Prediction Error and not a Sharpened Signal model. The interaction between prior expectation and sensory detail provides evidence for a Predictive Coding account of speech perception. Our work establishes methods that can be used to distinguish representations of Prediction Error and Sharpened Signals in other perceptual domains. PMID:27846209

Typical versus delayed speech onset influences verbal reporting of autistic interests.

PubMed

Chiodo, Liliane; Majerus, Steve; Mottron, Laurent

2017-01-01

The distinction between autism and Asperger syndrome has been abandoned in the DSM-5. However, this clinical categorization largely overlaps with the presence or absence of a speech onset delay which is associated with clinical, cognitive, and neural differences. It is unknown whether these different speech development pathways and associated cognitive differences are involved in the heterogeneity of the restricted interests that characterize autistic adults. This study tested the hypothesis that speech onset delay, or conversely, early mastery of speech, orients the nature and verbal reporting of adult autistic interests. The occurrence of a priori defined descriptors for perceptual and thematic dimensions were determined, as well as the perceived function and benefits, in the response of autistic people to a semi-structured interview on their intense interests. The number of words, grammatical categories, and proportion of perceptual / thematic descriptors were computed and compared between groups by variance analyses. The participants comprised 40 autistic adults grouped according to the presence ( N  = 20) or absence ( N  = 20) of speech onset delay, as well as 20 non-autistic adults, also with intense interests, matched for non-verbal intelligence using Raven's Progressive Matrices. The overall nature, function, and benefit of intense interests were similar across autistic subgroups, and between autistic and non-autistic groups. However, autistic participants with a history of speech onset delay used more perceptual than thematic descriptors when talking about their interests, whereas the opposite was true for autistic individuals without speech onset delay. This finding remained significant after controlling for linguistic differences observed between the two groups. Verbal reporting, but not the nature or positive function, of intense interests differed between adult autistic individuals depending on their speech acquisition history: oral reporting of intense interests was characterized by perceptual dominance for autistic individuals with delayed speech onset and thematic dominance for those without. This may contribute to the heterogeneous presentation observed among autistic adults of normal intelligence.

Building an Interdepartmental Major in Speech Communication.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Litterst, Judith K.

This paper describes a popular and innovative major program of study in speech communication at St. Cloud University in Minnesota: the Speech Communication Interdepartmental Major. The paper provides background on the program, discusses overall program requirements, presents sample student options, identifies ingredients for program success,…

The occurrence of 'what', 'where', 'what house' and other repair initiations in the home environment of hearing-impaired individuals.

PubMed

Pajo, Kati

2013-01-01

Even though research has increasingly focused on the qualitative features of natural conversations, which have improved the communication therapy for hearing-impaired individuals (HI) and familiar partners (FP), very little is known about the interactions that occur outside clinical settings. This study investigated qualitatively how both HI and FP initiated repair due to misperceptions or to a difficulty in understanding during conversations conducted at home. The HI participant's multimodal production style was adopted in the present analysis, and the frequencies were calculated for the different types of verbal repair initiations. Participants with acquired hearing loss (43-69 years) and their familiar partners (24-67 years) were video recorded (total time approximately 9 h) in their homes. The data consisted of eight conversational dyads. The transcription and analysis utilized Conversation Analysis. A total of 209 (HI 164/FP 45) verbal repair initiations were identified. The five major types of initiations found in the data (used by both HI and FP) were: open repair initiation, targeting question word, question word with repetition, repetition, and candidate understanding. HI participants rarely explicitly verbalized their difficulty to hear, but the production style, which included a fast speech rate and 'trouble posture', indicated a sensitive routine that was visible particularly in clear misperceptions. Furthermore, the alerting action of overlapping turn taking with the FP participant's turn could be seen to reveal the depth of misperception. The individual differences between HI participants were found predominantly in the frequency of their repair initiations, but also in how they used the different types of repair initiation. Through a deeper qualitative analysis, conversational research can provide extended knowledge of the occurrence and style of ordinary repair initiations and highlight their relationship in certain conversational environments. A robust starting point in communication therapy is increasing the awareness of HI individuals' existing skills. © 2012 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Cochlear Implantation in Older Adults

PubMed Central

Lin, Frank R.; Chien, Wade W.; Li, Lingsheng; Niparko, John K.; Francis, Howard W.

2012-01-01

Cochlear implants allow individuals with severe-to-profound hearing loss access to sound and spoken language. The number of older adults in the United States who are potential candidates for cochlear implantation is approximately 150,000 and will continue to increase with the aging of the population. Should cochlear implantation (CI) be routinely recommended for these older adults, and do these individuals benefit from CI? We reviewed our 12 year experience with cochlear implantation in adults ≥60 years (n = 445) at Johns Hopkins to investigate the impact of CI on speech understanding and to identify factors associated with speech performance. Complete data on speech outcomes at baseline and 1 year post-CI were available for 83 individuals. Our results demonstrate that cochlear implantation in adults ≥60 years consistently improved speech understanding scores with a mean increase of 60. 0% (S. D. 24. 1) on HINT sentences in quiet . The magnitude of the gain in speech scores was negatively associated with age at implantation such that for every increasing year of age at CI the gain in speech scores was 1. 3 percentage points less (95% CI: 0. 6 – 1. 9) after adjusting for age at hearing loss onset. Conversely, individuals with higher pre-CI speech scores (HINT scores between 40–60%) had significantly greater post-CI speech scores by a mean of 10. 0 percentage points (95% CI: 0. 4 – 19. 6) than those with lower pre-CI speech scores (HINT <40%) after adjusting for age at CI and age at hearing loss onset. These results suggest that older adult CI candidates who are younger at implantation and with higher preoperative speech scores obtain the highest speech understanding scores after cochlear implantation with possible implications for current Medicare policy. Finally, we provide an extended discussion of the epidemiology and impact of hearing loss in older adults. Future research of CI in older adults should expand beyond simple speech outcomes to take into account the broad cognitive, social, and physical functioning outcomes that are likely detrimentally impacted by hearing loss and may be mitigated by cochlear implantation. PMID:22932787

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

PubMed Central

Liu, Yin; Yin, Heng; Zhang, Junpeng; Zhang, Jing; Zhang, Jiang

2017-01-01

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 syllables is 91.24%. PMID:28926572

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

PubMed

He, Ling; Liu, Yin; Yin, Heng; Zhang, Junpeng; Zhang, Jing; Zhang, Jiang

2017-01-01

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 syllables is 91.24%.

Hearing speech in music.

PubMed

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 (P<.01). Low octave and fast tempo 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 (P<.01) and SPN (P<.05). Subjects with hearing loss had higher masked thresholds than the normal-hearing subjects (P<.01), but there were smaller differences between masking conditions (P<.01). It is pointed out that music 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.

The effect of varying talker identity and listening conditions on gaze behavior during audiovisual speech perception.

PubMed

Buchan, Julie N; Paré, Martin; Munhall, Kevin G

2008-11-25

During face-to-face conversation the face provides auditory and visual linguistic information, and also conveys information about the identity of the speaker. This study investigated behavioral strategies involved in gathering visual information while watching talking faces. The effects of varying talker identity and varying the intelligibility of speech (by adding acoustic noise) on gaze behavior were measured with an eyetracker. Varying the intelligibility of the speech by adding noise had a noticeable effect on the location and duration of fixations. When noise was present subjects adopted a vantage point that was more centralized on the face by reducing the frequency of the fixations on the eyes and mouth and lengthening the duration of their gaze fixations on the nose and mouth. Varying talker identity resulted in a more modest change in gaze behavior that was modulated by the intelligibility of the speech. Although subjects generally used similar strategies to extract visual information in both talker variability conditions, when noise was absent there were more fixations on the mouth when viewing a different talker every trial as opposed to the same talker every trial. These findings provide a useful baseline for studies examining gaze behavior during audiovisual speech perception and perception of dynamic faces.

[A case of crossed aphasia with echolalia after the resection of tumor in the right medial frontal lobe].

PubMed

Endo, K; Suzuki, K; Yamadori, A; Kumabe, T; Seki, K; Fujii, T

2001-03-01

We report a right-handed woman, who developed a non-fluent aphasia after resection of astrocytoma (grade III) in the right medial frontal lobe. On admission to the rehabilitation department, neurological examination revealed mild left hemiparesis, hyperreflexia on the left side and grasp reflex on the left hand. Neuropsychologically she showed general inattention, non-fluent aphasia, acalculia, constructional disability, and mild buccofacial apraxia. No other apraxia, unilateral spatial neglect or extinction phenomena were observed. An MRI demonstrated resected areas in the right superior frontal gyrus, subcortical region in the right middle frontal gyrus, anterior part of the cingulate gyrus, a part of supplementary motor area. Surrounding area in the right frontal lobe showed diffuse signal change. She demonstrated non-fluent aprosodic speech with word finding difficulty. No phonemic paraphasia, or anarthria was observed. Auditory comprehension was fair with some difficulty in comprehending complex commands. Naming was good, but verbal fluency tests for a category or phonemic cuing was severely impaired. She could repeat words but not sentences. Reading comprehension was disturbed by semantic paralexia and writing words was poor for both Kana (syllabogram) and Kanji(logogram) characters. A significant feature of her speech was mitigated echolalia. In both free conversation and examination setting, she often repeated phrases spoken to her which she used to start her speech. In addition, she repeated words spoken to others which were totally irrelevant to her conversation. She was aware of her echoing, which always embarrassed her. She described her echolalic tendency as a great nuisance. However, once echoing being forbidden, she could not initiate her speech and made incorrect responses after long delay. Thus, her compulsive echolalia helped to start her speech. Only four patients with crossed aphasia demonstrated echolalia in the literature. They showed severe aphasia with markedly decreased speech and severe comprehension deficit. A patient with a similar lesion in the right medial frontal lobe had aspontaneity in general and language function per se could not be examined properly. Echolalia related to the medial frontal lesion in the language dominant hemisphere was described as a compulsive speech response, because some other 'echoing' phenomena or compulsive behavior were also observed in these patients. On the other hand, some patients with a large lesion in the right hemisphere tended to respond to stimuli directed to other patients, so called 'response-to-next-patient-stimulation'. This behavior was explained by disinhibited shift of attention or perseveration of the set. Both compulsive speech responses and 'response-to-next-patient-stimulation' like phenomena may have contributed to the echolalia phenomena of the present case.

Echolalia or functional repetition in conversation--a case study of an individual with Huntington's disease.

PubMed

Saldert, Charlotta; Hartelius, Lena

2011-01-01

In this case study, we investigated the use of repetition in an individual with a neurogenic communication disorder. We present an analysis of interaction in natural conversations between a woman with advanced Huntington's disease (HD), whose speech had been described as sometimes characterised by echolalia, and her personal assistant. The conversational interaction is analysed on a sequential level, and recurrent patterns are explored. Although the ability of the person with HD to interact is affected by chorea, word retrieval problems and reduced comprehension, she takes an active part in conversation. The conversational partner's contributions are often adapted to her communicative ability as they are formulated as questions or suggestions that can be elaborated on or responded to with a simple 'yes' or 'no'. The person with HD often repeats the words of her conversational partner in a way that extends her contributions and shows listenership, and this use of repetition is also frequent in ordinary conversations between non-brain-damaged individuals. The results show that the conversation partners in this case cooperate in making the conversation proceed and evolve, and that verbal repetition is used in a way that works as a strategy for compensating for the impairment.

Echolalic and Spontaneous Phrase Speech in Autistic Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howlin, Patricia

1982-01-01

Investigates the syntactical level of spontaneous and echolalic utterances of 26 autistic boys at different stages of phrase speech development. Speech samples were collected over a 90-minute period in unstructured settings in participants' homes. Imitations were not deliberately elicited, and only unprompted, noncommunicative echoes were…

A new method to sample stuttering in preschool children.

PubMed

O'Brian, Sue; Jones, Mark; Pilowsky, Rachel; Onslow, Mark; Packman, Ann; Menzies, Ross

2010-06-01

This study reports a new method for sampling the speech of preschool stuttering children outside the clinic environment. Twenty parents engaged their stuttering children in an everyday play activity in the home with a telephone handset nearby. A remotely located researcher telephoned the parent and recorded the play session with a phone-recording jack attached to a digital audio recorder at the remote location. The parent placed an audio recorder near the child for comparison purposes. Children as young as 2 years complied with the remote method of speech sampling. The quality of the remote recordings was superior to that of the in-home recordings. There was no difference in means or reliability of stutter-count measures made from the remote recordings compared with those made in-home. Advantages of the new method include: (1) cost efficiency of real-time measurement of percent syllables stuttered in naturalistic situations, (2) reduction of bias associated with parent-selected timing of home recordings, (3) standardization of speech sampling procedures, (4) improved parent compliance with sampling procedures, (5) clinician or researcher on-line control of the acoustic and linguistic quality of recordings, and (6) elimination of the need to lend equipment to parents for speech sampling.

Distributed neural signatures of natural audiovisual speech and music in the human auditory cortex.

PubMed

Salmi, Juha; Koistinen, Olli-Pekka; Glerean, Enrico; Jylänki, Pasi; Vehtari, Aki; Jääskeläinen, Iiro P; Mäkelä, Sasu; Nummenmaa, Lauri; Nummi-Kuisma, Katarina; Nummi, Ilari; Sams, Mikko

2017-08-15

During a conversation or when listening to music, auditory and visual information are combined automatically into audiovisual objects. However, it is still poorly understood how specific type of visual information shapes neural processing of sounds in lifelike stimulus environments. Here we applied multi-voxel pattern analysis to investigate how naturally matching visual input modulates supratemporal cortex activity during processing of naturalistic acoustic speech, singing and instrumental music. Bayesian logistic regression classifiers with sparsity-promoting priors were trained to predict whether the stimulus was audiovisual or auditory, and whether it contained piano playing, speech, or singing. The predictive performances of the classifiers were tested by leaving one participant at a time for testing and training the model using the remaining 15 participants. The signature patterns associated with unimodal auditory stimuli encompassed distributed locations mostly in the middle and superior temporal gyrus (STG/MTG). A pattern regression analysis, based on a continuous acoustic model, revealed that activity in some of these MTG and STG areas were associated with acoustic features present in speech and music stimuli. Concurrent visual stimulus modulated activity in bilateral MTG (speech), lateral aspect of right anterior STG (singing), and bilateral parietal opercular cortex (piano). Our results suggest that specific supratemporal brain areas are involved in processing complex natural speech, singing, and piano playing, and other brain areas located in anterior (facial speech) and posterior (music-related hand actions) supratemporal cortex are influenced by related visual information. Those anterior and posterior supratemporal areas have been linked to stimulus identification and sensory-motor integration, respectively. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Patients with hippocampal amnesia successfully integrate gesture and speech.

PubMed

Hilverman, Caitlin; Clough, Sharice; Duff, Melissa C; Cook, Susan Wagner

2018-06-19

During conversation, people integrate information from co-speech hand gestures with information in spoken language. For example, after hearing the sentence, "A piece of the log flew up and hit Carl in the face" while viewing a gesture directed at the nose, people tend to later report that the log hit Carl in the nose (information only in gesture) rather than in the face (information in speech). The cognitive and neural mechanisms that support the integration of gesture with speech are unclear. One possibility is that the hippocampus - known for its role in relational memory and information integration - is necessary for integrating gesture and speech. To test this possibility, we examined how patients with hippocampal amnesia and healthy and brain-damaged comparison participants express information from gesture in a narrative retelling task. Participants watched videos of an experimenter telling narratives that included hand gestures that contained supplementary information. Participants were asked to retell the narratives and their spoken retellings were assessed for the presence of information from gesture. For features that had been accompanied by supplementary gesture, patients with amnesia retold fewer of these features overall and fewer retellings that matched the speech from the narrative. Yet their retellings included features that contained information that had been present uniquely in gesture in amounts that were not reliably different from comparison groups. Thus, a functioning hippocampus is not necessary for gesture-speech integration over short timescales. Providing unique information in gesture may enhance communication for individuals with declarative memory impairment, possibly via non-declarative memory mechanisms. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Discourse Analysis of the Political Speeches of the Ousted Arab Presidents during the Arab Spring Revolution Using Halliday and Hasan's Framework of Cohesion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Al-Majali, Wala'

2015-01-01

This study is designed to explore the salient linguistic features of the political speeches of the ousted Arab presidents during the Arab Spring Revolution. The sample of the study is composed of seven political speeches delivered by the ousted Arab presidents during the period from December 2010 to December 2012. Three speeches were delivered by…

The Prompt Book for...Teaching the Art of Speech and Drama To Children: A Resource Guide for Teachers of Children in the Art of Speech and Drama.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dugger, Anita; And Others

Providing for individual differences in ability, interest, and cultural values among students, this guide contains resources, goals, objectives, sample lesson plans, and activities for teaching speech and drama to elementary school students. The first section of the guide offers advice on the organization of a speech arts curriculum, approaches to…

The Influence of Native Language on Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Vocal Samples Completed by Brazilian and Canadian SLPs.

PubMed

Chaves, Cristiane Ribeiro; Campbell, Melanie; Côrtes Gama, Ana Cristina

2017-03-01

This study aimed to determine the influence of native language on the auditory-perceptual assessment of voice, as completed by Brazilian and Anglo-Canadian listeners using Brazilian vocal samples and the grade, roughness, breathiness, asthenia, strain (GRBAS) scale. This is an analytical, observational, comparative, and transversal study conducted at the Speech Language Pathology Department of the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil, and at the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department of the University of Alberta in Canada. The GRBAS scale, connected speech, and a sustained vowel were used in this study. The vocal samples were drawn randomly from a database of recorded speech of Brazilian adults, some with healthy voices and some with voice disorders. The database is housed at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Forty-six samples of connected speech (recitation of days of the week), produced by 35 women and 11 men, and 46 samples of the sustained vowel /a/, produced by 37 women and 9 men, were used in this study. The listeners were divided into two groups of three speech therapists, according to nationality: Brazilian or Anglo-Canadian. The groups were matched according to the years of professional experience of participants. The weighted kappa was used to calculate the intra- and inter-rater agreements, with 95% confidence intervals, respectively. An analysis of the intra-rater agreement showed that Brazilians and Canadians had similar results in auditory-perceptual evaluation of sustained vowel and connected speech. The results of the inter-rater agreement of connected speech and sustained vowel indicated that Brazilians and Canadians had, respectively, moderate agreement on the overall severity (0.57 and 0.50), breathiness (0.45 and 0.45), and asthenia (0.50 and 0.46); poor correlation on roughness (0.19 and 0.007); and weak correlation on strain to connected speech (0.22), and moderate correlation to sustained vowel (0.50). In general, auditory-perceptual evaluation is not influenced by the native language on most dimensions of the perceptual parameters of the GRBAS scale. Copyright © 2017 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Speech Intelligibility in Severe Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

Movement of the velum during speech and singing in classically trained singers.

PubMed

Austin, S F

1997-06-01

The present study addresses two questions: (a) Is the action and/or posture of the velopharyngeal valve conducive to allow significant resonance during Western tradition classical singing? (b) How do the actions of the velopharyngeal valve observed in this style of singing compare with normal speech? A photodetector system was used to observe the area function of the velopharyngeal port during speech and classical style singing. Identical speech samples were produced by each subject in a normal speaking voice and then in the low, medium, and high singing ranges. Results indicate that in these four singers the velopharyngeal port was closed significantly longer in singing than in speaking samples. The amount of time the velopharyngeal port was opened was greatest in speech and diminished as the singer ascended in pitch. In the high voice condition, little or no opening of the velopharyngeal port was measured.

Listeners' Perceptions of Speech and Language Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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,…

Stuttering Inhibition via Altered Auditory Feedback during Scripted Telephone Conversations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hudock, Daniel; Kalinowski, Joseph

2014-01-01

Background: Overt stuttering is inhibited by approximately 80% when people who stutter read aloud as they hear an altered form of their speech feedback to them. However, levels of stuttering inhibition vary from 60% to 100% depending on speaking situation and signal presentation. For example, binaural presentations of delayed auditory feedback…

Genderlects: A Brief Review of the Literature.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Edelsky, Carole

Stereotypes about the way women talk grow out of knowledge of nonlinguistic, societally assigned sex role traits and of linguistic correlates of those traits. Among the findings of research on male/female speech differences are that, contrary to the stereotype, men talk more than women; men's conversation is task-oriented, while that of women is…

It Begins with a Conversation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brunner, Judy; Lewis, Dennis

2010-01-01

The First Amendment does not protect a bully when it comes to vulgar or intimidating language. When the language or behavior interferes with another student's educational opportunities--whether it is done inside or outside of school--it is not protected by freedom of speech or expression, and it should be addressed by school officials.…

Coverbal Gestures in the Recovery from Severe Fluent Aphasia: A Pilot Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carlomagno, Sergio; Zulian, Nicola; Razzano, Carmelina; De Mercurio, Ilaria; Marini, Andrea

2013-01-01

This post hoc study investigated coverbal gesture patterns in two persons with chronic Wernicke's aphasia. They had both received therapy focusing on multimodal communication therapy, and their pre- and post-therapy verbal and gestural skills in face-to-face conversational interaction with their speech therapist were analysed by administering a…

Formulaic Language in Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease: Complementary Effects of Subcortical and Cortical Dysfunction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van Lancker Sidtis, Diana; Choi, JiHee; Alken, Amy; Sidtis, John J.

2015-01-01

Purpose: The production of formulaic expressions (conversational speech formulas, pause fillers, idioms, and other fixed expressions) is excessive in the left hemisphere and deficient in the right hemisphere and in subcortical stroke. Speakers with Alzheimer's disease (AD), having functional basal ganglia, reveal abnormally high proportions of…

The Presidential Sound: From Orotund to Instructional Speech, 1892-1912

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goodale, Greg

2010-01-01

At the turn of the twentieth century, the sound of presidential address changed from an orotund style to an instructional style. The orotund style had featured the careful pronunciation of consonants, elongated vowels, trilled r's and repeated declamations. The instructional style, on the other hand, mimicked the conversational lectures of the…

Taking It to the Classroom: Strategies for Re-Claiming Citizenship through Communication Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kelley, Colleen E.

Speech communication in general and rhetoric in particular address suggestions for protecting the "space" in which public conversation occurs in a democracy. Although the framers of the Constitution clearly envisioned significant citizen involvement in policy making, citizen access to the process has greatly declined, especially at the…

Argument Structure, Speech Acts, and Roles in Child-Adult Dispute Episodes.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Prescott, Barbara L.

A study identified discourse patterns in potential disputes, deflected disputes, incomplete, and completed disputes from a one-hour conversation involving two 3-year-old female children and one female adult. These varied dispute episodes were identified, coded, and analyzed using a pragmatic model of adult argumentation focusing on the structures,…

Structuring Conversation: Discourse Markers in Cervantes's "Entremeses"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

King, Jeremy

2011-01-01

Due to the recent shift in the linguistic pragmatics literature from the analysis of isolated speech acts to the focus on phenomena which affect the global meaning of a message, discourse markers (DMs) have become a frequent research topic. Despite their popularity, the evolution and development of these forms is often neglected in investigations…

Communication Patterns in Normal and Disturbed Families.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Angermeyer, Matthias C.; Hecker, Hartmut

A study of formal communication in 30 families each with a schizophrenic son and 28 families, each with a "normal" son was conducted in Germany. By means of factor analysis four types of formal speech behavior were identified using musical terminology: "staccato," a highly fragmented flow of conversation with high turnover rate; "solo" in which…

Competencia Comunicativa em Portuges (Communicative Competence in Portuguese).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paiva, Ricardo

A textbook designed to give speech and writing practice to intermediate and advanced students of Portuguese as a second language includes 14 units intended to cover two semesters' work with approximately five hours per week of instruction. The units typically include: a text forming the basis for free conversation and practice of language…

Diversity in Adoption of Linguistic Features of London English by Chinese and Bangladeshi Adolescents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pennington, Martha C.; Lau, Lawrence; Sachdev, Itesh

2011-01-01

This comparative study, conducted in multicultural London, investigates the occurrence in interviews with a researcher and in constructed same-sex peer conversations of five linguistic features characteristic of London English in the speech of two groups of British-born adolescents: ethnic Bangladeshis and ethnic Chinese of Cantonese heritage. The…

Teaching Spanish to the Deaf.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Munoz-Strizver, Nancy

Conversational Spanish is taught to hearing-impaired adolescents at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD) through the use of cued speech. This paper provides an explanation of this mode of instruction and a description of the Spanish program at MSSD. The students learn the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Cued…

Peer-Directed Communicative Interactions of Augmented Language Learners with Mental Retardation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Romski, Mary Ann; And Others

1994-01-01

Evaluation of naturally occurring peer-directed communicative interactions of 13 youth with moderate to severe mental retardation and little or no functional speech, who used the System for Augmenting Language as their primary means of communication, found that the system was an integral component of successful and effective conversations and…

Small Colleges Need "Gold Medal Selfies"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gross, Karen

2014-01-01

Higher education has been a favorite news topic for months. President Obama and the first lady have entered the national conversation, particularly around issues of cost and graduation rates for low-income students--addressing education in the State of the Union, at White House events, and in speeches across the nation. In the midst of these…

Pragmatic Language Impairment: Case Studies of Social and Pragmatic Language Therapy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adams, Catherine; Baxendale, Janet; Lloyd, Julian; Aldred, Catherine

2005-01-01

The current position on speech and language intervention for children who have pragmatic language impairment (PLI) is limited by a lack of evidence to support practice. Two intervention outcome case studies of children with PLI, aimed at establishing efficacy, are presented in this paper. Standardized language tests and conversational sampling…

Using Tangible Companions for Enhancing Learning English Conversation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Yi Hsuan; Young, Shelley S.-C.; Jang, Jyh-Shing Roger

2013-01-01

In this study, the researchers attempted to extend the concept of learning companions from the virtual world to the real physical environment and made a breakthrough in technique development of tangible learning robots. The aim of this study was to explore an innovative way by combining the speech recognition technology with educational robots in…

Deriving Word Order in Code-Switching: Feature Inheritance and Light Verbs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shim, Ji Young

2013-01-01

This dissertation investigates code-switching (CS), the concurrent use of more than one language in conversation, commonly observed in bilingual speech. Assuming that code-switching is subject to universal principles, just like monolingual grammar, the dissertation provides a principled account of code-switching, with particular emphasis on OV~VO…

Captions and Reduced Forms Instruction: The Impact on EFL Students' Listening Comprehension

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Jie Chi; Chang, Peichin

2014-01-01

For many EFL learners, listening poses a grave challenge. The difficulty in segmenting a stream of speech and limited capacity in short-term memory are common weaknesses for language learners. Specifically, reduced forms, which frequently appear in authentic informal conversations, compound the challenges in listening comprehension. Numerous…

Discovering communicative competencies in a nonspeaking child with autism.

PubMed

Stiegler, Lillian N

2007-10-01

This article is intended to demonstrate that adapted conversation analysis (CA) and speech act analysis (SAA) may be applied by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to (a) identify communicative competencies in nonspeaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially during particularly successful interactions, and (b) identify communicative patterns that are exhibited by interventionists and communication partners that may positively or negatively impact interactions with such children. A case example involving an 8-year-old boy with autism and the author, an SLP, is explicated. A videotaped segment from an intervention session was transcribed and subjected to adapted forms of CA and SAA. CA and SAA helped reveal several underlying competencies in the boy's communicative output, including an awareness of conversational structure and sequence, diversity of communicative acts, functional use of gaze and smile behavior, and the ability to spontaneously initiate interactions. Observations regarding the SLP's interactive style included the use of multiple instances of "asking" as well as multiple "derailments" of the boy's obvious communicative bids. CA and SAA may be adapted to gain a clearer picture of what takes place during especially positive communicative interactions with nonspeaking children with ASD.

Inadvertent recovery in communication deficits following the upper limb mirror therapy in stroke: A case report.

PubMed

Arya, Kamal Narayan; Pandian, Shanta

2014-10-01

Broca's aphasia is the most challenging communication deficit in stroke. Left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), a key region of the mirror-neuron system, gets lesioned in Broca's aphasia. Mirror therapy (MT), a form of action-observation, may trigger the mirror neurons. The aim of this study was to report a case of poststroke subject with Broca's aphasia, who exhibited an inadvertent and significant improvement in speech after MT for the paretic upper limb. The 20-month old stroke patient underwent MT through goal-directed tasks. He received a total absence of spontaneous speech, writing, and naming. After 45 sessions of task-based MT for the upper limb, he showed tremendous recovery in expressive communication. He had fluent and comprehensive communication; however, with a low pitch and minor pronunciation errors. He showed a substantial change (from 18/100 to 79/100) on the Communicative Effective Index, particularly, on items such as expressing emotions, one-to-one conversation, naming, and spontaneous conversation. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Clarissa Spoken Dialogue System for Procedure Reading and Navigation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hieronymus, James; Dowding, John

2004-01-01

Speech is the most natural modality for humans use to communicate with other people, agents and complex systems. A spoken dialogue system must be robust to noise and able to mimic human conversational behavior, like correcting misunderstandings, answering simple questions about the task and understanding most well formed inquiries or commands. The system aims to understand the meaning of the human utterance, and if it does not, then it discards the utterance as being meant for someone else. The first operational system is Clarissa, a conversational procedure reader and navigator, which will be used in a System Development Test Objective (SDTO) on the International Space Station (ISS) during Expedition 10. In the present environment one astronaut reads the procedure on a Manual Procedure Viewer (MPV) or paper, and has to stop to read or turn pages, shifting focus from the task. Clarissa is designed to read and navigate ISS procedures entirely with speech, while the astronaut has his eyes and hands engaged in performing the task. The system also provides an MPV like graphical interface so the procedure can be read visually. A demo of the system will be given.

Fluency variation in adolescents.

PubMed

Furquim de Andrade, Claudia Regina; de Oliveira Martins, Vanessa

2007-10-01

The Speech Fluency Profile of fluent adolescent speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, were examined with respect to gender and neurolinguistic variations. Speech samples of 130 male and female adolescents, aged between 12;0 and 17;11 years were gathered. They were analysed according to type of speech disruption; speech rate; and frequency of speech disruptions. Statistical analysis did not find significant differences between genders for the variables studied. However, regarding the phases of adolescence (early: 12;0-14;11 years; late: 15;0-17;11 years), statistical differences were observed for all of the variables. As for neurolinguistic maturation, a decrease in the number of speech disruptions and an increase in speech rate occurred during the final phase of adolescence, indicating that the maturation of the motor and linguistic processes exerted an influence over the fluency profile of speech.

Comparing Measures of Voice Quality From Sustained Phonation and Continuous Speech.

PubMed

Gerratt, Bruce R; Kreiman, Jody; Garellek, Marc

2016-10-01

The question of what type of utterance-a sustained vowel or continuous speech-is best for voice quality analysis has been extensively studied but with equivocal results. This study examines whether previously reported differences derive from the articulatory and prosodic factors occurring in continuous speech versus sustained phonation. Speakers with voice disorders sustained vowels and read sentences. Vowel samples were excerpted from the steadiest portion of each vowel in the sentences. In addition to sustained and excerpted vowels, a 3rd set of stimuli was created by shortening sustained vowel productions to match the duration of vowels excerpted from continuous speech. Acoustic measures were made on the stimuli, and listeners judged the severity of vocal quality deviation. Sustained vowels and those extracted from continuous speech contain essentially the same acoustic and perceptual information about vocal quality deviation. Perceived and/or measured differences between continuous speech and sustained vowels derive largely from voice source variability across segmental and prosodic contexts and not from variations in vocal fold vibration in the quasisteady portion of the vowels. Approaches to voice quality assessment by using continuous speech samples average across utterances and may not adequately quantify the variability they are intended to assess.

Impairments of speech fluency in Lewy body spectrum disorder.

PubMed

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.

The perception of sentence stress in cochlear implant recipients.

PubMed

Meister, Hartmut; Landwehr, Markus; Pyschny, Verena; Wagner, Petra; Walger, Martin

2011-01-01

Sentence stress is a vital attribute of speech since it indicates the importance of specific words within an utterance. Basic acoustic correlates of stress are syllable duration, intensity, and fundamental frequency (F0). Objectives of the study were to determine cochlear implant (CI) users' perception of the acoustic correlates and to uncover which cues are used for stress identification. Several experiments addressed the discrimination of changes in syllable duration, intensity, and F0 as well as stress identification based on these cues. Moreover, the discrimination of combined cues and identification of stress in conversational speech was examined. Both natural utterances and artificial manipulations of the acoustic cues were used as stimuli. Discrimination of syllable duration did not differ significantly between CI recipients and a control group of normal-hearing listeners. In contrast, CI users performed significantly worse on tasks of discrimination and stress identification based on F0 as well as on intensity. Results from these measurements were significantly correlated with the ability to identify stress in conversational speech. Discrimination performance for covarying F0 and intensity changes was more strongly correlated to identification performance than was found for discrimination of either F0 or intensity alone. Syllable duration was not related to stress identification in natural utterances. The outcome emphasizes the importance of both F0 and intensity for CI users' identification of sentence-based stress. Both cues were used separately for stress perception, but combining the cues provided extra benefit for most of the subjects.

Estimating psycho-physiological state of a human by speech analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ronzhin, A. L.

2005-05-01

Adverse effects of intoxication, fatigue and boredom could degrade performance of highly trained operators of complex technical systems with potentially catastrophic consequences. Existing physiological fitness for duty tests are time consuming, costly, invasive, and highly unpopular. Known non-physiological tests constitute a secondary task and interfere with the busy workload of the tested operator. Various attempts to assess the current status of the operator by processing of "normal operational data" often lead to excessive amount of computations, poorly justified metrics, and ambiguity of results. At the same time, speech analysis presents a natural, non-invasive approach based upon well-established efficient data processing. In addition, it supports both behavioral and physiological biometric. This paper presents an approach facilitating robust speech analysis/understanding process in spite of natural speech variability and background noise. Automatic speech recognition is suggested as a technique for the detection of changes in the psycho-physiological state of a human that typically manifest themselves by changes of characteristics of voice tract and semantic-syntactic connectivity of conversation. Preliminary tests have confirmed that the statistically significant correlation between the error rate of automatic speech recognition and the extent of alcohol intoxication does exist. In addition, the obtained data allowed exploring some interesting correlations and establishing some quantitative models. It is proposed to utilize this approach as a part of fitness for duty test and compare its efficiency with analyses of iris, face geometry, thermography and other popular non-invasive biometric techniques.

Alternating motion rate as an index of speech motor disorder in traumatic brain injury.

PubMed

Wang, Yu-Tsai; Kent, Ray D; Duffy, Joseph R; Thomas, Jack E; Weismer, Gary

2004-01-01

The task of syllable alternating motion rate (AMR) (also called diadochokinesis) is suitable for examining speech disorders of varying degrees of severity and in individuals with varying levels of linguistic and cognitive ability. However, very limited information on this task has been published for subjects with traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study is a quantitative and qualitative acoustic analysis of AMR in seven subjects with TBI. The primary goal was to use acoustic analyses to assess speech motor control disturbances for the group as a whole and for individual patients. Quantitative analyses included measures of syllable rate, syllable and intersyllable gap durations, energy maxima, and voice onset time (VOT). Qualitative analyses included classification of features evident in spectrograms and waveforms to provide a more detailed description. The TBI group had (1) a slowed syllable rate due mostly to lengthened syllables and, to a lesser degree, lengthened intersyllable gaps, (2) highly correlated syllable rates between AMR and conversation, (3) temporal and energy maxima irregularities within repetition sequences, (4) normal median VOT values but with large variation, and (5) a number of speech production abnormalities revealed by qualitative analysis, including explosive speech quality, breathy voice quality, phonatory instability, multiple or missing stop bursts, continuous voicing, and spirantization. The relationships between these findings and TBI speakers' neurological status and dysarthria types are also discussed. It was concluded that acoustic analyses of the AMR task provides specific information on motor speech limitations in individuals with TBI.

Factors Associated With Negative Attitudes Toward Speaking in Preschool-Age Children Who Do and Do Not Stutter.

PubMed

Groner, Stephen; Walden, Tedra; Jones, Robin

2016-01-01

This study explored relations between the negativity of children's speech-related attitudes as measured by the Communication Attitude Test for Preschool and Kindergarten Children Who Stutter (KiddyCAT; Vanryckeghem & Brutten, 2007) and (a) age; (b) caregiver reports of stuttering and its social consequences; (c) types of disfluencies; and (d) standardized speech, vocabulary, and language scores. Participants were 46 preschool-age children who stutter (CWS; 12 females, 34 males) and 66 preschool-age children who do not stutter (CWNS; 35 females, 31 males). After a conversation, children completed standardized tests and the KiddyCAT while their caregivers completed scales on observed stuttering behaviors and their consequences. The KiddyCAT scores of both the CWS and the CWNS were significantly negatively correlated with age. Both groups' KiddyCAT scores increased with higher scores on the Speech Fluency Rating Scale of the Test of Childhood Stuttering (Gillam, Logan, & Pearson, 2009). Repetitions were a significant contributor to the CWNS's KiddyCAT scores, but no specific disfluency significantly contributed to the CWS's KiddyCAT scores. Greater articulation errors were associated with higher KiddyCAT scores in the CWNS. No standardized test scores were associated with KiddyCAT scores in the CWS. Attitudes that speech is difficult are not associated with similar aspects of communication for CWS and CWNS. Age significantly contributed to negative speech attitudes for CWS, whereas age, repetitions, and articulation errors contributed to negative speech attitudes for CWNS.

Intimate insight: MDMA changes how people talk about significant others

PubMed Central

Baggott, Matthew J.; Kirkpatrick, Matthew G.; Bedi, Gillinder; de Wit, Harriet

2015-01-01

Rationale ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is widely believed to increase sociability. The drug alters speech production and fluency, and may influence speech content. Here, we investigated the effect of MDMA on speech content, which may reveal how this drug affects social interactions. Method 35 healthy volunteers with prior MDMA experience completed this two-session, within-subjects, double-blind study during which they received 1.5 mg/kg oral MDMA and placebo. Participants completed a 5-min standardized talking task during which they discussed a close personal relationship (e.g., a friend or family member) with a research assistant. The conversations were analyzed for selected content categories (e.g., words pertaining to affect, social interaction, and cognition), using both a standard dictionary method (Pennebaker’s Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC) and a machine learning method using random forest classifiers. Results Both analytic methods revealed that MDMA altered speech content relative to placebo. Using LIWC scores, the drug increased use of social and sexual words, consistent with reports that MDMA increases willingness to disclose. Using the machine learning algorithm, we found that MDMA increased use of social words and words relating to both positive and negative emotions. Conclusions These findings are consistent with reports that MDMA acutely alters speech content, specifically increasing emotional and social content during a brief semistructured dyadic interaction. Studying effects of psychoactive drugs on speech content may offer new insights into drug effects on mental states, and on emotional and psychosocial interaction. PMID:25922420

Intimate insight: MDMA changes how people talk about significant others.

PubMed

Baggott, Matthew J; Kirkpatrick, Matthew G; Bedi, Gillinder; de Wit, Harriet

2015-06-01

±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is widely believed to increase sociability. The drug alters speech production and fluency, and may influence speech content. Here, we investigated the effect of MDMA on speech content, which may reveal how this drug affects social interactions. Thirty-five healthy volunteers with prior MDMA experience completed this two-session, within-subjects, double-blind study during which they received 1.5 mg/kg oral MDMA and placebo. Participants completed a five-minute standardized talking task during which they discussed a close personal relationship (e.g. a friend or family member) with a research assistant. The conversations were analyzed for selected content categories (e.g. words pertaining to affect, social interaction, and cognition), using both a standard dictionary method (Pennebaker's Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC) and a machine learning method using random forest classifiers. Both analytic methods revealed that MDMA altered speech content relative to placebo. Using LIWC scores, the drug increased use of social and sexual words, consistent with reports that MDMA increases willingness to disclose. Using the machine learning algorithm, we found that MDMA increased use of social words and words relating to both positive and negative emotions. These findings are consistent with reports that MDMA acutely alters speech content, specifically increasing emotional and social content during a brief semistructured dyadic interaction. Studying effects of psychoactive drugs on speech content may offer new insights into drug effects on mental states, and on emotional and psychosocial interaction. © The Author(s) 2015.

A Wavelet Model for Vocalic Speech Coarticulation

DTIC Science & Technology

1994-10-01

control vowel’s signal as the mother wavelet. A practical experiment is conducted to evaluate the coarticulation channel using samples 01 real speech...transformation from a control speech state (input) to an effected speech state (output). Specifically, a vowel produced in isolation is transformed into an...the wavelet transform of the effected vowel’s signal, using the control vowel’s signal as the mother wavelet. A practical experiment is conducted to

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

PubMed

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.

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

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

Audiovisual Matching in Speech and Nonspeech Sounds: A Neurodynamical Model

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Loh, Marco; Schmid, Gabriele; Deco, Gustavo; Ziegler, Wolfram

2010-01-01

Audiovisual speech perception provides an opportunity to investigate the mechanisms underlying multimodal processing. By using nonspeech stimuli, it is possible to investigate the degree to which audiovisual processing is specific to the speech domain. It has been shown in a match-to-sample design that matching across modalities is more difficult…

Phonology and Vocal Behavior in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorders

PubMed Central

Schoen, Elizabeth; Paul, Rhea; Chawarska, Katyrzyna

2011-01-01

Scientific Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine the phonological and other vocal productions of children, 18-36 months, with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and to compare these productions to those of age-matched and language-matched controls. Speech samples were obtained from 30 toddlers with ASD, 11 age-matched toddlers and 23 language-matched toddlers during either parent-child or clinician-child play sessions. Samples were coded for a variety of speech-like and non-speech vocalization productions. Toddlers with ASD produced speech-like vocalizations similar to those of language-matched peers, but produced significantly more atypical non-speech vocalizations when compared to both control groups.Toddlers with ASD show speech-like sound production that is linked to their language level, in a manner similar to that seen in typical development. The main area of difference in vocal development in this population is in the production of atypical vocalizations. Findings suggest that toddlers with autism spectrum disorders might not tune into the language model of their environment. Failure to attend to the ambient language environment negatively impacts the ability to acquire spoken language. PMID:21308998

Emotional and physiological responses of fluent listeners while watching the speech of adults who stutter.

PubMed

Guntupalli, Vijaya K; Everhart, D Erik; Kalinowski, Joseph; Nanjundeswaran, Chayadevie; Saltuklaroglu, Tim

2007-01-01

People who stutter produce speech that is characterized by intermittent, involuntary part-word repetitions and prolongations. In addition to these signature acoustic manifestations, those who stutter often display repetitive and fixated behaviours outside the speech producing mechanism (e.g. in the head, arm, fingers, nares, etc.). Previous research has examined the attitudes and perceptions of those who stutter and people who frequently interact with them (e.g. relatives, parents, employers). Results have shown an unequivocal, powerful and robust negative stereotype despite a lack of defined differences in personality structure between people who stutter and normally fluent individuals. However, physiological investigations of listener responses during moments of stuttering are limited. There is a need for data that simultaneously examine physiological responses (e.g. heart rate and galvanic skin conductance) and subjective behavioural responses to stuttering. The pairing of these objective and subjective data may provide information that casts light on the genesis of negative stereotypes associated with stuttering, the development of compensatory mechanisms in those who stutter, and the true impact of stuttering on senders and receivers alike. To compare the emotional and physiological responses of fluent speakers while listening and observing fluent and severe stuttered speech samples. Twenty adult participants (mean age = 24.15 years, standard deviation = 3.40) observed speech samples of two fluent speakers and two speakers who stutter reading aloud. Participants' skin conductance and heart rate changes were measured as physiological responses to stuttered or fluent speech samples. Participants' subjective responses on arousal (excited-calm) and valence (happy-unhappy) dimensions were assessed via the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) rating scale with an additional questionnaire comprised of a set of nine bipolar adjectives. Results showed significantly increased skin conductance and lower mean heart rate during the presentation of stuttered speech relative to the presentation of fluent speech samples (p<0.05). Listeners also self-rated themselves as being more aroused, unhappy, nervous, uncomfortable, sad, tensed, unpleasant, avoiding, embarrassed, and annoyed while viewing stuttered speech relative to the fluent speech. These data support the notion that stutter-filled speech can elicit physiological and emotional responses in listeners. Clinicians who treat stuttering should be aware that listeners show involuntary physiological responses to moderate-severe stuttering that probably remain salient over time and contribute to the evolution of negative stereotypes of people who stutter. With this in mind, it is hoped that clinicians can work with people who stutter to develop appropriate coping strategies. The role of amygdala and mirror neural mechanism in physiological and subjective responses to stuttering is discussed.

Something to talk about: enhancement of linguistic cohesion through tdCS in chronic non fluent aphasia.

PubMed

Marangolo, Paola; Fiori, Valentina; Campana, Serena; Calpagnano, Maria Antonietta; Razzano, Carmelina; Caltagirone, Carlo; Marini, Andrea

2014-01-01

Several studies have shown that the modulation of cortical activity through transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) enhances naming performance in persons with aphasia. In this study, we investigated the potential effects of tDCS in improving spontaneous speech and the ability to use connective words to establish cohesion among adjacent utterances in a group of eight participants with chronic non fluent aphasia. They were administered five short videoclips representing everyday life contexts and two picture description tasks. Three videoclips were used to elicit spontaneous conversation during the treatment, while the remaining tasks were presented to the patients only before and after the therapy. Patients were required to talk about each videoclip, with the help of a therapist, while they were treated with tDCS (20 min, 1 mA) over the left hemisphere in three different conditions: anodic tDCS over the Broca's area, anodic tDCS over the Wernicke's area and a sham condition. Each experimental condition was performed for ten consecutive daily sessions with 14 days of intersession interval. Only after Broca's stimulation, patients showed a greater improvement in producing words that enhanced the cohesion of their speech samples (i.e., pronouns, ellipses, word repetitions, conjunctions). Beneficial effects of the stimulation were generalized also to contexts presented to the patients at the beginning and at the end of the therapy sessions. Our data further confirm the key role of the left inferior frontal gyrus in binding words into a coherent speech. We believe that positive tDCS effects may be further extended to different linguistic domains, useful to promote language recovery. © 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Decoding spectrotemporal features of overt and covert speech from the human cortex

PubMed Central

Martin, Stéphanie; Brunner, Peter; Holdgraf, Chris; Heinze, Hans-Jochen; Crone, Nathan E.; Rieger, Jochem; Schalk, Gerwin; Knight, Robert T.; Pasley, Brian N.

2014-01-01

Auditory perception and auditory imagery have been shown to activate overlapping brain regions. We hypothesized that these phenomena also share a common underlying neural representation. To assess this, we used electrocorticography intracranial recordings from epileptic patients performing an out loud or a silent reading task. In these tasks, short stories scrolled across a video screen in two conditions: subjects read the same stories both aloud (overt) and silently (covert). In a control condition the subject remained in a resting state. We first built a high gamma (70–150 Hz) neural decoding model to reconstruct spectrotemporal auditory features of self-generated overt speech. We then evaluated whether this same model could reconstruct auditory speech features in the covert speech condition. Two speech models were tested: a spectrogram and a modulation-based feature space. For the overt condition, reconstruction accuracy was evaluated as the correlation between original and predicted speech features, and was significant in each subject (p < 10−5; paired two-sample t-test). For the covert speech condition, dynamic time warping was first used to realign the covert speech reconstruction with the corresponding original speech from the overt condition. Reconstruction accuracy was then evaluated as the correlation between original and reconstructed speech features. Covert reconstruction accuracy was compared to the accuracy obtained from reconstructions in the baseline control condition. Reconstruction accuracy for the covert condition was significantly better than for the control condition (p < 0.005; paired two-sample t-test). The superior temporal gyrus, pre- and post-central gyrus provided the highest reconstruction information. The relationship between overt and covert speech reconstruction depended on anatomy. These results provide evidence that auditory representations of covert speech can be reconstructed from models that are built from an overt speech data set, supporting a partially shared neural substrate. PMID:24904404

High-frequency energy in singing and speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

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.

Perception of Filtered Speech by Children with Developmental Dyslexia and Children with Specific Language Impairments

PubMed Central

Goswami, Usha; Cumming, Ruth; Chait, Maria; Huss, Martina; Mead, Natasha; Wilson, Angela M.; Barnes, Lisa; Fosker, Tim

2016-01-01

Here we use two filtered speech tasks to investigate children’s processing of slow (<4 Hz) versus faster (∼33 Hz) temporal modulations in speech. We compare groups of children with either developmental dyslexia (Experiment 1) or speech and language impairments (SLIs, Experiment 2) to groups of typically-developing (TD) children age-matched to each disorder group. Ten nursery rhymes were filtered so that their modulation frequencies were either low-pass filtered (<4 Hz) or band-pass filtered (22 – 40 Hz). Recognition of the filtered nursery rhymes was tested in a picture recognition multiple choice paradigm. Children with dyslexia aged 10 years showed equivalent recognition overall to TD controls for both the low-pass and band-pass filtered stimuli, but showed significantly impaired acoustic learning during the experiment from low-pass filtered targets. Children with oral SLIs aged 9 years showed significantly poorer recognition of band pass filtered targets compared to their TD controls, and showed comparable acoustic learning effects to TD children during the experiment. The SLI samples were also divided into children with and without phonological difficulties. The children with both SLI and phonological difficulties were impaired in recognizing both kinds of filtered speech. These data are suggestive of impaired temporal sampling of the speech signal at different modulation rates by children with different kinds of developmental language disorder. Both SLI and dyslexic samples showed impaired discrimination of amplitude rise times. Implications of these findings for a temporal sampling framework for understanding developmental language disorders are discussed. PMID:27303348

Determining stability in connected speech in primary progressive aphasia and Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Beales, Ashleigh; Whitworth, Anne; Cartwright, Jade; Panegyres, Peter K; Kane, Robert T

2018-03-08

Using connected speech to assess progressive language disorders is confounded by uncertainty around whether connected speech is stable over successive sampling, and therefore representative of an individual's performance, and whether some contexts and/or language behaviours show greater stability than others. A repeated measure, within groups, research design was used to investigate stability of a range of behaviours in the connected speech of six individuals with primary progressive aphasia and three individuals with Alzheimer's disease. Stability was evaluated, at a group and individual level, across three samples, collected over 3 weeks, involving everyday monologue, narrative and picture description, and analysed for lexical content, fluency and communicative informativeness and efficiency. Excellent and significant stability was found on the majority of measures, at a group and individual level, across all genres, with isolated measures (e.g. nouns use, communicative efficiency) showing good, but greater variability, within one of the three genres. Findings provide evidence of stability on measures of lexical content, fluency and communicative informativeness and efficiency. While preliminary evidence suggests that task selection is influential when considering stability of particular connected speech measures, replication over a larger sample is necessary to reproduce findings.

The Wildcat Corpus of Native- and Foreign-Accented English: Communicative Efficiency across Conversational Dyads with Varying Language Alignment Profiles

PubMed Central

Van Engen, Kristin J.; Baese-Berk, Melissa; Baker, Rachel E.; Choi, Arim; Kim, Midam; Bradlow, Ann R.

2012-01-01

This paper describes the development of the Wildcat Corpus of native- and foreign-accented English, a corpus containing scripted and spontaneous speech recordings from 24 native speakers of American English and 52 non-native speakers of English. The core element of this corpus is a set of spontaneous speech recordings, for which a new method of eliciting dialogue-based, laboratory-quality speech recordings was developed (the Diapix task). Dialogues between two native speakers of English, between two non-native speakers of English (with either shared or different L1s), and between one native and one non-native speaker of English are included and analyzed in terms of general measures of communicative efficiency. The overall finding was that pairs of native talkers were most efficient, followed by mixed native/non-native pairs and non-native pairs with shared L1. Non-native pairs with different L1s were least efficient. These results support the hypothesis that successful speech communication depends both on the alignment of talkers to the target language and on the alignment of talkers to one another in terms of native language background. PMID:21313992

Transcranial magnetic stimulation: language function.

PubMed

Epstein, C M

1998-07-01

Studies of language using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) have focused both on identification of language areas and on elucidation of function. TMS may result in either inhibition or facilitation of language processes and may operate directly at a presumptive site of language cortex or indirectly through intracortical networks. TMS has been used to create reversible "temporary lesions," similar to those produced by Wada tests and direct cortical electrical stimulation, in cerebral cortical areas subserving language function. Rapid-rate TMS over the left inferior frontal region blocks speech output in most subjects. However, the results are not those predicted from classic models of language organization. Speech arrest is obtained most easily over facial motor cortex, and true aphasia is rare, whereas right hemisphere or bilateral lateralization is unexpectedly prominent. A clinical role for these techniques is not yet fully established. Interfering with language comprehension and verbal memory is currently more difficult than blocking speech output, but numerous TMS studies have demonstrated facilitation of language-related tasks, including oral word association, story recall, digit span, and picture naming. Conversely, speech output also facilitates motor responses to TMS in the dominant hemisphere. Such new and often-unexpected findings may provide important insights into the organization of language.

Speech intelligibility index predictions for young and old listeners in automobile noise: Can the index be improved by incorporating factors other than absolute threshold?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Saweikis, Meghan; Surprenant, Aimée M.; Davies, Patricia; Gallant, Don

2003-10-01

While young and old subjects with comparable audiograms tend to perform comparably on speech recognition tasks in quiet environments, the older subjects have more difficulty than the younger subjects with recognition tasks in degraded listening conditions. This suggests that factors other than an absolute threshold may account for some of the difficulty older listeners have on recognition tasks in noisy environments. Many metrics, including the Speech Intelligibility Index (SII), used to measure speech intelligibility, only consider an absolute threshold when accounting for age related hearing loss. Therefore these metrics tend to overestimate the performance for elderly listeners in noisy environments [Tobias et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 83, 859-895 (1988)]. The present studies examine the predictive capabilities of the SII in an environment with automobile noise present. This is of interest because people's evaluation of the automobile interior sound is closely linked to their ability to carry on conversations with their fellow passengers. The four studies examine whether, for subjects with age related hearing loss, the accuracy of the SII can be improved by incorporating factors other than an absolute threshold into the model. [Work supported by Ford Motor Company.

Post-treatment speech naturalness of comprehensive stuttering program clients and differences in ratings among listener groups.

PubMed

Teshima, Shelli; Langevin, Marilyn; Hagler, Paul; Kully, Deborah

2010-03-01

The purposes of this study were to investigate naturalness of the post-treatment speech of Comprehensive Stuttering Program (CSP) clients and differences in naturalness ratings by three listener groups. Listeners were 21 student speech-language pathologists, 9 community members, and 15 listeners who stutter. Listeners rated perceptually fluent speech samples of CSP clients obtained immediately post-treatment (Post) and at 5 years follow-up (F5), and speech samples of matched typically fluent (TF) speakers. A 9-point interval rating scale was used. A 3 (listener group)x2 (time)x2 (speaker) mixed ANOVA was used to test for differences among mean ratings. The difference between CSP Post and F5 mean ratings was statistically significant. The F5 mean rating was within the range reported for typically fluent speakers. Student speech-language pathologists were found to be less critical than community members and listeners who stutter in rating naturalness; however, there were no significant differences in ratings made by community members and listeners who stutter. Results indicate that the naturalness of post-treatment speech of CSP clients improves in the post-treatment period and that it is possible for clients to achieve levels of naturalness that appear to be acceptable to adults who stutter and that are within the range of naturalness ratings given to typically fluent speakers. Readers will be able to (a) summarize key findings of studies that have investigated naturalness ratings, and (b) interpret the naturalness ratings of Comprehensive Stuttering Program speaker samples and the ratings made by the three listener groups in this study.

Speech Discrimination Difficulties in High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder Are Likely Independent of Auditory Hypersensitivity

PubMed Central

Dunlop, William A.; Enticott, Peter G.; Rajan, Ramesh

2016-01-01

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), characterized by impaired communication skills and repetitive behaviors, 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. PMID:27555814

Do You Have the Right to Be an Advocate?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Underwood, Julie

2013-01-01

Public employees have the right to engage in political activity on issues of public concern--even those issues that relate to education. Advocacy for a particular candidate on a ballot or taking a side on a referendum clearly are issues of public concern and therefore protected. Conversely, speech that involves a purely personal matter is not…

Whose Voice Is It Anyway? Hushing and Hearing "Voices" in Speech and Language Therapy Interactions with People with Chronic Schizophrenia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walsh, Irene P.

2008-01-01

Background: Some people with schizophrenia are considered to have communication difficulties because of concomitant language impairment and/or because of suppressed or "unusual" communication skills due to the often-chronic nature and manifestation of the illness process. Conversations with a person with schizophrenia pose many pragmatic…

Playing with Word Endings: Morphological Variation in the Learning of Russian Noun Inflections

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kempe, Vera; Brooks, Patricia J.; Mironova, Natalija; Pershukova, Angelina; Fedorova, Olga

2007-01-01

This paper documents the occurrence of form variability through diminutive "wordplay", and examines whether this variability facilitates or hinders morphology acquisition in a richly inflected language. First, in a longitudinal speech corpus of eight Russian mothers conversing with their children (1.6-3.6), and with an adult, the use of diminutive…

Speech or Silence: Undocumented Students' Decisions to Disclose or Disguise Their Citizenship Status in School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mangual Figueroa, Ariana

2017-01-01

This article provides ethnographic evidence of the ways in which undocumented students make decisions about when to share or withhold their migratory status during conversations with peers and teachers in one elementary school. It argues that an analytic focus on how and when elementary-aged students talk about migratory status during everyday…

Conversation and Conflict: Supporting Authentic Dialogue in the Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fleck-Henderson, Ann; Melendez, Michael Paul

2009-01-01

This paper presents an exploratory study of MSW students who self-identified as having political/religious world views differing from what they perceived to be dominant at their school. A goal was to learn about conditions that fostered or inhibited authentic speech for those students. A secondary goal was to learn how students dealt with their…

Falling out of "Like"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wanket, Maureen O'Leary

2006-01-01

In this article, the author laments the way students abuse the term "like" in their common language. She feels that the word has become a pervasive parasite in the speech of many unwitting American teenagers, and discusses the many purposes "like" serves in conversation. "Like" can be a verb that stands for "said." It is a shortcut that allows the…

Frequency of Use Leads to Automaticity of Production: Evidence from Repair in Conversation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kapatsinski, Vsevolod

2010-01-01

In spontaneous speech, speakers sometimes replace a word they have just produced or started producing by another word. The present study reports that in these replacement repairs, low-frequency replaced words are more likely to be interrupted prior to completion than high-frequency words, providing support to the hypothesis that the production of…

Bringing Climate Change into the Life Science Classroom: Essentials, Impacts on Life, and Addressing Misconceptions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hawkins, Amy J.; Stark, Louisa A.

2016-01-01

Climate change is at the forefront of our cultural conversation about science, influencing everything from presidential debates to Leonardo DiCaprio's 2016 Oscar acceptance speech. The topic is becoming increasingly socially and scientifically relevant but is no closer to being resolved. Most high school students take a life science course but…

People with "MECP2" Mutation-Positive Rett Disorder Who Converse

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kerr, A. M.; Archer, H. L.; Evans, J. C.; Prescott, R. J.; Gibbon, F.

2006-01-01

Background: People with useful speech after regression constitute a distinct group of those with mutation-positive Rett disorder, 6% (20/331) reported among mutation-positive people in the British Survey. We aimed to determine the physical, mental and genetic characteristics of this group and to gain insight into their experience of Rett syndrome.…

(Non)Verbal Behavior of Young Stutterers and Their Mothers. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Conture, Edward G.

This final report describes activities and accomplishments of a 3-year project which analyzed the speech and related behaviors of 28 young children (mean age 52.5 months) who stuttered, their mothers, and similar non-stuttering children and mothers. A loosely structured conversation between each mother and child was recorded and analyzed. In…

How Hard Can It Be to Listen? Fatigue in School-Age Children with Hearing Loss

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bess, Fred H.; Gustafson, Samantha J.; Hornsby, Benjamin W. Y.

2014-01-01

Teachers and parents have long believed that children with hearing loss (CHL) are at increased risk for fatigue. CHL may be physically and mentally "worn out" as a result of focusing so intently on a teacher's speech and on conversations with other students. Moreover, increased listening effort, stress, and subsequent fatigue could…

The Rise and Fall of Unstressed Vowel Reduction in the Spanish of Cusco, Peru: A Sociophonetic Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Delforge, Ann Marie

2009-01-01

This dissertation describes the phonetic characteristics of a phenomenon that has previously been denominated "unstressed vowel reduction" in Andean Spanish based on the spectrographic analysis of 40,556 unstressed vowels extracted from the conversational speech of 150 residents of the city of Cusco, Peru. Results demonstrate that this…

The Occurrence and the Success Rate of Self-Initiated Self-Repair

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sato, Rintaro; Takatsuka, Shigenobu

2016-01-01

Errors naturally appear in spontaneous speeches and conversations. Particularly in a second or foreign language, it is only natural that mistakes happen as a part of the learning process. After an inappropriate expression is detected, it can be corrected. This act of correcting can be initiated either by the speaker (non-native speaker) or the…

The Poetics of Argumentation: The Relevance of Conversational Repetition for Two Theories of Emergent Mathematical Reasoning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Staats, Susan

2017-01-01

Poetic structures emerge in spoken language when speakers repeat grammatical phrases that were spoken before. They create the potential to amend or comment on previous speech, and to convey meaning through the structure of discourse. This paper considers the ways in which poetic structure analysis contributes to two perspectives on emergent…

The Influence of Phonetic Complexity on Stuttered Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coalson, Geoffrey A.; Byrd, Courtney T.; Davis, Barbara L.

2012-01-01

The primary purpose of this study was to re-examine the influence of phonetic complexity on stuttering in young children through the use of the Word Complexity Measure (WCM). Parent-child conversations were transcribed for 14 children who stutter (mean age = 3 years, 7 months; SD = 11.20 months). Lexical and linguistic factors were accounted for…

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

PubMed

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.

[Relevance of psychosocial factors in speech rehabilitation after laryngectomy].

PubMed

Singer, S; Fuchs, M; Dietz, A; Klemm, E; Kienast, U; Meyer, A; Oeken, J; Täschner, R; Wulke, C; Schwarz, R

2007-12-01

Often it is assumed that psychosocial and sociodemographic factors cause the success of voice rehabilitation after laryngectomy. Aim of this study was to analyze the association between these parameters. Based on tumor registries of six ENT-clinics all patients were surveyed, who were laryngectomized in the years before (N = 190). Success of voice rehabilitation has been assessed as speech intelligibility measured with the postlaryngectomy-telephone-intelligibility-test. For the assessment of the psychosocial parameters validated and standardized instruments were used if possible. Statistical analysis was done by multiple logistic regression analysis. Low speech intelligibility is associated with reduced conversations (OR 0.970) and social activity (OR 1.049). Patients are more likely to talk with esophageal voice when their motivation for learning the new voice was high (OR 7.835) and when they assessed their speech therapist as important for their motivation (OR 4.794). The risk to communicate merely by whispering is higher when patients live together with a partner (OR 5.293), when they talk seldomly (OR 1.017) and when they are not very active in social contexts (OR 0.966). Psychosocial factors can only partly explain how voice rehabilitation after laryngectomy becomes a success. Speech intelligibility is associated with active communication behaviour, whereas the use of an esophageal voice is correlated with motivation. It seems that the gaining of tracheoesophageal puncture voice is independent of psychosocial factors.

Does indirect speech promote nondirective genetic counseling? Results of a sociolinguistic investigation.

PubMed

Benkendorf, J L; Prince, M B; Rose, M A; De Fina, A; Hamilton, H E

2001-01-01

To date, research examining adherence to genetic counseling principles has focused on specific counseling activities such as the giving or withholding of information and responding to client requests for advice. We audiotaped 43 prenatal genetic counseling sessions and used data-driven, qualitative, sociolinguistic methodologies to investigate how language choices facilitate or hinder the counseling process. Transcripts of each session were prepared for sociolinguistic analysis of the emergent discourse that included studying conversational style, speaker-listener symmetry, directness, and other interactional patterns. Analysis of our data demonstrates that: 1) indirect speech, marked by the use of hints, hedges, and other politeness strategies, facilitates rapport and mitigates the tension between a client-centered relationship and a counselor-driven agenda; 2) direct speech, or speaking literally, is an effective strategy for providing information and education; and 3) confusion exists between the use of indirect speech and the intent to provide nondirective counseling, especially when facilitating client decision-making. Indirect responses to client questions, such as those that include the phrases "some people" or "most people," helped to maintain counselor neutrality; however, this well-intended indirectness, used to preserve client autonomy, may have obstructed direct explorations of client needs. We argue that the genetic counseling process requires increased flexibility in the use of direct and indirect speech and provide new insights into how "talk" affects the work of genetic counselors.

Two Different Communication Genres and Implications for Vocabulary Development and Learning to Read

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Massaro, Dominic W.

2015-01-01

This study examined potential differences in vocabulary found in picture books and adult's speech to children and to other adults. Using a small sample of various sources of speech and print, Hayes observed that print had a more extensive vocabulary than speech. The current analyses of two different spoken language databases and an assembled…

School-Based Speech-Language Pathologists' Use of iPads

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Romane, Garvin Philippe

2017-01-01

This study explored school-based speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') use of iPads and apps for speech and language instruction, specifically for articulation, language, and vocabulary goals. A mostly quantitative-based survey was administered to approximately 2,800 SLPs in a K-12 setting; the final sample consisted of 189 licensed SLPs. Overall,…

The Measurement of the Oral and Nasal Sound Pressure Levels of Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clarke, Wayne M.

1975-01-01

A nasal separator was used to measure the oral and nasal components in the speech of a normal adult Australian population. Results indicated no difference in oral and nasal sound pressure levels for read versus spontaneous speech samples; however, females tended to have a higher nasal component than did males. (Author/TL)

Effects of Culture and Gender in Comprehension of Speech Acts of Indirect Request

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shams, Rabe'a; Afghari, Akbar

2011-01-01

This study investigates the comprehension of indirect request speech act used by Iranian people in daily communication. The study is an attempt to find out whether different cultural backgrounds and the gender of the speakers affect the comprehension of the indirect request of speech act. The sample includes thirty males and females in Gachsaran…

Phonological Memory, Attention Control, and Musical Ability: Effects of Individual Differences on Rater Judgments of Second Language Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

The Influence of Social Class and Race on Language Test Performance and Spontaneous Speech of Preschool Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Dale L.

This investigation compares child language obtained with standardized tests and samples of spontaneous speech obtained in natural settings. It was hypothesized that differences would exist between social class and racial groups on the unfamiliar standard tests, but such differences would not be evident on spontaneous speech measures. Also, higher…

Speech disorders in neurofibromatosis type 1: a sample survey.

PubMed

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

2010-01-01

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. This study serves as a pilot to identify key issues in the speech of NF1 patients. In particular, the aim is to explore further the occurrence and nature of problems associated with speech as perceived by the patients themselves. A questionnaire was sent to 149 patients with NF1 registered at the Department of Genetics, Ghent University Hospital. The questionnaire inquired about articulation, hearing, breathing, voice, resonance and fluency. Sixty individuals ranging in age from 4.5 to 61.3 years returned completed questionnaires and these served as the database for the study. The results of this sample survey were compared with data of the normal population. About two-thirds of participants experienced at least one speech or speech-related problem of any type. Compared with the normal population, the NF1 group indicated more articulation difficulties, hearing impairment, abnormalities in loudness, and stuttering. The results indicate that speech difficulties are an area of interest in the NF1 population. Further research to elucidate these findings is needed.

Relationships among psychoacoustic judgments, speech understanding ability and self-perceived handicap in tinnitus subjects.

PubMed

Newman, C W; Wharton, J A; Shivapuja, B G; Jacobson, G P

1994-01-01

Tinnitus is often a disturbing symptom which affects 6-20% of the population. Relationships among tinnitus pitch and loudness judgments, audiometric speech understanding measures and self-perceived handicap were evaluated in a sample of subjects with tinnitus and hearing loss (THL). Data obtained from the THL sample on the audiometric speech measures were compared to the performance of an age-matched hearing loss only (HL) group. Both groups had normal hearing through 1 kHz with a sloping configuration of < or = 20 dB/octave between 2-12 kHz. The THL subjects performed more poorly on the low predictability items of the Speech Perception in Noise Test, suggesting that tinnitus may interfere with the perception of speech signals having reduced linguistic redundancy. The THL subjects rated their tinnitus as annoying at relatively low sensation levels using the pitch-match frequency as the reference tone. Further, significant relationships were found between loudness judgment measures and self-rated annoyance. No predictable relationships were observed between the audiometric speech measures and perceived handicap using the Tinnitus Handicap Questionnaire. These findings support the use of self-report measures in tinnitus patients in that audiometric speech tests alone may be insufficient in describing an individual's reaction to his/her communication breakdowns.

Are the Literacy Difficulties That Characterize Developmental Dyslexia Associated with a Failure to Integrate Letters and Speech Sounds?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nash, Hannah M.; Gooch, Debbie; Hulme, Charles; Mahajan, Yatin; McArthur, Genevieve; Steinmetzger, Kurt; Snowling, Margaret J.

2017-01-01

The "automatic letter-sound integration hypothesis" (Blomert, [Blomert, L., 2011]) proposes that dyslexia results from a failure to fully integrate letters and speech sounds into automated audio-visual objects. We tested this hypothesis in a sample of English-speaking children with dyslexic difficulties (N = 13) and samples of…

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

PubMed

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.

From where to what: a neuroanatomically based evolutionary model of the emergence of speech in humans

PubMed Central

Poliva, Oren

2017-01-01

In the brain of primates, the auditory cortex connects with the frontal lobe via the temporal pole (auditory ventral stream; AVS) and via the inferior parietal lobe (auditory dorsal stream; ADS). The AVS is responsible for sound recognition, and the ADS for sound-localization, voice detection and integration of calls with faces. I propose that the primary role of the ADS in non-human primates is the detection and response to contact calls. These calls are exchanged between tribe members (e.g., mother-offspring) and are used for monitoring location. Detection of contact calls occurs by the ADS identifying a voice, localizing it, and verifying that the corresponding face is out of sight. Once a contact call is detected, the primate produces a contact call in return via descending connections from the frontal lobe to a network of limbic and brainstem regions. Because the ADS of present day humans also performs speech production, I further propose an evolutionary course for the transition from contact call exchange to an early form of speech. In accordance with this model, structural changes to the ADS endowed early members of the genus Homo with partial vocal control. This development was beneficial as it enabled offspring to modify their contact calls with intonations for signaling high or low levels of distress to their mother. Eventually, individuals were capable of participating in yes-no question-answer conversations. In these conversations the offspring emitted a low-level distress call for inquiring about the safety of objects (e.g., food), and his/her mother responded with a high- or low-level distress call to signal approval or disapproval of the interaction. Gradually, the ADS and its connections with brainstem motor regions became more robust and vocal control became more volitional. Speech emerged once vocal control was sufficient for inventing novel calls. PMID:28928931

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

PubMed

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.

Quasi-closed phase forward-backward linear prediction analysis of speech for accurate formant detection and estimation.

PubMed

Gowda, Dhananjaya; Airaksinen, Manu; Alku, Paavo

2017-09-01

Recently, a quasi-closed phase (QCP) analysis of speech signals for accurate glottal inverse filtering was proposed. However, the QCP analysis which belongs to the family of temporally weighted linear prediction (WLP) methods uses the conventional forward type of sample prediction. This may not be the best choice especially in computing WLP models with a hard-limiting weighting function. A sample selective minimization of the prediction error in WLP reduces the effective number of samples available within a given window frame. To counter this problem, a modified quasi-closed phase forward-backward (QCP-FB) analysis is proposed, wherein each sample is predicted based on its past as well as future samples thereby utilizing the available number of samples more effectively. Formant detection and estimation experiments on synthetic vowels generated using a physical modeling approach as well as natural speech utterances show that the proposed QCP-FB method yields statistically significant improvements over the conventional linear prediction and QCP methods.

The Atlanta Motor Speech Disorders Corpus: Motivation, Development, and Utility.

PubMed

Laures-Gore, Jacqueline; Russell, Scott; Patel, Rupal; Frankel, Michael

2016-01-01

This paper describes the design and collection of a comprehensive spoken language dataset from speakers with motor speech disorders in Atlanta, Ga., USA. This collaborative project aimed to gather a spoken database consisting of nonmainstream American English speakers residing in the Southeastern US in order to provide a more diverse perspective of motor speech disorders. Ninety-nine adults with an acquired neurogenic disorder resulting in a motor speech disorder were recruited. Stimuli include isolated vowels, single words, sentences with contrastive focus, sentences with emotional content and prosody, sentences with acoustic and perceptual sensitivity to motor speech disorders, as well as 'The Caterpillar' and 'The Grandfather' passages. Utility of this data in understanding the potential interplay of dialect and dysarthria was demonstrated with a subset of the speech samples existing in the database. The Atlanta Motor Speech Disorders Corpus will enrich our understanding of motor speech disorders through the examination of speech from a diverse group of speakers. © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Speech and pause characteristics in multiple sclerosis: A preliminary study of speakers with high and low neuropsychological test performance

PubMed Central

FEENAUGHTY, LYNDA; TJADEN, KRIS; BENEDICT, RALPH H.B.; WEINSTOCK-GUTTMAN, BIANCA

2017-01-01

This preliminary study investigated how cognitive-linguistic status in multiple sclerosis (MS) is reflected in two speech tasks (i.e. oral reading, narrative) that differ in cognitive-linguistic demand. Twenty individuals with MS were selected to comprise High and Low performance groups based on clinical tests of executive function and information processing speed and efficiency. Ten healthy controls were included for comparison. Speech samples were audio-recorded and measures of global speech timing were obtained. Results indicated predicted differences in global speech timing (i.e. speech rate and pause characteristics) for speech tasks differing in cognitive-linguistic demand, but the magnitude of these task-related differences was similar for all speaker groups. Findings suggest that assumptions concerning the cognitive-linguistic demands of reading aloud as compared to spontaneous speech may need to be re-considered for individuals with cognitive impairment. Qualitative trends suggest that additional studies investigating the association between cognitive-linguistic and speech motor variables in MS are warranted. PMID:23294227

Mistaking minds and machines: How speech affects dehumanization and anthropomorphism.

PubMed

Schroeder, Juliana; Epley, Nicholas

2016-11-01

Treating a human mind like a machine is an essential component of dehumanization, whereas attributing a humanlike mind to a machine is an essential component of anthropomorphism. Here we tested how a cue closely connected to a person's actual mental experience-a humanlike voice-affects the likelihood of mistaking a person for a machine, or a machine for a person. We predicted that paralinguistic cues in speech are particularly likely to convey the presence of a humanlike mind, such that removing voice from communication (leaving only text) would increase the likelihood of mistaking the text's creator for a machine. Conversely, adding voice to a computer-generated script (resulting in speech) would increase the likelihood of mistaking the text's creator for a human. Four experiments confirmed these hypotheses, demonstrating that people are more likely to infer a human (vs. computer) creator when they hear a voice expressing thoughts than when they read the same thoughts in text. Adding human visual cues to text (i.e., seeing a person perform a script in a subtitled video clip), did not increase the likelihood of inferring a human creator compared with only reading text, suggesting that defining features of personhood may be conveyed more clearly in speech (Experiments 1 and 2). Removing the naturalistic paralinguistic cues that convey humanlike capacity for thinking and feeling, such as varied pace and intonation, eliminates the humanizing effect of speech (Experiment 4). We discuss implications for dehumanizing others through text-based media, and for anthropomorphizing machines through speech-based media. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Pure word deafness with auditory object agnosia after bilateral lesion of the superior temporal sulcus.

PubMed

Gutschalk, Alexander; Uppenkamp, Stefan; Riedel, Bernhard; Bartsch, Andreas; Brandt, Tobias; Vogt-Schaden, Marlies

2015-12-01

Based on results from functional imaging, cortex along the superior temporal sulcus (STS) has been suggested to subserve phoneme and pre-lexical speech perception. For vowel classification, both superior temporal plane (STP) and STS areas have been suggested relevant. Lesion of bilateral STS may conversely be expected to cause pure word deafness and possibly also impaired vowel classification. Here we studied a patient with bilateral STS lesions caused by ischemic strokes and relatively intact medial STPs to characterize the behavioral consequences of STS loss. The patient showed severe deficits in auditory speech perception, whereas his speech production was fluent and communication by written speech was grossly intact. Auditory-evoked fields in the STP were within normal limits on both sides, suggesting that major parts of the auditory cortex were functionally intact. Further studies showed that the patient had normal hearing thresholds and only mild disability in tests for telencephalic hearing disorder. Prominent deficits were discovered in an auditory-object classification task, where the patient performed four standard deviations below the control group. In marked contrast, performance in a vowel-classification task was intact. Auditory evoked fields showed enhanced responses for vowels compared to matched non-vowels within normal limits. Our results are consistent with the notion that cortex along STS is important for auditory speech perception, although it does not appear to be entirely speech specific. Formant analysis and single vowel classification, however, appear to be already implemented in auditory cortex on the STP. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready.

PubMed

Fitch, W Tecumseh; de Boer, Bart; Mathur, Neil; Ghazanfar, Asif A

2016-12-01

For four decades, the inability of nonhuman primates to produce human speech sounds has been claimed to stem from limitations in their vocal tract anatomy, a conclusion based on plaster casts made from the vocal tract of a monkey cadaver. We used x-ray videos to quantify vocal tract dynamics in living macaques during vocalization, facial displays, and feeding. We demonstrate that the macaque vocal tract could easily produce an adequate range of speech sounds to support spoken language, showing that previous techniques based on postmortem samples drastically underestimated primate vocal capabilities. Our findings imply that the evolution of human speech capabilities required neural changes rather than modifications of vocal anatomy. Macaques have a speech-ready vocal tract but lack a speech-ready brain to control it.

"The caterpillar": a novel reading passage for assessment of motor speech disorders.

PubMed

Patel, Rupal; Connaghan, Kathryn; Franco, Diana; Edsall, Erika; Forgit, Dory; Olsen, Laura; Ramage, Lianna; Tyler, Emily; Russell, Scott

2013-02-01

A review of the salient characteristics of motor speech disorders and common assessment protocols revealed the need for a novel reading passage tailored specifically to differentiate between and among the dysarthrias (DYSs) and apraxia of speech (AOS). "The Caterpillar" passage was designed to provide a contemporary, easily read, contextual speech sample with specific tasks (e.g., prosodic contrasts, words of increasing length and complexity) targeted to inform the assessment of motor speech disorders. Twenty-two adults, 15 with DYS or AOS and 7 healthy controls (HC), were recorded reading "The Caterpillar" passage to demonstrate its utility in examining motor speech performance. Analysis of performance across a subset of segmental and prosodic variables illustrated that "The Caterpillar" passage showed promise for extracting individual profiles of impairment that could augment current assessment protocols and inform treatment planning in motor speech disorders.

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

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

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…

Do Native Speakers of North American and Singapore English Differentially Perceive Comprehensibility in Second Language Speech?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saito, Kazuya; Shintani, Natsuko

2016-01-01

The current study examined the extent to which native speakers of North American and Singapore English differentially perceive the comprehensibility (ease of understanding) of second language (L2) speech. Spontaneous speech samples elicited from 50 Japanese learners of English with various proficiency levels were first rated by 10 Canadian and 10…