Acoustic cue weighting in the singleton vs geminate contrast in Lebanese Arabic: The case of fricative consonants.

PubMed

Al-Tamimi, Jalal; Khattab, Ghada

2015-07-01

This paper is the first reported investigation of the role of non-temporal acoustic cues in the singleton-geminate contrast in Lebanese Arabic, alongside the more frequently reported temporal cues. The aim is to explore the extent to which singleton and geminate consonants show qualitative differences in a language where phonological length is prominent and where moraic structure governs segment timing and syllable weight. Twenty speakers (ten male, ten female) were recorded producing trochaic disyllables with medial singleton and geminate fricatives preceded by phonologically short and long vowels. The following acoustic measures were applied on the medial fricative and surrounding vowels: absolute duration; intensity; fundamental frequency; spectral peak and shape, dynamic amplitude, and voicing patterns of medial fricatives; and vowel quality and voice quality correlates of surrounding vowels. Discriminant analysis and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves were used to assess each acoustic cue's contribution to the singleton-geminate contrast. Classification rates of 89% and ROC curves with an area under the curve rate of 96% confirmed the major role played by temporal cues, with non-temporal cues contributing to the contrast but to a much lesser extent. These results confirm that the underlying contrast for gemination in Arabic is temporal, but highlight [+tense] (fortis) as a secondary feature.

The Queen's English: an alternative, biosocial hypothesis for the distinctive features of "gay speech".

PubMed

Rendall, Drew; Vasey, Paul L; McKenzie, Jared

2008-02-01

Popular stereotypes concerning the speech of homosexuals typically attribute speech patterns characteristic of the opposite-sex, i.e., broadly feminized speech in gay men and broadly masculinized speech in lesbian women. A small body of recent empirical research has begun to address the subject more systematically and to consider specific mechanistic hypotheses to account for the potentially distinctive features of homosexual speech. Results do not yet fully endorse the stereotypes but they do not entirely discount them either; nor do they cleanly favor any single mechanistic hypothesis. To contribute to this growing body of research, we report acoustic analyses of 2,875 vowel sounds from a balanced set of 125 speakers representing heterosexual and homosexual individuals of each sex from southern Alberta, Canada. Analyses focused on voice pitch and formant frequencies which together determine the principle perceptual features of vowels. There was no significant difference in mean voice pitch between heterosexual and homosexual men or between heterosexual and homosexual women, but there were significant differences in the formant frequencies of vowels produced by both homosexual groups compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Formant frequency differences were specific to only certain vowel sounds and some could be attributed to basic differences in body size between heterosexual and homosexual speakers. The remaining formant frequency differences were not obviously due to differences in vocal tract anatomy between heterosexual and homosexual speakers, nor did they reflect global feminization or masculinization of vowel production patterns in homosexual men and women, respectively. The vowel-specific differences observed could reflect social modeling processes in which only certain speech patterns of the opposite-sex, or of same-sex homosexuals, are selectively adopted. However, we introduce an alternative biosocial hypothesis, specifically that the distinctive, vowel-specific features of homosexual speakers relative to heterosexual speakers arise incidentally as a product of broader psychobehavioral differences between the two groups that are, in turn, continuous with and flow from the physiological processes that affect sexual orientation to begin with.

An acoustic feature-based similarity scoring system for speech rehabilitation assistance.

PubMed

Syauqy, Dahnial; Wu, Chao-Min; Setyawati, Onny

2016-08-01

The purpose of this study is to develop a tool to assist speech therapy and rehabilitation, which focused on automatic scoring based on the comparison of the patient's speech with another normal speech on several aspects including pitch, vowel, voiced-unvoiced segments, strident fricative and sound intensity. The pitch estimation employed the use of cepstrum-based algorithm for its robustness; the vowel classification used multilayer perceptron (MLP) to classify vowel from pitch and formants; and the strident fricative detection was based on the major peak spectral intensity, location and the pitch existence in the segment. In order to evaluate the performance of the system, this study analyzed eight patient's speech recordings (four males, four females; 4-58-years-old), which had been recorded in previous study in cooperation with Taipei Veterans General Hospital and Taoyuan General Hospital. The experiment result on pitch algorithm showed that the cepstrum method had 5.3% of gross pitch error from a total of 2086 frames. On the vowel classification algorithm, MLP method provided 93% accuracy (men), 87% (women) and 84% (children). In total, the overall results showed that 156 tool's grading results (81%) were consistent compared to 192 audio and visual observations done by four experienced respondents. Implication for Rehabilitation Difficulties in communication may limit the ability of a person to transfer and exchange information. The fact that speech is one of the primary means of communication has encouraged the needs of speech diagnosis and rehabilitation. The advances of technology in computer-assisted speech therapy (CAST) improve the quality, time efficiency of the diagnosis and treatment of the disorders. The present study attempted to develop tool to assist speech therapy and rehabilitation, which provided simple interface to let the assessment be done even by the patient himself without the need of particular knowledge of speech processing while at the same time, also provided further deep analysis of the speech, which can be useful for the speech therapist.

The Influence of Pronunciation Learning Strategies on Mastering English Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rokoszewska, Katarzyna

2012-01-01

The present paper focuses on the role of strategies in learning the pronunciation of the target language. First, an outline of various general classifications of language learning strategies is provided. Next, pronunciation learning strategies are defined and their various taxonomies are presented. This is followed by the description of the study…

Speaker normalization and adaptation using second-order connectionist networks.

PubMed

Watrous, R L

1993-01-01

A method for speaker normalization and adaption using connectionist networks is developed. A speaker-specific linear transformation of observations of the speech signal is computed using second-order network units. Classification is accomplished by a multilayer feedforward network that operates on the normalized speech data. The network is adapted for a new talker by modifying the transformation parameters while leaving the classifier fixed. This is accomplished by backpropagating classification error through the classifier to the second-order transformation units. This method was evaluated for the classification of ten vowels for 76 speakers using the first two formant values of the Peterson-Barney data. The results suggest that rapid speaker adaptation resulting in high classification accuracy can be accomplished by this method.

A stylistic classification of Russian-language texts based on the random walk model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kramarenko, A. A.; Nekrasov, K. A.; Filimonov, V. V.; Zhivoderov, A. A.; Amieva, A. A.

2017-09-01

A formal approach to text analysis is suggested that is based on the random walk model. The frequencies and reciprocal positions of the vowel letters are matched up by a process of quasi-particle migration. Statistically significant difference in the migration parameters for the texts of different functional styles is found. Thus, a possibility of classification of texts using the suggested method is demonstrated. Five groups of the texts are singled out that can be distinguished from one another by the parameters of the quasi-particle migration process.

The Mechanics of Fingerspelling: Analyzing Ethiopian Sign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duarte, Kyle

2010-01-01

Ethiopian Sign Language utilizes a fingerspelling system that represents Amharic orthography. Just as each character of the Amharic abugida encodes a consonant-vowel sound pair, each sign in the Ethiopian Sign Language fingerspelling system uses handshape to encode a base consonant, as well as a combination of timing, placement, and orientation to…

Investigating the Pedagogical Potential of Recasts for L2 Vowel Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saito, Kazuya; Lyster, Roy

2012-01-01

Whereas second language (L2) education research has extensively examined how different types of interactional feedback can be facilitative of L2 development in meaning-oriented classrooms, most of these primary studies have focused on recasts (i.e., teachers' reformulations of students' errors). Some researchers have claimed that recasts serve an…

An Optimal Set of Flesh Points on Tongue and Lips for Speech-Movement Classification

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Jun; Samal, Ashok; Rong, Panying; Green, Jordan R.

2016-01-01

Purpose: The authors sought to determine an optimal set of flesh points on the tongue and lips for classifying speech movements. Method: The authors used electromagnetic articulographs (Carstens AG500 and NDI Wave) to record tongue and lip movements from 13 healthy talkers who articulated 8 vowels, 11 consonants, a phonetically balanced set of…

Effects of emotion on different phoneme classes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

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

2004-10-01

This study investigates the effects of emotion on different phoneme classes using short-term spectral features. In the research on emotion in speech, most studies have focused on prosodic features of speech. In this study, based on the hypothesis that different emotions have varying effects on the properties of the different speech sounds, we investigate the usefulness of phoneme-class level acoustic modeling for automatic emotion classification. Hidden Markov models (HMM) based on short-term spectral features for five broad phonetic classes are used for this purpose using data obtained from recordings of two actresses. Each speaker produces 211 sentences with four different emotions (neutral, sad, angry, happy). Using the speech material we trained and compared the performances of two sets of HMM classifiers: a generic set of ``emotional speech'' HMMs (one for each emotion) and a set of broad phonetic-class based HMMs (vowel, glide, nasal, stop, fricative) for each emotion type considered. Comparison of classification results indicates that different phoneme classes were affected differently by emotional change and that the vowel sounds are the most important indicator of emotions in speech. Detailed results and their implications on the underlying speech articulation will be discussed.

Does Vowel Inventory Density Affect Vowel-to-Vowel Coarticulation?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mok, Peggy P. K.

2013-01-01

This study tests the output constraints hypothesis that languages with a crowded phonemic vowel space would allow less vowel-to-vowel coarticulation than languages with a sparser vowel space to avoid perceptual confusion. Mandarin has fewer vowel phonemes than Cantonese, but their allophonic vowel spaces are similarly crowded. The hypothesis…

Mimological Reveries? Disconfirming the Hypothesis of Phono-Emotional Iconicity in Poetry

PubMed Central

Kraxenberger, Maria; Menninghaus, Winfried

2016-01-01

The present study retested previously reported empirical evidence suggesting an iconic relation between sound and emotional meaning in poetry. To this end, we analyzed the frequency of certain phoneme classes in 48 German poems and correlated them with ratings for emotional classification. Our analyses provide evidence for a link between the emotional classification of poems (joyful vs. sad) and the perception of tonal contrast as reflected in the attribution of phenomenological sound qualia (bright vs. dark). However, we could not confirm any of the previous hypotheses and findings regarding either a connection between the frequencies of occurrence of specific vowel classes and the perception of tonal contrast, or a relation between the frequencies of occurrence of consonant classes and emotional classification. PMID:27895614

Handwritten recognition of Tamil vowels using deep learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ram Prashanth, N.; Siddarth, B.; Ganesh, Anirudh; Naveen Kumar, Vaegae

2017-11-01

We come across a large volume of handwritten texts in our daily lives and handwritten character recognition has long been an important area of research in pattern recognition. The complexity of the task varies among different languages and it so happens largely due to the similarity between characters, distinct shapes and number of characters which are all language-specific properties. There have been numerous works on character recognition of English alphabets and with laudable success, but regional languages have not been dealt with very frequently and with similar accuracies. In this paper, we explored the performance of Deep Belief Networks in the classification of Handwritten Tamil vowels, and conclusively compared the results obtained. The proposed method has shown satisfactory recognition accuracy in light of difficulties faced with regional languages such as similarity between characters and minute nuances that differentiate them. We can further extend this to all the Tamil characters.

The Effect of Stress and Speech Rate on Vowel Coarticulation in Catalan Vowel-Consonant-Vowel Sequences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Recasens, Daniel

2015-01-01

Purpose: The goal of this study was to ascertain the effect of changes in stress and speech rate on vowel coarticulation in vowel-consonant-vowel sequences. Method: Data on second formant coarticulatory effects as a function of changing /i/ versus /a/ were collected for five Catalan speakers' productions of vowel-consonant-vowel sequences with the…

High-Resolution, Non-Invasive Imaging of Upper Vocal Tract Articulators Compatible with Human Brain Recordings

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

Bouchard, Kristofer E.; Conant, David F.; Anumanchipalli, Gopala K.

A complete neurobiological understanding of speech motor control requires determination of the relationship between simultaneously recorded neural activity and the kinematics of the lips, jaw, tongue, and larynx. Many speech articulators are internal to the vocal tract, and therefore simultaneously tracking the kinematics of all articulators is nontrivial-especially in the context of human electrophysiology recordings. Here, we describe a noninvasive, multi-modal imaging system to monitor vocal tract kinematics, demonstrate this system in six speakers during production of nine American English vowels, and provide new analysis of such data. Classification and regression analysis revealed considerable variability in the articulator-to-acoustic relationship acrossmore » speakers. Non-negative matrix factorization extracted basis sets capturing vocal tract shapes allowing for higher vowel classification accuracy than traditional methods. Statistical speech synthesis generated speech from vocal tract measurements, and we demonstrate perceptual identification. We demonstrate the capacity to predict lip kinematics from ventral sensorimotor cortical activity. These results demonstrate a multi-modal system to non-invasively monitor articulator kinematics during speech production, describe novel analytic methods for relating kinematic data to speech acoustics, and provide the first decoding of speech kinematics from electrocorticography. These advances will be critical for understanding the cortical basis of speech production and the creation of vocal prosthetics.« less

High-Resolution, Non-Invasive Imaging of Upper Vocal Tract Articulators Compatible with Human Brain Recordings

PubMed Central

Anumanchipalli, Gopala K.; Dichter, Benjamin; Chaisanguanthum, Kris S.; Johnson, Keith; Chang, Edward F.

2016-01-01

A complete neurobiological understanding of speech motor control requires determination of the relationship between simultaneously recorded neural activity and the kinematics of the lips, jaw, tongue, and larynx. Many speech articulators are internal to the vocal tract, and therefore simultaneously tracking the kinematics of all articulators is nontrivial—especially in the context of human electrophysiology recordings. Here, we describe a noninvasive, multi-modal imaging system to monitor vocal tract kinematics, demonstrate this system in six speakers during production of nine American English vowels, and provide new analysis of such data. Classification and regression analysis revealed considerable variability in the articulator-to-acoustic relationship across speakers. Non-negative matrix factorization extracted basis sets capturing vocal tract shapes allowing for higher vowel classification accuracy than traditional methods. Statistical speech synthesis generated speech from vocal tract measurements, and we demonstrate perceptual identification. We demonstrate the capacity to predict lip kinematics from ventral sensorimotor cortical activity. These results demonstrate a multi-modal system to non-invasively monitor articulator kinematics during speech production, describe novel analytic methods for relating kinematic data to speech acoustics, and provide the first decoding of speech kinematics from electrocorticography. These advances will be critical for understanding the cortical basis of speech production and the creation of vocal prosthetics. PMID:27019106

High-Resolution, Non-Invasive Imaging of Upper Vocal Tract Articulators Compatible with Human Brain Recordings

DOE PAGES

Bouchard, Kristofer E.; Conant, David F.; Anumanchipalli, Gopala K.; ...

2016-03-28

A complete neurobiological understanding of speech motor control requires determination of the relationship between simultaneously recorded neural activity and the kinematics of the lips, jaw, tongue, and larynx. Many speech articulators are internal to the vocal tract, and therefore simultaneously tracking the kinematics of all articulators is nontrivial-especially in the context of human electrophysiology recordings. Here, we describe a noninvasive, multi-modal imaging system to monitor vocal tract kinematics, demonstrate this system in six speakers during production of nine American English vowels, and provide new analysis of such data. Classification and regression analysis revealed considerable variability in the articulator-to-acoustic relationship acrossmore » speakers. Non-negative matrix factorization extracted basis sets capturing vocal tract shapes allowing for higher vowel classification accuracy than traditional methods. Statistical speech synthesis generated speech from vocal tract measurements, and we demonstrate perceptual identification. We demonstrate the capacity to predict lip kinematics from ventral sensorimotor cortical activity. These results demonstrate a multi-modal system to non-invasively monitor articulator kinematics during speech production, describe novel analytic methods for relating kinematic data to speech acoustics, and provide the first decoding of speech kinematics from electrocorticography. These advances will be critical for understanding the cortical basis of speech production and the creation of vocal prosthetics.« less

Vowel Imagery Decoding toward Silent Speech BCI Using Extreme Learning Machine with Electroencephalogram

PubMed Central

Kim, Jongin; Park, Hyeong-jun

2016-01-01

The purpose of this study is to classify EEG data on imagined speech in a single trial. We recorded EEG data while five subjects imagined different vowels, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/. We divided each single trial dataset into thirty segments and extracted features (mean, variance, standard deviation, and skewness) from all segments. To reduce the dimension of the feature vector, we applied a feature selection algorithm based on the sparse regression model. These features were classified using a support vector machine with a radial basis function kernel, an extreme learning machine, and two variants of an extreme learning machine with different kernels. Because each single trial consisted of thirty segments, our algorithm decided the label of the single trial by selecting the most frequent output among the outputs of the thirty segments. As a result, we observed that the extreme learning machine and its variants achieved better classification rates than the support vector machine with a radial basis function kernel and linear discrimination analysis. Thus, our results suggested that EEG responses to imagined speech could be successfully classified in a single trial using an extreme learning machine with a radial basis function and linear kernel. This study with classification of imagined speech might contribute to the development of silent speech BCI systems. PMID:28097128

English vowel identification and vowel formant discrimination by native Mandarin Chinese- and native English-speaking listeners: The effect of vowel duration dependence.

PubMed

Mi, Lin; Tao, Sha; Wang, Wenjing; Dong, Qi; Guan, Jingjing; Liu, Chang

2016-03-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between English vowel identification and English vowel formant discrimination for native Mandarin Chinese- and native English-speaking listeners. The identification of 12 English vowels was measured with the duration cue preserved or removed. The thresholds of vowel formant discrimination on the F2 of two English vowels,/Λ/and/i/, were also estimated using an adaptive-tracking procedure. Native Mandarin Chinese-speaking listeners showed significantly higher thresholds of vowel formant discrimination and lower identification scores than native English-speaking listeners. The duration effect on English vowel identification was similar between native Mandarin Chinese- and native English-speaking listeners. Moreover, regardless of listeners' language background, vowel identification was significantly correlated with vowel formant discrimination for the listeners who were less dependent on duration cues, whereas the correlation between vowel identification and vowel formant discrimination was not significant for the listeners who were highly dependent on duration cues. This study revealed individual variability in using multiple acoustic cues to identify English vowels for both native and non-native listeners. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Degraded Vowel Acoustics and the Perceptual Consequences in Dysarthria

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lansford, Kaitlin L.

Distorted vowel production is a hallmark characteristic of dysarthric speech, irrespective of the underlying neurological condition or dysarthria diagnosis. A variety of acoustic metrics have been used to study the nature of vowel production deficits in dysarthria; however, not all demonstrate sensitivity to the exhibited deficits. Less attention has been paid to quantifying the vowel production deficits associated with the specific dysarthrias. Attempts to characterize the relationship between naturally degraded vowel production in dysarthria with overall intelligibility have met with mixed results, leading some to question the nature of this relationship. It has been suggested that aberrant vowel acoustics may be an index of overall severity of the impairment and not an "integral component" of the intelligibility deficit. A limitation of previous work detailing perceptual consequences of disordered vowel acoustics is that overall intelligibility, not vowel identification accuracy, has been the perceptual measure of interest. A series of three experiments were conducted to address the problems outlined herein. The goals of the first experiment were to identify subsets of vowel metrics that reliably distinguish speakers with dysarthria from non-disordered speakers and differentiate the dysarthria subtypes. Vowel metrics that capture vowel centralization and reduced spectral distinctiveness among vowels differentiated dysarthric from non-disordered speakers. Vowel metrics generally failed to differentiate speakers according to their dysarthria diagnosis. The second and third experiments were conducted to evaluate the relationship between degraded vowel acoustics and the resulting percept. In the second experiment, correlation and regression analyses revealed vowel metrics that capture vowel centralization and distinctiveness and movement of the second formant frequency were most predictive of vowel identification accuracy and overall intelligibility. The third experiment was conducted to evaluate the extent to which the nature of the acoustic degradation predicts the resulting percept. Results suggest distinctive vowel tokens are better identified and, likewise, better-identified tokens are more distinctive. Further, an above-chance level agreement between nature of vowel misclassification and misidentification errors was demonstrated for all vowels, suggesting degraded vowel acoustics are not merely an index of severity in dysarthria, but rather are an integral component of the resultant intelligibility disorder.

Auditory spatial attention to speech and complex non-speech sounds in children with autism spectrum disorder.

PubMed

Soskey, Laura N; Allen, Paul D; Bennetto, Loisa

2017-08-01

One of the earliest observable impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a failure to orient to speech and other social stimuli. Auditory spatial attention, a key component of orienting to sounds in the environment, has been shown to be impaired in adults with ASD. Additionally, specific deficits in orienting to social sounds could be related to increased acoustic complexity of speech. We aimed to characterize auditory spatial attention in children with ASD and neurotypical controls, and to determine the effect of auditory stimulus complexity on spatial attention. In a spatial attention task, target and distractor sounds were played randomly in rapid succession from speakers in a free-field array. Participants attended to a central or peripheral location, and were instructed to respond to target sounds at the attended location while ignoring nearby sounds. Stimulus-specific blocks evaluated spatial attention for simple non-speech tones, speech sounds (vowels), and complex non-speech sounds matched to vowels on key acoustic properties. Children with ASD had significantly more diffuse auditory spatial attention than neurotypical children when attending front, indicated by increased responding to sounds at adjacent non-target locations. No significant differences in spatial attention emerged based on stimulus complexity. Additionally, in the ASD group, more diffuse spatial attention was associated with more severe ASD symptoms but not with general inattention symptoms. Spatial attention deficits have important implications for understanding social orienting deficits and atypical attentional processes that contribute to core deficits of ASD. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1405-1416. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Temporal and acoustic characteristics of Greek vowels produced by adults with cerebral palsy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Botinis, Antonis; Orfanidou, Ioanna; Fourakis, Marios; Fourakis, Marios

2005-09-01

The present investigation examined the temporal and spectral characteristics of Greek vowels as produced by speakers with intact (NO) versus cerebral palsy affected (CP) neuromuscular systems. Six NO and six CP native speakers of Greek produced the Greek vowels [i, e, a, o, u] in the first syllable of CVCV nonsense words in a short carrier phrase. Stress could be on either the first or second syllable. There were three female and three male speakers in each group. In terms of temporal characteristics, the results showed that: vowels produced by CP speakers were longer than vowels produced by NO speakers; stressed vowels were longer than unstressed vowels; vowels produced by female speakers were longer than vowels produced by male speakers. In terms of spectral characteristics the results showed that the vowel space of the CP speakers was smaller than that of the NO speakers. This is similar to the results recently reported by Liu et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 3879-3889 (2005)] for CP speakers of Mandarin. There was also a reduction of the acoustic vowel space defined by unstressed vowels, but this reduction was much more pronounced in the vowel productions of CP speakers than NO speakers.

Children's discrimination of vowel sequences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Coady, Jeffry A.; Kluender, Keith R.; Evans, Julia

2003-10-01

Children's ability to discriminate sequences of steady-state vowels was investigated. Vowels (as in ``beet,'' ``bat,'' ``bought,'' and ``boot'') were synthesized at durations of 40, 80, 160, 320, 640, and 1280 ms. Four different vowel sequences were created by concatenating different orders of vowels for each duration, separated by 10-ms intervening silence. Thus, sequences differed in vowel order and duration (rate). Sequences were 12 s in duration, with amplitude ramped linearly over the first and last 2 s. Sequence pairs included both same (identical sequences) and different trials (sequences with vowels in different orders). Sequences with vowel of equal duration were presented on individual trials. Children aged 7;0 to 10;6 listened to pairs of sequences (with 100 ms between sequences) and responded whether sequences sounded the same or different. Results indicate that children are best able to discriminate sequences of intermediate-duration vowels, typical of conversational speaking rate. Children were less accurate with both shorter and longer vowels. Results are discussed in terms of auditory processing (shortest vowels) and memory (longest vowels). [Research supported by NIDCD DC-05263, DC-04072, and DC-005650.

The effect of reduced vowel working space on speech intelligibility in Mandarin-speaking young adults with cerebral palsy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Huei-Mei; Tsao, Feng-Ming; Kuhl, Patricia K.

2005-06-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of reduced vowel working space on dysarthric talkers' speech intelligibility using both acoustic and perceptual approaches. In experiment 1, the acoustic-perceptual relationship between vowel working space area and speech intelligibility was examined in Mandarin-speaking young adults with cerebral palsy. Subjects read aloud 18 bisyllabic words containing the vowels /eye/, /aye/, and /you/ using their normal speaking rate. Each talker's words were identified by three normal listeners. The percentage of correct vowel and word identification were calculated as vowel intelligibility and word intelligibility, respectively. Results revealed that talkers with cerebral palsy exhibited smaller vowel working space areas compared to ten age-matched controls. The vowel working space area was significantly correlated with vowel intelligibility (r=0.632, p<0.005) and with word intelligibility (r=0.684, p<0.005). Experiment 2 examined whether tokens of expanded vowel working spaces were perceived as better vowel exemplars and represented with greater perceptual spaces than tokens of reduced vowel working spaces. The results of the perceptual experiment support this prediction. The distorted vowels of talkers with cerebral palsy compose a smaller acoustic space that results in shrunken intervowel perceptual distances for listeners. .

Cross-language categorization of French and German vowels by naive American listeners.

PubMed

Strange, Winifred; Levy, Erika S; Law, Franzo F

2009-09-01

American English (AE) speakers' perceptual assimilation of 14 North German (NG) and 9 Parisian French (PF) vowels was examined in two studies using citation-form disyllables (study 1) and sentences with vowels surrounded by labial and alveolar consonants in multisyllabic nonsense words (study 2). Listeners categorized multiple tokens of each NG and PF vowel as most similar to selected AE vowels and rated their category "goodness" on a nine-point Likert scale. Front, rounded vowels were assimilated primarily to back AE vowels, despite their acoustic similarity to front AE vowels. In study 1, they were considered poorer exemplars of AE vowels than were NG and PF back, rounded vowels; in study 2, front and back, rounded vowels were perceived as similar to each other. Assimilation of some front, unrounded and back, rounded NG and PF vowels varied with language, speaking style, and consonantal context. Differences in perceived similarity often could not be predicted from context-specific cross-language spectral similarities. Results suggest that listeners can access context-specific, phonetic details when listening to citation-form materials, but assimilate non-native vowels on the basis of context-independent phonological equivalence categories when processing continuous speech. Results are interpreted within the Automatic Selective Perception model of speech perception.

Cross-language categorization of French and German vowels by naïve American listeners

PubMed Central

Strange, Winifred; Levy, Erika S.; Law, Franzo F.

2009-01-01

American English (AE) speakers’ perceptual assimilation of 14 North German (NG) and 9 Parisian French (PF) vowels was examined in two studies using citation-form disyllables (study 1) and sentences with vowels surrounded by labial and alveolar consonants in multisyllabic nonsense words (study 2). Listeners categorized multiple tokens of each NG and PF vowel as most similar to selected AE vowels and rated their category “goodness” on a nine-point Likert scale. Front, rounded vowels were assimilated primarily to back AE vowels, despite their acoustic similarity to front AE vowels. In study 1, they were considered poorer exemplars of AE vowels than were NG and PF back, rounded vowels; in study 2, front and back, rounded vowels were perceived as similar to each other. Assimilation of some front, unrounded and back, rounded NG and PF vowels varied with language, speaking style, and consonantal context. Differences in perceived similarity often could not be predicted from context-specific cross-language spectral similarities. Results suggest that listeners can access context-specific, phonetic details when listening to citation-form materials, but assimilate non-native vowels on the basis of context-independent phonological equivalence categories when processing continuous speech. Results are interpreted within the Automatic Selective Perception model of speech perception. PMID:19739759

Speaker-Sex Discrimination for Voiced and Whispered Vowels at Short Durations.

PubMed

Smith, David R R

2016-01-01

Whispered vowels, produced with no vocal fold vibration, lack the periodic temporal fine structure which in voiced vowels underlies the perceptual attribute of pitch (a salient auditory cue to speaker sex). Voiced vowels possess no temporal fine structure at very short durations (below two glottal cycles). The prediction was that speaker-sex discrimination performance for whispered and voiced vowels would be similar for very short durations but, as stimulus duration increases, voiced vowel performance would improve relative to whispered vowel performance as pitch information becomes available. This pattern of results was shown for women's but not for men's voices. A whispered vowel needs to have a duration three times longer than a voiced vowel before listeners can reliably tell whether it's spoken by a man or woman (∼30 ms vs. ∼10 ms). Listeners were half as sensitive to information about speaker-sex when it is carried by whispered compared with voiced vowels.

The influence of different native language systems on vowel discrimination and identification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kewley-Port, Diane; Bohn, Ocke-Schwen; Nishi, Kanae

2005-04-01

The ability to identify the vowel sounds of a language reliably is dependent on the ability to discriminate between vowels at a more sensory level. This study examined how the complexity of the vowel systems of three native languages (L1) influenced listeners perception of American English (AE) vowels. AE has a fairly complex vowel system with 11 monophthongs. In contrast, Japanese has only 5 spectrally different vowels, while Swedish has 9 and Danish has 12. Six listeners, with exposure of less than 4 months in English speaking environments, participated from each L1. Their performance in two tasks was compared to 6 AE listeners. As expected, there were large differences in a linguistic identification task using 4 confusable AE low vowels. Japanese listeners performed quite poorly compared to listeners with more complex L1 vowel systems. Thresholds for formant discrimination for the 3 groups were very similar to those of native AE listeners. Thus it appears that sensory abilities for discriminating vowels are only slightly affected by native vowel systems, and that vowel confusions occur at a more central, linguistic level. [Work supported by funding from NIHDCD-02229 and the American-Scandinavian Foundation.

Effect of Vowel Context on the Recognition of Initial Consonants in Kannada.

PubMed

Kalaiah, Mohan Kumar; Bhat, Jayashree S

2017-09-01

The present study was carried out to investigate the effect of vowel context on the recognition of Kannada consonants in quiet for young adults. A total of 17 young adults with normal hearing in both ears participated in the study. The stimuli included consonant-vowel syllables, spoken by 12 native speakers of Kannada. Consonant recognition task was carried out as a closed-set (fourteen-alternative forced-choice). The present study showed an effect of vowel context on the perception of consonants. Maximum consonant recognition score was obtained in the /o/ vowel context, followed by the /a/ and /u/ vowel contexts, and then the /e/ context. Poorest consonant recognition score was obtained in the vowel context /i/. Vowel context has an effect on the recognition of Kannada consonants, and the vowel effect was unique for Kannada consonants.

Speaker-Sex Discrimination for Voiced and Whispered Vowels at Short Durations

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Whispered vowels, produced with no vocal fold vibration, lack the periodic temporal fine structure which in voiced vowels underlies the perceptual attribute of pitch (a salient auditory cue to speaker sex). Voiced vowels possess no temporal fine structure at very short durations (below two glottal cycles). The prediction was that speaker-sex discrimination performance for whispered and voiced vowels would be similar for very short durations but, as stimulus duration increases, voiced vowel performance would improve relative to whispered vowel performance as pitch information becomes available. This pattern of results was shown for women’s but not for men’s voices. A whispered vowel needs to have a duration three times longer than a voiced vowel before listeners can reliably tell whether it’s spoken by a man or woman (∼30 ms vs. ∼10 ms). Listeners were half as sensitive to information about speaker-sex when it is carried by whispered compared with voiced vowels. PMID:27757218

Discrimination of synthesized English vowels by American and Korean listeners

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Byunggon

2004-05-01

This study explored the discrimination of synthesized English vowel pairs by 27 American and Korean, male and female listeners. The average formant values of nine monophthongs produced by ten American English male speakers were employed to synthesize the vowels. Then, subjects were instructed explicitly to respond to AX discrimination tasks in which the standard vowel was followed by another one with the increment or decrement of the original formant values. The highest and lowest formant values of the same vowel quality were collected and compared to examine patterns of vowel discrimination. Results showed that the American and Korean groups discriminated the vowel pairs almost identically and their center formant frequency values of the high and low boundary fell almost exactly on those of the standards. In addition, the acceptable range of the same vowel quality was similar among the language and gender groups. The acceptable thresholds of each vowel formed an oval to maintain perceptual contrast from adjacent vowels. Pedagogical implications of those findings are discussed.

Regional dialect variation in the vowel systems of typically developing children

PubMed Central

Jacewicz, Ewa; Fox, Robert Allen; Salmons, Joseph

2015-01-01

Purpose To investigate regional dialect variation in the vowel systems of normally developing 8–12 years-old children. Method Thirteen vowels in isolated h_d words were produced by 94 children and 93 adults, males and females. All participants spoke American English and were born and raised in one of three distinct dialect regions in the United States: western North Carolina (Southern dialect), central Ohio (Midland) and southeastern Wisconsin (Northern Midwestern dialect). Acoustic analysis included formant frequencies (F1 and F2) measured at five equidistant time points in a vowel and formant movement (trajectory length). Results Children’s productions showed many dialect-specific features comparable to those in adult speakers, both in terms of vowel dispersion patterns and formant movement. Different features were also found including systemic vowel changes, significant monophthongization of selected vowels and greater formant movement in diphthongs. Conclusions The acoustic results provide evidence for regional distinctiveness in children’s vowel systems. Children acquire not only the systemic relations among vowels but also their dialect-specific patterns of formant dynamics. Directing attention to the regional variation in the production of American English vowels, this work may prove helpful in better understanding and interpretation of the development of vowel categories and vowel systems in children. PMID:20966384

Contextual variation in the acoustic and perceptual similarity of North German and American English vowels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Strange, Winifred; Bohn, Ocke-Schwen; Nishi, Kanae; Trent, Sonja A.

2005-09-01

Strange et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 115, 1791-1807 (2004)] reported that North German (NG) front-rounded vowels in hVp syllables were acoustically intermediate between front and back American English (AE) vowels. However, AE listeners perceptually assimilated them as poor exemplars of back AE vowels. In this study, speaker- and context-independent cross-language discriminant analyses of NG and AE vowels produced in CVC syllables (C=labial, alveolar, velar stops) in sentences showed that NG front-rounded vowels fell within AE back-vowel distributions, due to the ``fronting'' of AE back vowels in alveolar/velar contexts. NG [smcapi, e, ɛ, openo] were located relatively ``higher'' in acoustic vowel space than their AE counterparts and varied in cross-language similarity across consonantal contexts. In a perceptual assimilation task, naive listeners classified NG vowels in terms of native AE categories and rated their goodness on a 7-point scale (very foreign to very English sounding). Both front- and back-rounded NG vowels were perceptually assimilated overwhelmingly to back AE categories and judged equally good exemplars. Perceptual assimilation patterns did not vary with context, and were not always predictable from acoustic similarity. These findings suggest that listeners adopt a context-independent strategy when judging the cross-language similarity of vowels produced and presented in continuous speech contexts.

Identification and Multiplicity of Double Vowels in Cochlear Implant Users

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kwon, Bomjun J.; Perry, Trevor T.

2014-01-01

Purpose: The present study examined cochlear implant (CI) users' perception of vowels presented concurrently (i.e., "double vowels") to further our understanding of auditory grouping in electric hearing. Method: Identification of double vowels and single vowels was measured with 10 CI subjects. Fundamental frequencies (F0s) of…

Acoustic Properties Predict Perception of Unfamiliar Dutch Vowels by Adult Australian English and Peruvian Spanish Listeners

PubMed Central

Alispahic, Samra; Mulak, Karen E.; Escudero, Paola

2017-01-01

Research suggests that the size of the second language (L2) vowel inventory relative to the native (L1) inventory may affect the discrimination and acquisition of L2 vowels. Models of non-native and L2 vowel perception stipulate that naïve listeners' non-native and L2 perceptual patterns may be predicted by the relationship in vowel inventory size between the L1 and the L2. Specifically, having a smaller L1 vowel inventory than the L2 impedes L2 vowel perception, while having a larger one often facilitates it. However, the Second Language Linguistic Perception (L2LP) model specifies that it is the L1–L2 acoustic relationships that predict non-native and L2 vowel perception, regardless of L1 vowel inventory. To test the effects of vowel inventory size vs. acoustic properties on non-native vowel perception, we compared XAB discrimination and categorization of five Dutch vowel contrasts between monolinguals whose L1 contains more (Australian English) or fewer (Peruvian Spanish) vowels than Dutch. No effect of language background was found, suggesting that L1 inventory size alone did not account for performance. Instead, participants in both language groups were more accurate in discriminating contrasts that were predicted to be perceptually easy based on L1–L2 acoustic relationships, and were less accurate for contrasts likewise predicted to be difficult. Further, cross-language discriminant analyses predicted listeners' categorization patterns which in turn predicted listeners' discrimination difficulty. Our results show that listeners with larger vowel inventories appear to activate multiple native categories as reflected in lower accuracy scores for some Dutch vowels, while listeners with a smaller vowel inventory seem to have higher accuracy scores for those same vowels. In line with the L2LP model, these findings demonstrate that L1–L2 acoustic relationships better predict non-native and L2 perceptual performance and that inventory size alone is not a good predictor for cross-language perceptual difficulties. PMID:28191001

A practical approach to Sasang constitutional diagnosis using vocal features

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Sasang constitutional medicine (SCM) is a type of tailored medicine that divides human beings into four Sasang constitutional (SC) types. Diagnosis of SC types is crucial to proper treatment in SCM. Voice characteristics have been used as an essential clue for diagnosing SC types. In the past, many studies tried to extract quantitative vocal features to make diagnosis models; however, these studies were flawed by limited data collected from one or a few sites, long recording time, and low accuracy. We propose a practical diagnosis model having only a few variables, which decreases model complexity. This in turn, makes our model appropriate for clinical applications. Methods A total of 2,341 participants’ voice recordings were used in making a SC classification model and to test the generalization ability of the model. Although the voice data consisted of five vowels and two repeated sentences per participant, we used only the sentence part for our study. A total of 21 features were extracted, and an advanced feature selection method—the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO)—was applied to reduce the number of variables for classifier learning. A SC classification model was developed using multinomial logistic regression via LASSO. Results We compared the proposed classification model to the previous study, which used both sentences and five vowels from the same patient’s group. The classification accuracies for the test set were 47.9% and 40.4% for male and female, respectively. Our result showed that the proposed method was superior to the previous study in that it required shorter voice recordings, is more applicable to practical use, and had better generalization performance. Conclusions We proposed a practical SC classification method and showed that our model having fewer variables outperformed the model having many variables in the generalization test. We attempted to reduce the number of variables in two ways: 1) the initial number of candidate features was decreased by considering shorter voice recording, and 2) LASSO was introduced for reducing model complexity. The proposed method is suitable for an actual clinical environment. Moreover, we expect it to yield more stable results because of the model’s simplicity. PMID:24200041

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

PubMed

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

2017-09-01

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

Acoustic properties of vowel production in prelingually deafened Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants

PubMed Central

Yang, Jing; Brown, Emily; Fox, Robert A.; Xu, Li

2015-01-01

The present study examined the acoustic features of vowel production in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs). The subjects included 14 native Mandarin-speaking, prelingually deafened children with CIs (2.9–8.3 yr old) and 60 age-matched, normal-hearing (NH) children (3.1–9.0 years old). Each subject produced a list of monosyllables containing seven Mandarin vowels: [i, a, u, y, ɤ, ʅ, ɿ]. Midpoint F1 and F2 of each vowel token were extracted and normalized to eliminate the effects of different vocal tract sizes. Results showed that the CI children produced significantly longer vowels and less compact vowel categories than the NH children did. The CI children's acoustic vowel space was reduced due to a retracted production of the vowel [i]. The vowel space area showed a strong negative correlation with age at implantation (r = −0.80). The analysis of acoustic distance showed that the CI children produced corner vowels [a, u] similarly to the NH children, but other vowels (e.g., [ʅ, ɿ]) differently from the NH children, which suggests that CI children generally follow a similar developmental path of vowel acquisition as NH children. These findings highlight the importance of early implantation and have implications in clinical aural habilitation in young children with CIs. PMID:26627755

Contextual variation in the acoustic and perceptual similarity of North German and American English vowels.

PubMed

Strange, Winifred; Bohn, Ocke-Schwen; Nishi, Kanae; Trent, Sonja A

2005-09-01

Strange et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 115, 1791-1807 (2004)] reported that North German (NG) front-rounded vowels in hVp syllables were acoustically intermediate between front and back American English (AE) vowels. However, AE listeners perceptually assimilated them as poor exemplars of back AE vowels. In this study, speaker- and context-independent cross-language discriminant analyses of NG and AE vowels produced in CVC syllables (C=labial, alveolar, velar stops) in sentences showed that NG front-rounded vowels fell within AE back-vowel distributions, due to the "fronting" of AE back vowels in alveolar/velar contexts. NG [I, e, epsilon, inverted c] were located relatively "higher" in acoustic vowel space than their AE counterparts and varied in cross-language similarity across consonantal contexts. In a perceptual assimilation task, naive listeners classified NG vowels in terms of native AE categories and rated their goodness on a 7-point scale (very foreign to very English sounding). Both front- and back-rounded NG vowels were perceptually assimilated overwhelmingly to back AE categories and judged equally good exemplars. Perceptual assimilation patterns did not vary with context, and were not always predictable from acoustic similarity. These findings suggest that listeners adopt a context-independent strategy when judging the cross-language similarity of vowels produced and presented in continuous speech contexts.

Malaysian English: An Instrumental Analysis of Vowel Contrasts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pillai, Stefanie; Don, Zuraidah Mohd.; Knowles, Gerald; Tang, Jennifer

2010-01-01

This paper makes an instrumental analysis of English vowel monophthongs produced by 47 female Malaysian speakers. The focus is on the distribution of Malaysian English vowels in the vowel space, and the extent to which there is phonetic contrast between traditionally paired vowels. The results indicate that, like neighbouring varieties of English,…

Perception of Vowel Length by Japanese- and English-Learning Infants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mugitani, Ryoko; Pons, Ferran; Fais, Laurel; Dietrich, Christiane; Werker, Janet F.; Amano, Shigeaki

2009-01-01

This study investigated vowel length discrimination in infants from 2 language backgrounds, Japanese and English, in which vowel length is either phonemic or nonphonemic. Experiment 1 revealed that English 18-month-olds discriminate short and long vowels although vowel length is not phonemically contrastive in English. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed…

Acoustic and Durational Properties of Indian English Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maxwell, Olga; Fletcher, Janet

2009-01-01

This paper presents findings of an acoustic phonetic analysis of vowels produced by speakers of English as a second language from northern India. The monophthongal vowel productions of a group of male speakers of Hindi and male speakers of Punjabi were recorded, and acoustic phonetic analyses of vowel formant frequencies and vowel duration were…

Acoustic characteristics of the vowel systems of six regional varieties of American English

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Clopper, Cynthia G.; Pisoni, David B.; de Jong, Kenneth

2005-09-01

Previous research by speech scientists on the acoustic characteristics of American English vowel systems has typically focused on a single regional variety, despite decades of sociolinguistic research demonstrating the extent of regional phonological variation in the United States. In the present study, acoustic measures of duration and first and second formant frequencies were obtained from five repetitions of 11 different vowels produced by 48 talkers representing both genders and six regional varieties of American English. Results revealed consistent variation due to region of origin, particularly with respect to the production of low vowels and high back vowels. The Northern talkers produced shifted low vowels consistent with the Northern Cities Chain Shift, the Southern talkers produced fronted back vowels consistent with the Southern Vowel Shift, and the New England, Midland, and Western talkers produced the low back vowel merger. These findings indicate that the vowel systems of American English are better characterized in terms of the region of origin of the talkers than in terms of a single set of idealized acoustic-phonetic baselines of ``General'' American English and provide benchmark data for six regional varieties.

Dynamic spectral structure specifies vowels for children and adultsa

PubMed Central

Nittrouer, Susan

2008-01-01

When it comes to making decisions regarding vowel quality, adults seem to weight dynamic syllable structure more strongly than static structure, although disagreement exists over the nature of the most relevant kind of dynamic structure: spectral change intrinsic to the vowel or structure arising from movements between consonant and vowel constrictions. Results have been even less clear regarding the signal components children use in making vowel judgments. In this experiment, listeners of four different ages (adults, and 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old children) were asked to label stimuli that sounded either like steady-state vowels or like CVC syllables which sometimes had middle sections masked by coughs. Four vowel contrasts were used, crossed for type (front/back or closed/open) and consonant context (strongly or only slightly constraining of vowel tongue position). All listeners recognized vowel quality with high levels of accuracy in all conditions, but children were disproportionately hampered by strong coarticulatory effects when only steady-state formants were available. Results clarified past studies, showing that dynamic structure is critical to vowel perception for all aged listeners, but particularly for young children, and that it is the dynamic structure arising from vocal-tract movement between consonant and vowel constrictions that is most important. PMID:17902868

Colloquial Arabic vowels in Israel: a comparative acoustic study of two dialects.

PubMed

Amir, Noam; Amir, Ofer; Rosenhouse, Judith

2014-10-01

This study explores the acoustic properties of the vowel systems of two dialects of colloquial Arabic spoken in Israel. One dialect is spoken in the Galilee region in the north of Israel, and the other is spoken in the Triangle (Muthallath) region, in central Israel. These vowel systems have five short and five long vowels /i, i:, e, e:, a, a:, o, o:, u, u:/. Twenty men and twenty women from each region were included, uttering 30 vowels each. All speakers were adult Muslim native speakers of these two dialects. The studied vowels were uttered in non-pharyngeal and non-laryngeal environments in the context of CVC words, embedded in a carrier sentence. The acoustic parameters studied were the two first formants, F0, and duration. Results revealed that long vowels were approximately twice as long as short vowels and differed also in their formant values. The two dialects diverged mainly in the short vowels rather than in the long ones. An overlap was found between the two short vowel pairs /i/-/e/ and /u/-/o/. This study demonstrates the existence of dialectal differences in the colloquial Arabic vowel systems, underlining the need for further research into the numerous additional dialects found in the region.

Cross-dialectal variation in formant dynamics of American English vowels

PubMed Central

Fox, Robert Allen; Jacewicz, Ewa

2009-01-01

This study aims to characterize the nature of the dynamic spectral change in vowels in three distinct regional varieties of American English spoken in the Western North Carolina, in Central Ohio, and in Southern Wisconsin. The vowels ∕ɪ, ε, e, æ, aɪ∕ were produced by 48 women for a total of 1920 utterances and were contained in words of the structure ∕bVts∕ and ∕bVdz∕ in sentences which elicited nonemphatic and emphatic vowels. Measurements made at the vowel target (i.e., the central 60% of the vowel) produced a set of acoustic parameters which included position and movement in the F1 by F2 space, vowel duration, amount of spectral change [measured as vector length (VL) and trajectory length (TL)], and spectral rate of change. Results revealed expected variation in formant dynamics as a function of phonetic factors (vowel emphasis and consonantal context). However, for each vowel and for each measure employed, dialect was a strong source of variation in vowel-inherent spectral change. In general, the dialect-specific nature and amount of spectral change can be characterized quite effectively by position and movement in the F1 by F2 space, vowel duration, TL (but not VL which underestimates formant movement), and spectral rate of change. PMID:19894839

Stress Effects in Vowel Perception as a Function of Language-Specific Vocabulary Patterns.

PubMed

Warner, Natasha; Cutler, Anne

2017-01-01

Evidence from spoken word recognition suggests that for English listeners, distinguishing full versus reduced vowels is important, but discerning stress differences involving the same full vowel (as in mu- from music or museum) is not. In Dutch, in contrast, the latter distinction is important. This difference arises from the relative frequency of unstressed full vowels in the two vocabularies. The goal of this paper is to determine how this difference in the lexicon influences the perception of stressed versus unstressed vowels. All possible sequences of two segments (diphones) in Dutch and in English were presented to native listeners in gated fragments. We recorded identification performance over time throughout the speech signal. The data were here analysed specifically for patterns in perception of stressed versus unstressed vowels. The data reveal significantly larger stress effects (whereby unstressed vowels are harder to identify than stressed vowels) in English than in Dutch. Both language-specific and shared patterns appear regarding which vowels show stress effects. We explain the larger stress effect in English as reflecting the processing demands caused by the difference in use of unstressed vowels in the lexicon. The larger stress effect in English is due to relative inexperience with processing unstressed full vowels. © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel.

The Vowel Harmony in the Sinhala Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Petryshyn, Ivan

2005-01-01

The Sinhala language is characterized by the melodic shifty stress or its essence, the opposition between long and short vowels, the Ablaut variants of the vowels and the syllabic alphabet which, of course, might impact the vowel harmony and can be a feature of all the leveled Indo-European languages. The vowel harmony is a well-known concept in…

An EMA/EPG Study of Vowel-to-Vowel Articulation across Velars in Southern British English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fletcher, Janet

2004-01-01

Recent studies have attested that the extent of transconsonantal vowel-to-vowel coarticulation is at least partly dependent on degree of prosodic accentuation, in languages like English. A further important factor is the mutual compatibility of consonant and vowel gestures associated with the segments in question. In this study two speakers of…

Pre-attentive sensitivity to vowel duration reveals native phonology and predicts learning of second-language sounds.

PubMed

Chládková, Kateřina; Escudero, Paola; Lipski, Silvia C

2013-09-01

In some languages (e.g. Czech), changes in vowel duration affect word meaning, while in others (e.g. Spanish) they do not. Yet for other languages (e.g. Dutch), the linguistic role of vowel duration remains unclear. To reveal whether Dutch represents vowel length in its phonology, we compared auditory pre-attentive duration processing in native and non-native vowels across Dutch, Czech, and Spanish. Dutch duration sensitivity patterned with Czech but was larger than Spanish in the native vowel, while it was smaller than Czech and Spanish in the non-native vowel. An interpretation of these findings suggests that in Dutch, duration is used phonemically but it might be relevant for the identity of certain native vowels only. Furthermore, the finding that Spanish listeners are more sensitive to duration in non-native than in native vowels indicates that a lack of duration differences in one's native language could be beneficial for second-language learning. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effect of Vowel Identity and Onset Asynchrony on Concurrent Vowel Identification

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hedrick, Mark S.; Madix, Steven G.

2009-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to determine the effects of vowel identity and temporal onset asynchrony on identification of vowels overlapped in time. Method: Fourteen listeners with normal hearing, with a mean age of 24 years, participated. The listeners were asked to identify both of a pair of 200-ms vowels (referred to as…

We're Not in Kansas Anymore: The TOTO Strategy for Decoding Vowel Pairs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meese, Ruth Lyn

2016-01-01

Vowel teams such as vowel digraphs present a challenge to struggling readers. Some researchers assert that phonics generalizations such as the "two vowels go walking and the first one does the talking" rule do not hold often enough to be reliable for children. Others suggest that some vowel teams are highly regular and that children can…

The Spelling of Vowels Is Influenced by Australian and British English Dialect Differences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kemp, Nenagh

2009-01-01

Two experiments examined the influence of dialect on the spelling of vowel sounds. British and Australian children (6 to 8 years) and university students wrote words whose unstressed vowel sound is spelled i or e and pronounced /I/ or /schwa/. Participants often (mis)spelled these vowel sounds as they pronounced them. When vowels were pronounced…

The Developmental Process of Vowel Integration as Found in Children in Grades 1-3.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bentz, Darrell; Szymczuk, Mike

A study was designed to investigate the auditory-visual integrative abilities of primary grade children for five long vowels and five short vowels. The Vowel Integration Test (VIT), composed of 35 nonsense words having all the long and short vowel sounds, was administered to students in 64 schools over a period of two years. Students' indications…

Acoustic characteristics of the vowel systems of six regional varieties of American English

PubMed Central

Clopper, Cynthia G.; Pisoni, David B.; de Jong, Kenneth

2012-01-01

Previous research by speech scientists on the acoustic characteristics of American English vowel systems has typically focused on a single regional variety, despite decades of sociolinguistic research demonstrating the extent of regional phonological variation in the United States. In the present study, acoustic measures of duration and first and second formant frequencies were obtained from five repetitions of 11 different vowels produced by 48 talkers representing both genders and six regional varieties of American English. Results revealed consistent variation due to region of origin, particularly with respect to the production of low vowels and high back vowels. The Northern talkers produced shifted low vowels consistent with the Northern Cities Chain Shift, the Southern talkers produced fronted back vowels consistent with the Southern Vowel Shift, and the New England, Midland, and Western talkers produced the low back vowel merger. These findings indicate that the vowel systems of American English are better characterized in terms of the region of origin of the talkers than in terms of a single set of idealized acoustic-phonetic baselines of “General” American English and provide benchmark data for six regional varieties. PMID:16240825

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.

Are vowel errors influenced by consonantal context in the speech of persons with aphasia?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gelfer, Carole E.; Bell-Berti, Fredericka; Boyle, Mary

2004-05-01

The literature suggests that vowels and consonants may be affected differently in the speech of persons with conduction aphasia (CA) or nonfluent aphasia with apraxia of speech (AOS). Persons with CA have shown similar error rates across vowels and consonants, while those with AOS have shown more errors for consonants than vowels. These data have been interpreted to suggest that consonants have greater gestural complexity than vowels. However, recent research [M. Boyle et al., Proc. International Cong. Phon. Sci., 3265-3268 (2003)] does not support this interpretation: persons with AOS and CA both had a high proportion of vowel errors, and vowel errors almost always occurred in the context of consonantal errors. To examine the notion that vowels are inherently less complex than consonants and are differentially affected in different types of aphasia, vowel production in different consonantal contexts for speakers with AOS or CA was examined. The target utterances, produced in carrier phrases, were bVC and bV syllables, allowing us to examine whether vowel production is influenced by consonantal context. Listener judgments were obtained for each token, and error productions were grouped according to the intended utterance and error type. Acoustical measurements were made from spectrographic displays.

LEARNING NONADJACENT DEPENDENCIES IN PHONOLOGY: TRANSPARENT VOWELS IN VOWEL HARMONY

PubMed Central

Finley, Sara

2015-01-01

Nonadjacent dependencies are an important part of the structure of language. While the majority of syntactic and phonological processes occur at a local domain, there are several processes that appear to apply at a distance, posing a challenge for theories of linguistic structure. This article addresses one of the most common nonadjacent phenomena in phonology: transparent vowels in vowel harmony. Vowel harmony occurs when adjacent vowels are required to share the same phonological feature value (e.g. V+F C V+F). However, transparent vowels create a second-order nonadjacent pattern because agreement between two vowels can ‘skip’ the transparent neutral vowel in addition to consonants (e.g. V+F C VT−F C V+F). Adults are shown to display initial learning biases against second-order nonadjacency in experiments that use an artificial grammar learning paradigm. Experiments 1–3 show that adult learners fail to learn the second-order long-distance dependency created by the transparent vowel (as compared to a control condition). In experiments 4–5, training in terms of overall exposure as well as the frequency of relevant transparent items was increased. With adequate exposure, learners reliably generalize to novel words containing transparent vowels. The experiments suggest that learners are sensitive to the structure of phonological representations, even when learning occurs at a relatively rapid pace.* PMID:26146423

Examining Acoustic and Kinematic Measures of Articulatory Working Space: Effects of Speech Intensity.

PubMed

Whitfield, Jason A; Dromey, Christopher; Palmer, Panika

2018-05-17

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of speech intensity on acoustic and kinematic vowel space measures and conduct a preliminary examination of the relationship between kinematic and acoustic vowel space metrics calculated from continuously sampled lingual marker and formant traces. Young adult speakers produced 3 repetitions of 2 different sentences at 3 different loudness levels. Lingual kinematic and acoustic signals were collected and analyzed. Acoustic and kinematic variants of several vowel space metrics were calculated from the formant frequencies and the position of 2 lingual markers. Traditional metrics included triangular vowel space area and the vowel articulation index. Acoustic and kinematic variants of sentence-level metrics based on the articulatory-acoustic vowel space and the vowel space hull area were also calculated. Both acoustic and kinematic variants of the sentence-level metrics significantly increased with an increase in loudness, whereas no statistically significant differences in traditional vowel-point metrics were observed for either the kinematic or acoustic variants across the 3 loudness conditions. In addition, moderate-to-strong relationships between the acoustic and kinematic variants of the sentence-level vowel space metrics were observed for the majority of participants. These data suggest that both kinematic and acoustic vowel space metrics that reflect the dynamic contributions of both consonant and vowel segments are sensitive to within-speaker changes in articulation associated with manipulations of speech intensity.

Embedded Vowels: Remedying the Problems Arising out of Embedded Vowels in the English Writings of Arab Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Khan, Mohamed Fazlulla

2013-01-01

L1 habits often tend to interfere with the process of learning a second language. The vowel habits of Arab learners of English are one such interference. Arabic orthography is such that certain vowels indicated by diacritics are often omitted, since an experienced reader of Arabic knows, by habit, the exact vowel sound in each phonetic…

Synthesis fidelity and time-varying spectral change in vowels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Assmann, Peter F.; Katz, William F.

2005-02-01

Recent studies have shown that synthesized versions of American English vowels are less accurately identified when the natural time-varying spectral changes are eliminated by holding the formant frequencies constant over the duration of the vowel. A limitation of these experiments has been that vowels produced by formant synthesis are generally less accurately identified than the natural vowels after which they are modeled. To overcome this limitation, a high-quality speech analysis-synthesis system (STRAIGHT) was used to synthesize versions of 12 American English vowels spoken by adults and children. Vowels synthesized with STRAIGHT were identified as accurately as the natural versions, in contrast with previous results from our laboratory showing identification rates 9%-12% lower for the same vowels synthesized using the cascade formant model. Consistent with earlier studies, identification accuracy was not reduced when the fundamental frequency was held constant across the vowel. However, elimination of time-varying changes in the spectral envelope using STRAIGHT led to a greater reduction in accuracy (23%) than was previously found with cascade formant synthesis (11%). A statistical pattern recognition model, applied to acoustic measurements of the natural and synthesized vowels, predicted both the higher identification accuracy for vowels synthesized using STRAIGHT compared to formant synthesis, and the greater effects of holding the formant frequencies constant over time with STRAIGHT synthesis. Taken together, the experiment and modeling results suggest that formant estimation errors and incorrect rendering of spectral and temporal cues by cascade formant synthesis contribute to lower identification accuracy and underestimation of the role of time-varying spectral change in vowels. .

A comparison of vowel normalization procedures for language variation research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Adank, Patti; Smits, Roel; van Hout, Roeland

2004-11-01

An evaluation of vowel normalization procedures for the purpose of studying language variation is presented. The procedures were compared on how effectively they (a) preserve phonemic information, (b) preserve information about the talker's regional background (or sociolinguistic information), and (c) minimize anatomical/physiological variation in acoustic representations of vowels. Recordings were made for 80 female talkers and 80 male talkers of Dutch. These talkers were stratified according to their gender and regional background. The normalization procedures were applied to measurements of the fundamental frequency and the first three formant frequencies for a large set of vowel tokens. The normalization procedures were evaluated through statistical pattern analysis. The results show that normalization procedures that use information across multiple vowels (``vowel-extrinsic'' information) to normalize a single vowel token performed better than those that include only information contained in the vowel token itself (``vowel-intrinsic'' information). Furthermore, the results show that normalization procedures that operate on individual formants performed better than those that use information across multiple formants (e.g., ``formant-extrinsic'' F2-F1). .

A comparison of vowel normalization procedures for language variation research.

PubMed

Adank, Patti; Smits, Roel; van Hout, Roeland

2004-11-01

An evaluation of vowel normalization procedures for the purpose of studying language variation is presented. The procedures were compared on how effectively they (a) preserve phonemic information, (b) preserve information about the talker's regional background (or sociolinguistic information), and (c) minimize anatomical/physiological variation in acoustic representations of vowels. Recordings were made for 80 female talkers and 80 male talkers of Dutch. These talkers were stratified according to their gender and regional background. The normalization procedures were applied to measurements of the fundamental frequency and the first three formant frequencies for a large set of vowel tokens. The normalization procedures were evaluated through statistical pattern analysis. The results show that normalization procedures that use information across multiple vowels ("vowel-extrinsic" information) to normalize a single vowel token performed better than those that include only information contained in the vowel token itself ("vowel-intrinsic" information). Furthermore, the results show that normalization procedures that operate on individual formants performed better than those that use information across multiple formants (e.g., "formant-extrinsic" F2-F1).

Orientation selectivity based structure for texture classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Jinjian; Lin, Weisi; Shi, Guangming; Zhang, Yazhong; Lu, Liu

2014-10-01

Local structure, e.g., local binary pattern (LBP), is widely used in texture classification. However, LBP is too sensitive to disturbance. In this paper, we introduce a novel structure for texture classification. Researches on cognitive neuroscience indicate that the primary visual cortex presents remarkable orientation selectivity for visual information extraction. Inspired by this, we investigate the orientation similarities among neighbor pixels, and propose an orientation selectivity based pattern for local structure description. Experimental results on texture classification demonstrate that the proposed structure descriptor is quite robust to disturbance.

Acoustic Analysis of Nasal Vowels in Monguor Language

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Hanbin

2017-09-01

The purpose of the study is to analyze the spectrum characteristics and acoustic features for the nasal vowels [ɑ˜] and [ɔ˜] in Monguor language. On the base of acoustic parameter database of the Monguor speech, the study finds out that there are five main zero-pole pairs appearing for the nasal vowel [ɔ˜] and two zero-pole pairs appear for the nasal vowel [ɔ˜]. The results of regression analysis demonstrate that the duration of the nasal vowel [ɔ˜] or the nasal vowel [ɔ˜] can be predicted by its F1, F2 and F3 respectively.

Importance of envelope modulations during consonants and vowels in segmentally interrupted sentencesa)

PubMed Central

Fogerty, Daniel

2014-01-01

The present study investigated the importance of overall segment amplitude and intrinsic segment amplitude modulation of consonants and vowels to sentence intelligibility. Sentences were processed according to three conditions that replaced consonant or vowel segments with noise matched to the long-term average speech spectrum. Segments were replaced with (1) low-level noise that distorted the overall sentence envelope, (2) segment-level noise that restored the overall syllabic amplitude modulation of the sentence, and (3) segment-modulated noise that further restored faster temporal envelope modulations during the vowel. Results from the first experiment demonstrated an incremental benefit with increasing resolution of the vowel temporal envelope. However, amplitude modulations of replaced consonant segments had a comparatively minimal effect on overall sentence intelligibility scores. A second experiment selectively noise-masked preserved vowel segments in order to equate overall performance of consonant-replaced sentences to that of the vowel-replaced sentences. Results demonstrated no significant effect of restoring consonant modulations during the interrupting noise when existing vowel cues were degraded. A third experiment demonstrated greater perceived sentence continuity with the preservation or addition of vowel envelope modulations. Overall, results support previous investigations demonstrating the importance of vowel envelope modulations to the intelligibility of interrupted sentences. PMID:24606291

Perceptual invariance of coarticulated vowels over variations in speaking rate.

PubMed

Stack, Janet W; Strange, Winifred; Jenkins, James J; Clarke, William D; Trent, Sonja A

2006-04-01

This study examined the perception and acoustics of a large corpus of vowels spoken in consonant-vowel-consonant syllables produced in citation-form (lists) and spoken in sentences at normal and rapid rates by a female adult. Listeners correctly categorized the speaking rate of sentence materials as normal or rapid (2% errors) but did not accurately classify the speaking rate of the syllables when they were excised from the sentences (25% errors). In contrast, listeners accurately identified the vowels produced in sentences spoken at both rates when presented the sentences and when presented the excised syllables blocked by speaking rate or randomized. Acoustical analysis showed that formant frequencies at syllable midpoint for vowels in sentence materials showed "target undershoot" relative to citation-form values, but little change over speech rate. Syllable durations varied systematically with vowel identity, speaking rate, and voicing of final consonant. Vowel-inherent-spectral-change was invariant in direction of change over rate and context for most vowels. The temporal location of maximum F1 frequency further differentiated spectrally adjacent lax and tense vowels. It was concluded that listeners were able to utilize these rate- and context-independent dynamic spectrotemporal parameters to identify coarticulated vowels, even when sentential information about speaking rate was not available.

Neural Representation of Concurrent Vowels in Macaque Primary Auditory Cortex123

PubMed Central

Micheyl, Christophe; Steinschneider, Mitchell

2016-01-01

Abstract Successful speech perception in real-world environments requires that the auditory system segregate competing voices that overlap in frequency and time into separate streams. Vowels are major constituents of speech and are comprised of frequencies (harmonics) that are integer multiples of a common fundamental frequency (F0). The pitch and identity of a vowel are determined by its F0 and spectral envelope (formant structure), respectively. When two spectrally overlapping vowels differing in F0 are presented concurrently, they can be readily perceived as two separate “auditory objects” with pitches at their respective F0s. A difference in pitch between two simultaneous vowels provides a powerful cue for their segregation, which in turn, facilitates their individual identification. The neural mechanisms underlying the segregation of concurrent vowels based on pitch differences are poorly understood. Here, we examine neural population responses in macaque primary auditory cortex (A1) to single and double concurrent vowels (/a/ and /i/) that differ in F0 such that they are heard as two separate auditory objects with distinct pitches. We find that neural population responses in A1 can resolve, via a rate-place code, lower harmonics of both single and double concurrent vowels. Furthermore, we show that the formant structures, and hence the identities, of single vowels can be reliably recovered from the neural representation of double concurrent vowels. We conclude that A1 contains sufficient spectral information to enable concurrent vowel segregation and identification by downstream cortical areas. PMID:27294198

Vowel Deletion in Latvian.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karins, A. Krisjanis

1995-01-01

Investigates variable deletion of short vowels in word-final unstressed syllables in Latvian spoken in Riga. Affected vowels were almost always inflectional endings and results indicated that internal phonological and prosodic factors (especially distance from main word stress) were the strongest constraints on vowel deletion, along with the…

Dissociation of tone and vowel processing in Mandarin idioms.

PubMed

Hu, Jiehui; Gao, Shan; Ma, Weiyi; Yao, Dezhong

2012-09-01

Using event-related potentials, this study measured the access of suprasegmental (tone) and segmental (vowel) information in spoken word recognition with Mandarin idioms. Participants performed a delayed-response acceptability task, in which they judged the correctness of the last word of each idiom, which might deviate from the correct word in either tone or vowel. Results showed that, compared with the correct idioms, a larger early negativity appeared only for vowel violation. Additionally, a larger N400 effect was observed for vowel mismatch than tone mismatch. A control experiment revealed that these differences were not due to low-level physical differences across conditions; instead, they represented the greater constraining power of vowels than tones in the lexical selection and semantic integration of the spoken words. Furthermore, tone violation elicited a more robust late positive component than vowel violation, suggesting different reanalyses of the two types of information. In summary, the current results support a functional dissociation of tone and vowel processing in spoken word recognition. Copyright © 2012 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Call me Alix, not Elix: vowels are more important than consonants in own-name recognition at 5 months.

PubMed

Bouchon, Camillia; Floccia, Caroline; Fux, Thibaut; Adda-Decker, Martine; Nazzi, Thierry

2015-07-01

Consonants and vowels differ acoustically and articulatorily, but also functionally: Consonants are more relevant for lexical processing, and vowels for prosodic/syntactic processing. These functional biases could be powerful bootstrapping mechanisms for learning language, but their developmental origin remains unclear. The relative importance of consonants and vowels at the onset of lexical acquisition was assessed in French-learning 5-month-olds by testing sensitivity to minimal phonetic changes in their own name. Infants' reactions to mispronunciations revealed sensitivity to vowel but not consonant changes. Vowels were also more salient (on duration and intensity) but less distinct (on spectrally based measures) than consonants. Lastly, vowel (but not consonant) mispronunciation detection was modulated by acoustic factors, in particular spectrally based distance. These results establish that consonant changes do not affect lexical recognition at 5 months, while vowel changes do; the consonant bias observed later in development does not emerge until after 5 months through additional language exposure. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Vowel reduction in word-final position by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals.

PubMed

Byers, Emily; Yavas, Mehmet

2017-01-01

Vowel reduction is a prominent feature of American English, as well as other stress-timed languages. As a phonological process, vowel reduction neutralizes multiple vowel quality contrasts in unstressed syllables. For bilinguals whose native language is not characterized by large spectral and durational differences between tonic and atonic vowels, systematically reducing unstressed vowels to the central vowel space can be problematic. Failure to maintain this pattern of stressed-unstressed syllables in American English is one key element that contributes to a "foreign accent" in second language speakers. Reduced vowels, or "schwas," have also been identified as particularly vulnerable to the co-articulatory effects of adjacent consonants. The current study examined the effects of adjacent sounds on the spectral and temporal qualities of schwa in word-final position. Three groups of English-speaking adults were tested: Miami-based monolingual English speakers, early Spanish-English bilinguals, and late Spanish-English bilinguals. Subjects performed a reading task to examine their schwa productions in fluent speech when schwas were preceded by consonants from various points of articulation. Results indicated that monolingual English and late Spanish-English bilingual groups produced targeted vowel qualities for schwa, whereas early Spanish-English bilinguals lacked homogeneity in their vowel productions. This extends prior claims that schwa is targetless for F2 position for native speakers to highly-proficient bilingual speakers. Though spectral qualities lacked homogeneity for early Spanish-English bilinguals, early bilinguals produced schwas with near native-like vowel duration. In contrast, late bilinguals produced schwas with significantly longer durations than English monolinguals or early Spanish-English bilinguals. Our results suggest that the temporal properties of a language are better integrated into second language phonologies than spectral qualities. Finally, we examined the role of nonstructural variables (e.g. linguistic history measures) in predicting native-like vowel duration. These factors included: Age of L2 learning, amount of L1 use, and self-reported bilingual dominance. Our results suggested that different sociolinguistic factors predicted native-like reduced vowel duration than predicted native-like vowel qualities across multiple phonetic environments.

Vowel reduction in word-final position by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Vowel reduction is a prominent feature of American English, as well as other stress-timed languages. As a phonological process, vowel reduction neutralizes multiple vowel quality contrasts in unstressed syllables. For bilinguals whose native language is not characterized by large spectral and durational differences between tonic and atonic vowels, systematically reducing unstressed vowels to the central vowel space can be problematic. Failure to maintain this pattern of stressed-unstressed syllables in American English is one key element that contributes to a “foreign accent” in second language speakers. Reduced vowels, or “schwas,” have also been identified as particularly vulnerable to the co-articulatory effects of adjacent consonants. The current study examined the effects of adjacent sounds on the spectral and temporal qualities of schwa in word-final position. Three groups of English-speaking adults were tested: Miami-based monolingual English speakers, early Spanish-English bilinguals, and late Spanish-English bilinguals. Subjects performed a reading task to examine their schwa productions in fluent speech when schwas were preceded by consonants from various points of articulation. Results indicated that monolingual English and late Spanish-English bilingual groups produced targeted vowel qualities for schwa, whereas early Spanish-English bilinguals lacked homogeneity in their vowel productions. This extends prior claims that schwa is targetless for F2 position for native speakers to highly-proficient bilingual speakers. Though spectral qualities lacked homogeneity for early Spanish-English bilinguals, early bilinguals produced schwas with near native-like vowel duration. In contrast, late bilinguals produced schwas with significantly longer durations than English monolinguals or early Spanish-English bilinguals. Our results suggest that the temporal properties of a language are better integrated into second language phonologies than spectral qualities. Finally, we examined the role of nonstructural variables (e.g. linguistic history measures) in predicting native-like vowel duration. These factors included: Age of L2 learning, amount of L1 use, and self-reported bilingual dominance. Our results suggested that different sociolinguistic factors predicted native-like reduced vowel duration than predicted native-like vowel qualities across multiple phonetic environments. PMID:28384234

Perceptual integration of acoustic cues to laryngeal contrasts in Korean fricatives.

PubMed

Lee, Sarah; Katz, Jonah

2016-02-01

This paper provides evidence that multiple acoustic cues involving the presence of low-frequency energy integrate in the perception of Korean coronal fricatives. This finding helps explain a surprising asymmetry between the production and perception of these fricatives found in previous studies: lower F0 onset in the following vowel leads to a response bias for plain [s] over fortis [s*], despite the fact that there is no evidence for a corresponding acoustic asymmetry in the production of [s] and [s*]. A fixed classification task using the Garner paradigm provides evidence that low F0 in a following vowel and the presence of voicing during frication perceptually integrate. This suggests that Korean listeners in previous experiments were responding to an "intermediate perceptual property" of stimuli, despite the fact that the individual acoustic components of that property are not all present in typical Korean fricative productions. The finding also broadens empirical support for the general idea of perceptual integration to a language, a different manner of consonant, and a situation where covariance of the acoustic cues under investigation is not generally present in a listener's linguistic input.

Morphometric Differences of Vocal Tract Articulators in Different Loudness Conditions in Singing.

PubMed

Echternach, Matthias; Burk, Fabian; Burdumy, Michael; Traser, Louisa; Richter, Bernhard

2016-01-01

Dynamic MRI analysis of phonation has gathered interest in voice and speech physiology. However, there are limited data addressing the extent to which articulation is dependent on loudness. 12 professional singer subjects of different voice classifications were analysed concerning the vocal tract profiles recorded with dynamic real-time MRI with 25fps in different pitch and loudness conditions. The subjects were asked to sing ascending scales on the vowel /a/ in three loudness conditions (comfortable=mf, very soft=pp, very loud=ff, respectively). Furthermore, fundamental frequency and sound pressure level were analysed from the simultaneously recorded optical audio signal after noise cancellation. The data show articulatory differences with respect to changes of both pitch and loudness. Here, lip opening and pharynx width were increased. While the vertical larynx position was rising with pitch it was lower for greater loudness. Especially, the lip opening and pharynx width were more strongly correlated with the sound pressure level than with pitch. For the vowel /a/ loudness has an effect on articulation during singing which should be considered when articulatory vocal tract data are interpreted.

Identification and discrimination of Spanish front vowels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Castellanos, Isabel; Lopez-Bascuas, Luis E.

2004-05-01

The idea that vowels are perceived less categorically than consonants is widely accepted. Ades [Psychol. Rev. 84, 524-530 (1977)] tried to explain this fact on the basis of the Durlach and Braida [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 46, 372-383 (1969)] theory of intensity resolution. Since vowels seem to cover a broader perceptual range, context-coding noise for vowels should be greater than for consonants leading to a less categorical performance on the vocalic segments. However, relatively recent work by Macmillan et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 84, 1262-1280 (1988)] has cast doubt on the assumption of different perceptual ranges for vowels and consonants even though context variance is acknowledged to be greater for the former. A possibility is that context variance increases as number of long-term phonemic categories also increases. To test this hypothesis we focused on Spanish as the target language. Spanish has less vowel categories than English and the implication is that Spanish vowels will be more categorically perceived. Identification and discrimination experiments were conducted on a synthetic /i/-/e/ continuum and the obtained functions were studied to assess whether Spanish vowels are more categorically perceived than English vowels. The results are discussed in the context of different theories of speech perception.

Adult perceptions of phonotactic violations in Japanese

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fais, Laurel; Kajikawa, Sachiyo; Werker, Janet; Amano, Shigeaki

2004-05-01

Adult Japanese speakers ``hear'' epenthetic vowels in productions of Japanese-like words that violate the canonical CVCVCV form by containing internal consonant clusters (CVCCV) [Dupoux et al., J. Exp. Psychol. 25, 1568-1578 (1999)]. Given this finding, this research examined how Japanese adults rated the goodness of Japanese-like words produced without a vowel in the final syllable (CVC), and words produced without vowels in the penultimate and final syllables (CVCC). Furthermore, in some of these contexts, voiceless vowels may appear in fluent, casual Japanese productions, especially in the Kanto dialect, and in some, such voiceless vowels may not appear. Results indicate that both Kanto and Kinki speakers rated CVC productions for contexts in which voiceless vowels are not allowed as the worst; they rated CVC and CVCC contexts in which voiceless vowel productions are allowed as better. In these latter contexts, the CVC words, which result from the loss of one, final, vowel, are judged to be better than the CVCC words, which result from the loss of two (final and penultimate) vowels. These results mirror the relative seriousness of the phonotactic violations and indicate listeners have tacit knowledge of these regularities in their language.

Catalan speakers' perception of word stress in unaccented contexts.

PubMed

Ortega-Llebaria, Marta; del Mar Vanrell, Maria; Prieto, Pilar

2010-01-01

In unaccented contexts, formant frequency differences related to vowel reduction constitute a consistent cue to word stress in English, whereas in languages such as Spanish that have no systematic vowel reduction, stress perception is based on duration and intensity cues. This article examines the perception of word stress by speakers of Central Catalan, in which, due to its vowel reduction patterns, words either alternate stressed open vowels with unstressed mid-central vowels as in English or contain no vowel quality cues to stress, as in Spanish. Results show that Catalan listeners perceive stress based mainly on duration cues in both word types. Other cues pattern together with duration to make stress perception more robust. However, no single cue is absolutely necessary and trading effects compensate for a lack of differentiation in one dimension by changes in another dimension. In particular, speakers identify longer mid-central vowels as more stressed than shorter open vowels. These results and those obtained in other stress-accent languages provide cumulative evidence that word stress is perceived independently of pitch accents by relying on a set of cues with trading effects so that no single cue, including formant frequency differences related to vowel reduction, is absolutely necessary for stress perception.

Revisiting the Canadian English vowel space

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hagiwara, Robert

2005-04-01

In order to fill a need for experimental-acoustic baseline measurements of Canadian English vowels, a database is currently being constructed in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The database derives from multiple repetitions of fifteen English vowels (eleven standard monophthongs, syllabic /r/ and three standard diphthongs) in /hVd/ and /hVt/ contexts, as spoken by multiple speakers. Frequencies of the first four formants are taken from three timepoints in every vowel token (25, 50, and 75% of vowel duration). Preliminary results (from five men and five women) confirm some features characteristic of Canadian English, but call others into question. For instance the merger of low back vowels appears to be complete for these speakers, but the result is a lower-mid and probably rounded vowel rather than the low back unround vowel often described. With these data Canadian Raising can be quantified as an average 200 Hz or 1.5 Bark downward shift in the frequency of F1 before voiceless /t/. Analysis of the database will lead to a more accurate picture of the Canadian English vowel system, as well as provide a practical and up-to-date point of reference for further phonetic and sociophonetic comparisons.

Rate and onset cues can improve cochlear implant synthetic vowel recognition in noise

PubMed Central

Mc Laughlin, Myles; Reilly, Richard B.; Zeng, Fan-Gang

2013-01-01

Understanding speech-in-noise is difficult for most cochlear implant (CI) users. Speech-in-noise segregation cues are well understood for acoustic hearing but not for electric hearing. This study investigated the effects of stimulation rate and onset delay on synthetic vowel-in-noise recognition in CI subjects. In experiment I, synthetic vowels were presented at 50, 145, or 795 pulse/s and noise at the same three rates, yielding nine combinations. Recognition improved significantly if the noise had a lower rate than the vowel, suggesting that listeners can use temporal gaps in the noise to detect a synthetic vowel. This hypothesis is supported by accurate prediction of synthetic vowel recognition using a temporal integration window model. Using lower rates a similar trend was observed in normal hearing subjects. Experiment II found that for CI subjects, a vowel onset delay improved performance if the noise had a lower or higher rate than the synthetic vowel. These results show that differing rates or onset times can improve synthetic vowel-in-noise recognition, indicating a need to develop speech processing strategies that encode or emphasize these cues. PMID:23464025

The comparative study of resonance disorders for Vietnamese and Korean cleft palate speakers using nasometer.

PubMed

Shin, Yu-Jeong; Kim, Yongsoo; Kim, Hyun-Gi

2017-12-01

Nasalance is used to evaluate the velopharyngeal incompetence in clinical diagnoses using a nasometer. The aim of this study is to find the nasalance differences between Vietnamese cleft palate children and Korean cleft palate children by measuring the nasalance of five oral vowels. Ten Vietnamese cleft palate children after surgery, three Vietnamese children for the control group, and ten Korean cleft palate children after surgery with the same age participated in this experimentation. Instead of Korean control, the standard value of Korean version of the simplified nasometric assessment procedures (kSNAP) was used. The results are as follows: (1) the highest nasalance score among the Vietnamese normal vowels is the low vowel /a/; however, that of Korean normal vowels is the high vowel /i/. (2) The average nasalance score of Korean cleft palate vowels is 18% higher than that of Vietnamese cleft palate vowels. There was a nasalance score of over 45% among the vowels /e/ and /i/ in Vietnamese cleft palate patients and /i/, /o/, and /u/ in Korean cleft palate patients. These different nasalance scores of the same vowels seem to cause an ethnic difference between Vietnamese and Korean cleft palate children.

Shallow and deep orthographies in Hebrew: the role of vowelization in reading development for unvowelized scripts.

PubMed

Schiff, Rachel

2012-12-01

The present study explored the speed, accuracy, and reading comprehension of vowelized versus unvowelized scripts among 126 native Hebrew speaking children in second, fourth, and sixth grades. Findings indicated that second graders read and comprehended vowelized scripts significantly more accurately and more quickly than unvowelized scripts, whereas among fourth and sixth graders reading of unvowelized scripts developed to a greater degree than the reading of vowelized scripts. An analysis of the mediation effect for children's mastery of vowelized reading speed and accuracy on their mastery of unvowelized reading speed and comprehension revealed that in second grade, reading accuracy of vowelized words mediated the reading speed and comprehension of unvowelized scripts. In the fourth grade, accuracy in reading both vowelized and unvowelized words mediated the reading speed and comprehension of unvowelized scripts. By sixth grade, accuracy in reading vowelized words offered no mediating effect, either on reading speed or comprehension of unvowelized scripts. The current outcomes thus suggest that young Hebrew readers undergo a scaffolding process, where vowelization serves as the foundation for building initial reading abilities and is essential for successful and meaningful decoding of unvowelized scripts.

Articulatory characteristics of Hungarian ‘transparent’ vowels

PubMed Central

Benus, Stefan; Gafos, Adamantios I.

2007-01-01

Using a combination of magnetometry and ultrasound, we examined the articulatory characteristics of the so-called ‘transparent’ vowels [iː], [i], and [eː] in Hungarian vowel harmony. Phonologically, transparent vowels are front, but they can be followed by either front or back suffixes. However, a finer look reveals an underlying phonetic coherence in two respects. First, transparent vowels in back harmony contexts show a less advanced (more retracted) tongue body posture than phonemically identical vowels in front harmony contexts: e.g. [i] in buli-val is less advanced than [i] in bili-vel. Second, transparent vowels in monosyllabic stems selecting back suffixes are also less advanced than phonemically identical vowels in stems selecting front suffixes: e.g. [iː] in ír, taking back suffixes, compared to [iː] of hír, taking front suffixes, is less advanced when these stems are produced in bare form (no suffixes). We thus argue that the phonetic degree of tongue body horizontal position correlates with the phonological alternation in suffixes. A hypothesis that emerges from this work is that a plausible phonetic basis for transparency can be found in quantal characteristics of the relation between articulation and acoustics of transparent vowels. More broadly, the proposal is that the phonology of transparent vowels is better understood when their phonological patterning is studied together with their articulatory and acoustic characteristics. PMID:18389086

Perceptual “vowel spaces” of cochlear implant users: Implications for the study of auditory adaptation to spectral shift

PubMed Central

Harnsberger, James D.; Svirsky, Mario A.; Kaiser, Adam R.; Pisoni, David B.; Wright, Richard; Meyer, Ted A.

2012-01-01

Cochlear implant (CI) users differ in their ability to perceive and recognize speech sounds. Two possible reasons for such individual differences may lie in their ability to discriminate formant frequencies or to adapt to the spectrally shifted information presented by cochlear implants, a basalward shift related to the implant’s depth of insertion in the cochlea. In the present study, we examined these two alternatives using a method-of-adjustment (MOA) procedure with 330 synthetic vowel stimuli varying in F1 and F2 that were arranged in a two-dimensional grid. Subjects were asked to label the synthetic stimuli that matched ten monophthongal vowels in visually presented words. Subjects then provided goodness ratings for the stimuli they had chosen. The subjects’ responses to all ten vowels were used to construct individual perceptual “vowel spaces.” If CI users fail to adapt completely to the basalward spectral shift, then the formant frequencies of their vowel categories should be shifted lower in both F1 and F2. However, with one exception, no systematic shifts were observed in the vowel spaces of CI users. Instead, the vowel spaces differed from one another in the relative size of their vowel categories. The results suggest that differences in formant frequency discrimination may account for the individual differences in vowel perception observed in cochlear implant users. PMID:11386565

Cross-linguistic studies of children’s and adults’ vowel spacesa

PubMed Central

Chung, Hyunju; Kong, Eun Jong; Edwards, Jan; Weismer, Gary; Fourakis, Marios; Hwang, Youngdeok

2012-01-01

This study examines cross-linguistic variation in the location of shared vowels in the vowel space across five languages (Cantonese, American English, Greek, Japanese, and Korean) and three age groups (2-year-olds, 5-year-olds, and adults). The vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ were elicited in familiar words using a word repetition task. The productions of target words were recorded and transcribed by native speakers of each language. For correctly produced vowels, first and second formant frequencies were measured. In order to remove the effect of vocal tract size on these measurements, a normalization approach that calculates distance and angular displacement from the speaker centroid was adopted. Language-specific differences in the location of shared vowels in the formant values as well as the shape of the vowel spaces were observed for both adults and children. PMID:22280606

Acoustic correlates of sexual orientation and gender-role self-concept in women's speech.

PubMed

Kachel, Sven; Simpson, Adrian P; Steffens, Melanie C

2017-06-01

Compared to studies of male speakers, relatively few studies have investigated acoustic correlates of sexual orientation in women. The present investigation focuses on shedding more light on intra-group variability in lesbians and straight women by using a fine-grained analysis of sexual orientation and collecting data on psychological characteristics (e.g., gender-role self-concept). For a large-scale women's sample (overall n = 108), recordings of spontaneous and read speech were analyzed for median fundamental frequency and acoustic vowel space features. Two studies showed no acoustic differences between lesbians and straight women, but there was evidence of acoustic differences within sexual orientation groups. Intra-group variability in median f0 was found to depend on the exclusivity of sexual orientation; F1 and F2 in /iː/ (study 1) and median f0 (study 2) were acoustic correlates of gender-role self-concept, at least for lesbians. Other psychological characteristics (e.g., sexual orientation of female friends) were also reflected in lesbians' speech. Findings suggest that acoustic features indexicalizing sexual orientation can only be successfully interpreted in combination with a fine-grained analysis of psychological characteristics.

Mandarin compound vowels produced by prelingually deafened children with cochlear implants.

PubMed

Yang, Jing; Xu, Li

2017-06-01

Compound vowels including diphthongs and triphthongs have complex, dynamic spectral features. The production of compound vowels by children with cochlear implants (CIs) has not been studied previously. The present study examined the dynamic features of compound vowels in native Mandarin-speaking children with CIs. Fourteen prelingually deafened children with CIs (aged 2.9-8.3 years old) and 14 age-matched, normal-hearing (NH) children produced monosyllables containing six Mandarin compound vowels (i.e., /aɪ/, /aʊ/, /uo/, /iɛ/, /iaʊ/, /ioʊ/). The frequency values of the first two formants were measured at nine equidistant time points over the course of the vowel duration. All formant frequency values were normalized and then used to calculate vowel trajectory length and overall spectral rate of change. The results revealed that the CI children produced significantly longer durations for all six compound vowels. The CI children's ability to produce formant movement for the compound vowels varied considerably. Some CI children produced relatively static formant trajectories for certain diphthongs, whereas others produced certain vowels with greater formant movement than did the NH children. As a group, the CI children roughly followed the NH children on the pattern of magnitude of formant movement, but they showed a slower rate of formant change than did the NH children. The findings suggested that prelingually deafened children with CIs, during the early stage of speech acquisition, had not established appropriate targets and articulatory coordination for compound vowel productions. This preliminary study may shed light on rehabilitation of prelingually deafened children with CIs. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Vowel Acoustics in Dysarthria: Mapping to Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lansford, Kaitlin L.; Liss, Julie M.

2014-01-01

Purpose: The aim of the present report was to explore whether vowel metrics, demonstrated to distinguish dysarthric and healthy speech in a companion article (Lansford & Liss, 2014), are able to predict human perceptual performance. Method: Vowel metrics derived from vowels embedded in phrases produced by 45 speakers with dysarthria were…

Vowel Devoicing in Shanghai.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zee, Eric

A phonetic study of vowel devoicing in the Shanghai dialect of Chinese explored the phonetic conditions under which the high, closed vowels and the apical vowel in Shanghai are most likely to become devoiced. The phonetic conditions may be segmental or suprasegmental. Segmentally, the study sought to determine whether a certain type of pre-vocalic…

Palatalization and Intrinsic Prosodic Vowel Features in Russian

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ordin, Mikhail

2011-01-01

The presented study is aimed at investigating the interaction of palatalization and intrinsic prosodic features of the vowel in CVC (consonant+vowel+consonant) syllables in Russian. The universal nature of intrinsic prosodic vowel features was confirmed with the data from the Russian language. It was found that palatalization of the consonants…

Structural Generalizations over Consonants and Vowels in 11-Month-Old Infants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pons, Ferran; Toro, Juan M.

2010-01-01

Recent research has suggested consonants and vowels serve different roles during language processing. While statistical computations are preferentially made over consonants but not over vowels, simple structural generalizations are easily made over vowels but not over consonants. Nevertheless, the origins of this asymmetry are unknown. Here we…

A Vowel Is a Vowel: Generalizing Newly Learned Phonotactic Constraints to New Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chambers, Kyle E.; Onishi, Kristine H.; Fisher, Cynthia

2010-01-01

Adults can learn novel phonotactic constraints from brief listening experience. We investigated the representations underlying phonotactic learning by testing generalization to syllables containing new vowels. Adults heard consonant-vowel-consonant study syllables in which particular consonants were artificially restricted to the onset or coda…

Vowel Intelligibility in Children with and without Dysarthria: An Exploratory Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Levy, Erika S.; Leone, Dorothy; Moya-Gale, Gemma; Hsu, Sih-Chiao; Chen, Wenli; Ramig, Lorraine O.

2016-01-01

Children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy (CP) present with decreased vowel space area and reduced word intelligibility. Although a robust relationship exists between vowel space and word intelligibility, little is known about the intelligibility of vowels in this population. This exploratory study investigated the intelligibility of American…

Speechant: A Vowel Notation System to Teach English Pronunciation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

dos Reis, Jorge; Hazan, Valerie

2012-01-01

This paper introduces a new vowel notation system aimed at aiding the teaching of English pronunciation. This notation system, designed as an enhancement to orthographic text, was designed to use concepts borrowed from the representation of musical notes and is also linked to the acoustic characteristics of vowel sounds. Vowel timbre is…

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…

Audiovisual Perception of Congruent and Incongruent Dutch Front Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Valkenier, Bea; Duyne, Jurriaan Y.; Andringa, Tjeerd C.; Baskent, Deniz

2012-01-01

Purpose: Auditory perception of vowels in background noise is enhanced when combined with visually perceived speech features. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the influence of visual cues on vowel perception extends to incongruent vowels, in a manner similar to the McGurk effect observed with consonants. Method:…

Stress-Induced Acoustic Variation in L2 and L1 Spanish Vowels.

PubMed

Romanelli, Sofía; Menegotto, Andrea; Smyth, Ron

2018-05-28

We assessed the effect of lexical stress on the duration and quality of Spanish word-final vowels /a, e, o/ produced by American English late intermediate learners of L2 Spanish, as compared to those of native L1 Argentine Spanish speakers. Participants read 54 real words ending in /a, e, o/, with either final or penultimate lexical stress, embedded in a text and a word list. We measured vowel duration and both F1 and F2 frequencies at 3 temporal points. stressed vowels were longer than unstressed vowels, in Spanish L1 and L2. L1 and L2 Spanish stressed /a/ and /e/ had higher F1 values than their unstressed counterparts. Only the L2 speakers showed evidence of rising offglides for /e/ and /o/. The L2 and L1 Spanish vowel space was compressed in the absence of stress. Lexical stress affected the vowel quality of L1 and L2 Spanish vowels. We provide an up-to-date account of the formant trajectories of Argentine River Plate Spanish word-final /a, e, o/ and offer experimental support to the claim that stress affects the quality of Spanish vowels in word-final contexts. © 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Visual Cues Contribute Differentially to Audiovisual Perception of Consonants and Vowels in Improving Recognition and Reducing Cognitive Demands in Listeners With Hearing Impairment Using Hearing Aids.

PubMed

Moradi, Shahram; Lidestam, Björn; Danielsson, Henrik; Ng, Elaine Hoi Ning; Rönnberg, Jerker

2017-09-18

We sought to examine the contribution of visual cues in audiovisual identification of consonants and vowels-in terms of isolation points (the shortest time required for correct identification of a speech stimulus), accuracy, and cognitive demands-in listeners with hearing impairment using hearing aids. The study comprised 199 participants with hearing impairment (mean age = 61.1 years) with bilateral, symmetrical, mild-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss. Gated Swedish consonants and vowels were presented aurally and audiovisually to participants. Linear amplification was adjusted for each participant to assure audibility. The reading span test was used to measure participants' working memory capacity. Audiovisual presentation resulted in shortened isolation points and improved accuracy for consonants and vowels relative to auditory-only presentation. This benefit was more evident for consonants than vowels. In addition, correlations and subsequent analyses revealed that listeners with higher scores on the reading span test identified both consonants and vowels earlier in auditory-only presentation, but only vowels (not consonants) in audiovisual presentation. Consonants and vowels differed in terms of the benefits afforded from their associative visual cues, as indicated by the degree of audiovisual benefit and reduction in cognitive demands linked to the identification of consonants and vowels presented audiovisually.

Cross-linguistic vowel variation in trilingual speakers of Saterland Frisian, Low German, and High German.

PubMed

Peters, Jörg; Heeringa, Wilbert J; Schoormann, Heike E

2017-08-01

The present study compares the acoustic realization of Saterland Frisian, Low German, and High German vowels by trilingual speakers in the Saterland. The Saterland is a rural municipality in northwestern Germany. It offers the unique opportunity to study trilingualism with languages that differ both by their vowel inventories and by external factors, such as their social status and the autonomy of their speech communities. The objective of the study was to examine whether the trilingual speakers differ in their acoustic realizations of vowel categories shared by the three languages and whether those differences can be interpreted as effects of either the differences in the vowel systems or of external factors. Monophthongs produced in a /hVt/ frame revealed that High German vowels show the most divergent realizations in terms of vowel duration and formant frequencies, whereas Saterland Frisian and Low German vowels show small differences. These findings suggest that vowels of different languages are likely to share the same phonological space when the speech communities largely overlap, as is the case with Saterland Frisian and Low German, but may resist convergence if at least one language is shared with a larger, monolingual speech community, as is the case with High German.

Perception of steady-state vowels and vowelless syllables by adults and children

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nittrouer, Susan

2005-04-01

Vowels can be produced as long, isolated, and steady-state, but that is not how they are found in natural speech. Instead natural speech consists of almost continuously changing (i.e., dynamic) acoustic forms from which mature listeners recover underlying phonetic form. Some theories suggest that children need steady-state information to recognize vowels (and so learn vowel systems), even though that information is sparse in natural speech. The current study examined whether young children can recover vowel targets from dynamic forms, or whether they need steady-state information. Vowel recognition was measured for adults and children (3, 5, and 7 years) for natural productions of /dæd/, /dUd/ /æ/, /U/ edited to make six stimulus sets: three dynamic (whole syllables; syllables with middle 50-percent replaced by cough; syllables with all but the first and last three pitch periods replaced by cough), and three steady-state (natural, isolated vowels; reiterated pitch periods from those vowels; reiterated pitch periods from the syllables). Adults scored nearly perfectly on all but first/last three pitch period stimuli. Children performed nearly perfectly only when the entire syllable was heard, and performed similarly (near 80%) for all other stimuli. Consequently, children need dynamic forms to perceive vowels; steady-state forms are not preferred.

Vowel Space Characteristics of Speech Directed to Children With and Without Hearing Loss

PubMed Central

Wieland, Elizabeth A.; Burnham, Evamarie B.; Kondaurova, Maria; Bergeson, Tonya R.

2015-01-01

Purpose This study examined vowel characteristics in adult-directed (AD) and infant-directed (ID) speech to children with hearing impairment who received cochlear implants or hearing aids compared with speech to children with normal hearing. Method Mothers' AD and ID speech to children with cochlear implants (Study 1, n = 20) or hearing aids (Study 2, n = 11) was compared with mothers' speech to controls matched on age and hearing experience. The first and second formants of vowels /i/, /ɑ/, and /u/ were measured, and vowel space area and dispersion were calculated. Results In both studies, vowel space was modified in ID compared with AD speech to children with and without hearing loss. Study 1 showed larger vowel space area and dispersion in ID compared with AD speech regardless of infant hearing status. The pattern of effects of ID and AD speech on vowel space characteristics in Study 2 was similar to that in Study 1, but depended partly on children's hearing status. Conclusion Given previously demonstrated associations between expanded vowel space in ID compared with AD speech and enhanced speech perception skills, this research supports a focus on vowel pronunciation in developing intervention strategies for improving speech-language skills in children with hearing impairment. PMID:25658071

Segmentation and object-oriented classification of wetlands in a karst Florida landscape using multi-season Landsat-7 ETM+ Imagery

EPA Science Inventory

Segmentation and object-oriented processing of single-season and multi-season Landsat-7 ETM+ data was utilized for the classification of wetlands in a 1560 km2 study area of north central Florida. This segmentation and object-oriented classification outperformed the traditional ...

Effects of Levodopa on Vowel Articulation in Patients with Parkinson's Disease.

PubMed

Okada, Yukihiro; Murata, Miho; Toda, Tatsushi

2016-04-27

The effects of levodopa on articulatory dysfunction in patients with Parkinson's disease remain inconclusive. This study aimed to investigate the effects of levodopa on isolated vowel articulation and motor performance in patients with moderate to severe Parkinson's disease, excluding speech fluctuations caused by dyskinesia. 21 patients (14 males and 7 females) and 21 age- and sex- matched healthy subjects were enrolled. Together with motor assessment, the patients phonated five Japanese isolated vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, and /o/) 20 times before and 1 h after levodopa treatment. We made the frequency analysis of each vowel and measured the first and second formants. From these formants we constructed the pentagonal vowel space area which should be the good indicator for articulatory dysfunction of vowels. In control subjects, only speech samples were analyzed. To investigate the sequential relationship between plasma levodopa concentrations, motor performances, and acoustic measurements after treatment, entire drug cycle tests were performed in 4 patients. The pentagonal vowel space area was significantly expanded together with motor amelioration after levodopa treatment, although the enlargement is not enough for the space area of control subjects. Drug cycle tests revealed that sequential increases or decreases in plasma levodopa levels after treatment correlated well with expansion or decrease of the vowel space areas and improvement or deterioration of motor manifestations. Levodopa expanded the vowel space area and ameliorated motor performance, suggesting that dysfunctions in vowel articulation and motor performance in patients with Parkinson's disease are based on dopaminergic pathology.

Linguistic category structure influences early auditory processing: Converging evidence from mismatch responses and cortical oscillations.

PubMed

Scharinger, Mathias; Monahan, Philip J; Idsardi, William J

2016-03-01

While previous research has established that language-specific knowledge influences early auditory processing, it is still controversial as to what aspects of speech sound representations determine early speech perception. Here, we propose that early processing primarily depends on information propagated top-down from abstractly represented speech sound categories. In particular, we assume that mid-vowels (as in 'bet') exert less top-down effects than the high-vowels (as in 'bit') because of their less specific (default) tongue height position as compared to either high- or low-vowels (as in 'bat'). We tested this assumption in a magnetoencephalography (MEG) study where we contrasted mid- and high-vowels, as well as the low- and high-vowels in a passive oddball paradigm. Overall, significant differences between deviants and standards indexed reliable mismatch negativity (MMN) responses between 200 and 300ms post-stimulus onset. MMN amplitudes differed in the mid/high-vowel contrasts and were significantly reduced when a mid-vowel standard was followed by a high-vowel deviant, extending previous findings. Furthermore, mid-vowel standards showed reduced oscillatory power in the pre-stimulus beta-frequency band (18-26Hz), compared to high-vowel standards. We take this as converging evidence for linguistic category structure to exert top-down influences on auditory processing. The findings are interpreted within the linguistic model of underspecification and the neuropsychological predictive coding framework. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A classification of marked hijaiyah letters' pronunciation using hidden Markov model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wisesty, Untari N.; Mubarok, M. Syahrul; Adiwijaya

2017-08-01

Hijaiyah letters are the letters that arrange the words in Al Qur'an consisting of 28 letters. They symbolize the consonant sounds. On the other hand, the vowel sounds are symbolized by harokat/marks. Speech recognition system is a system used to process the sound signal to be data so that it can be recognized by computer. To build the system, some stages are needed i.e characteristics/feature extraction and classification. In this research, LPC and MFCC extraction method, K-Means Quantization vector and Hidden Markov Model classification are used. The data used are the 28 letters and 6 harakat with the total class of 168. After several are testing done, it can be concluded that the system can recognize the pronunciation pattern of marked hijaiyah letter very well in the training data with its highest accuracy of 96.1% using the feature of LPC extraction and 94% using the MFCC. Meanwhile, when testing system is used, the accuracy decreases up to 41%.

Classification of speech and language profiles in 4-year old children with cerebral palsy: A prospective preliminary study

PubMed Central

Hustad, Katherine C.; Gorton, Kristin; Lee, Jimin

2010-01-01

Purpose Little is known about the speech and language abilities of children with cerebral palsy (CP) and there is currently no system for classifying speech and language profiles. Such a system would have epidemiological value and would have the potential to advance the development of interventions that improve outcomes. In this study, we propose and test a preliminary speech and language classification system by quantifying how well speech and language data differentiate among children classified into different hypothesized profile groups. Method Speech and language assessment data were collected in a laboratory setting from 34 children with CP (18 males; 16 females) who were a mean age of 54 months (SD 1.8 months). Measures of interest were vowel area, speech rate, language comprehension scores, and speech intelligibility ratings. Results Canonical discriminant function analysis showed that three functions accounted for 100% of the variance among profile groups, with speech variables accounting for 93% of the variance. Classification agreement varied from 74% to 97% using four different classification paradigms. Conclusions Results provide preliminary support for the classification of speech and language abilities of children with CP into four initial profile groups. Further research is necessary to validate the full classification system. PMID:20643795

Vowel Space Characteristics and Vowel Identification Accuracy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neel, Amy T.

2008-01-01

Purpose: To examine the relation between vowel production characteristics and intelligibility. Method: Acoustic characteristics of 10 vowels produced by 45 men and 48 women from the J. M. Hillenbrand, L. A. Getty, M. J. Clark, and K. Wheeler (1995) study were examined and compared with identification accuracy. Global (mean f0, F1, and F2;…

Lip Movements for an Unfamiliar Vowel: Mandarin Front Rounded Vowel Produced by Japanese Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saito, Haruka

2016-01-01

Purpose: The study was aimed at investigating what kind of lip positions are selected by Japanese adult participants for an unfamiliar Mandarin rounded vowel /y/ and if their lip positions are related to and/or differentiated from those for their native vowels. Method: Videotaping and post hoc tracking measurements for lip positions, namely…

The Role of Consonant/Vowel Organization in Perceptual Discrimination

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chetail, Fabienne; Drabs, Virginie; Content, Alain

2014-01-01

According to a recent hypothesis, the CV pattern (i.e., the arrangement of consonant and vowel letters) constrains the mental representation of letter strings, with each vowel or vowel cluster being the core of a unit. Six experiments with the same/different task were conducted to test whether this structure is extracted prelexically. In the…

A Componential Approach to Training Reading Skills.

DTIC Science & Technology

1983-03-17

1 syllable, mixed vowels A2 16 one-syll., 4 two-syll., mixed vowels A3 14 one-syll., 6 two-syll., mixed vowels A4 All two-syllable, mixed vowels* B1 ...06520 I ERIC Facility-Acquisitions I Dr. John S. Brown 4833 Rugby Avenue XEROX Palo Alto Research Center Bethesda, MD 20014 3333 Coyote Road Palo Alto, CA

Vowel Harmony Is a Basic Phonetic Rule of the Turkic Languages

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shoibekova, Gaziza B.; Odanova, Sagira A.; Sultanova, Bibigul M.; Yermekova, Tynyshtyk N.

2016-01-01

The present study comprehensively analyzes vowel harmony as an important phonetic rule in Turkic languages. Recent changes in the vowel harmony potential of Turkic sounds caused by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors were described. Vowels in the Kazakh, Turkish, and Uzbek language were compared. The way this or that phoneme sounded in the…

Vowel Formant Values in Hearing and Hearing-Impaired Children: A Discriminant Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ozbic, Martina; Kogovsek, Damjana

2010-01-01

Hearing-impaired speakers show changes in vowel production and formant pitch and variability, as well as more cases of overlapping between vowels and more restricted formant space, than hearing speakers; consequently their speech is less intelligible. The purposes of this paper were to determine the differences in vowel formant values between 32…

Biomechanically Preferred Consonant-Vowel Combinations Fail to Appear in Adult Spoken Corpora

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Whalen, D. H.; Giulivi, Sara; Nam, Hosung; Levitt, Andrea G.; Halle, Pierre; Goldstein, Louis M.

2012-01-01

Certain consonant/vowel (CV) combinations are more frequent than would be expected from the individual C and V frequencies alone, both in babbling and, to a lesser extent, in adult language, based on dictionary counts: Labial consonants co-occur with central vowels more often than chance would dictate; coronals co-occur with front vowels, and…

Frustration in the pattern formation of polysyllabic words

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hayata, Kazuya

2016-12-01

A novel frustrated system is given for the analysis of (m + 1)-syllabled vocal sounds for languages with the m-vowel system, where the varieties of vowels are assumed to be m (m > 2). The necessary and sufficient condition for observing the sound frustration is that the configuration of m vowels in an m-syllabled word has a preference for the ‘repulsive’ type, in which there is no duplication of an identical vowel. For languages that meet this requirement, no (m + 1)-syllabled word can in principle select the present type because at most m different vowels are available and consequently the duplicated use of an identical vowel is inevitable. For languages showing a preference for the ‘attractive’ type, where an identical vowel aggregates in a word, there arises no such conflict. In this paper, we first elucidate for Arabic with m = 3 how to deal with the conflicting situation, where a statistical approach based on the chi-square testing is employed. In addition to the conventional three-vowel system, analyses are made also for Russian, where a polysyllabic word contains both a stressed and an indeterminate vowel. Through the statistical analyses the selection scheme for quadrisyllabic configurations is found to be strongly dependent on the parts of speech as well as the gender of nouns. In order to emphasize the relevance to the sound model of binary oppositions, analyzed results of Greek verbs are also given.

Articulatory changes in muscle tension dysphonia: evidence of vowel space expansion following manual circumlaryngeal therapy.

PubMed

Roy, Nelson; Nissen, Shawn L; Dromey, Christopher; Sapir, Shimon

2009-01-01

In a preliminary study, we documented significant changes in formant transitions associated with successful manual circumlaryngeal treatment (MCT) of muscle tension dysphonia (MTD), suggesting improvement in speech articulation. The present study explores further the effects of MTD on vowel articulation by means of additional vowel acoustic measures. Pre- and post-treatment audio recordings of 111 women with MTD were analyzed acoustically using two measures: vowel space area (VSA) and vowel articulation index (VAI), constructed using the first (F1) and second (F2) formants of 4 point vowels/ a, i, ae, u/, extracted from eight words within a standard reading passage. Pairwise t-tests revealed significant increases in both VSA and VAI, confirming that successful treatment of MTD is associated with vowel space expansion. Although MTD is considered a voice disorder, its treatment with MCT appears to positively affect vocal tract dynamics. While the precise mechanism underlying vowel space expansion remains unknown, improvements may be related to lowering of the larynx, expanding oropharyngeal space, and improving articulatory movements. The reader will be able to: (1) describe possible articulatory changes associated with successful treatment of muscle tension dysphonia; (2) describe two acoustic methods to assess vowel centralization and decentralization, and; (3) understand the basis for viewing muscle tension dysphonia as a disorder not solely confined to the larynx.

Cross-language comparisons of contextual variation in the production and perception of vowels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Strange, Winifred

2005-04-01

In the last two decades, a considerable amount of research has investigated second-language (L2) learners problems with perception and production of non-native vowels. Most studies have been conducted using stimuli in which the vowels are produced and presented in simple, citation-form (lists) monosyllabic or disyllabic utterances. In my laboratory, we have investigated the spectral (static/dynamic formant patterns) and temporal (syllable duration) variation in vowel productions as a function of speech-style (list/sentence utterances), speaking rate (normal/rapid), sentence focus (narrow focus/post-focus) and phonetic context (voicing/place of surrounding consonants). Data will be presented for a set of languages that include large and small vowel inventories, stress-, syllable-, and mora-timed prosody, and that vary in the phonological/phonetic function of vowel length, diphthongization, and palatalization. Results show language-specific patterns of contextual variation that affect the cross-language acoustic similarity of vowels. Research on cross-language patterns of perceived phonetic similarity by naive listeners suggests that listener's knowledge of native language (L1) patterns of contextual variation influences their L1/L2 similarity judgments and subsequently, their discrimination of L2 contrasts. Implications of these findings for assessing L2 learners perception of vowels and for developing laboratory training procedures to improve L2 vowel perception will be discussed. [Work supported by NIDCD.

Within- and across-language spectral and temporal variability of vowels in different phonetic and prosodic contexts: Russian and Japanese

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gilichinskaya, Yana D.; Hisagi, Miwako; Law, Franzo F.; Berkowitz, Shari; Ito, Kikuyo

2005-04-01

Contextual variability of vowels in three languages with large vowel inventories was examined previously. Here, variability of vowels in two languages with small inventories (Russian, Japanese) was explored. Vowels were produced by three female speakers of each language in four contexts: (Vba) disyllables and in 3-syllable nonsense words (gaC1VC2a) embedded within carrier sentences; contexts included bilabial stops (bVp) in normal rate sentences and alveolar stops (dVt) in both normal and rapid rate sentences. Dependent variables were syllable durations and formant frequencies at syllable midpoint. Results showed very little variation across consonant and rate conditions in formants for /i/ in both languages. Japanese short /u, o, a/ showed fronting (F2 increases) in alveolar context relative to labial context (1.3-2.0 Barks), which was more pronounced in rapid sentences. Fronting of Japanese long vowels was less pronounced (0.3 to 0.9 Barks). Japanese long/short vowel ratios varied with speaking style (syllables versus sentences) and speaking rate. All Russian vowels except /i/ were fronted in alveolar vs labial context (1.1-3.1 Barks) but showed little change in either spectrum or duration with speaking rate. Comparisons of these patterns of variability with American English, French and German vowel results will be discussed.

The Influence of Working Memory on Reading Comprehension in Vowelized versus Non-Vowelized Arabic

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Elsayyad, Hossam; Everatt, John; Mortimore, Tilly; Haynes, Charles

2017-01-01

Unlike English, short vowel sounds in Arabic are represented by diacritics rather than letters. According to the presence and absence of these vowel diacritics, the Arabic script can be considered more or less transparent in comparison with other orthographies. The purpose of this study was to investigate the contribution of working memory to…

The Roles of Vowel Fronting, Lengthening, and Listener Variables in the Perception of Vocal Femininity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shport, Irina A.

2018-01-01

Purpose: The goal of this study was to test whether fronting and lengthening of lax vowels influence the perception of femininity in listeners whose dialect is characterized as already having relatively fronted and long lax vowels in male and female speech. Method: Sixteen English words containing the /? ? ? ?/ vowels were produced by a male…

Textual Input Enhancement for Vowel Blindness: A Study with Arabic ESL Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alsadoon, Reem; Heift, Trude

2015-01-01

This study explores the impact of textual input enhancement on the noticing and intake of English vowels by Arabic L2 learners of English. Arabic L1 speakers are known to experience "vowel blindness," commonly defined as a difficulty in the textual decoding and encoding of English vowels due to an insufficient decoding of the word form.…

The Role of Vowels in Reading Semitic Scripts: Data from Arabic and Hebrew.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abu-Rabia, Salim

2001-01-01

Investigates the effect of vowels and context on reading accuracy of skilled adult native Arabic speakers in Arabic and in Hebrew, their second language. Reveals a significant effect for vowels and for context across all reading conditions in Arabic and Hebrew. Finds that the vowelized texts in Arabic and the pointed and unpointed texts in Hebrew…

Early integration of vowel and pitch processing: a mismatch negativity study.

PubMed

Lidji, Pascale; Jolicoeur, Pierre; Kolinsky, Régine; Moreau, Patricia; Connolly, John F; Peretz, Isabelle

2010-04-01

Several studies have explored the processing specificity of music and speech, but only a few have addressed the processing autonomy of their fundamental components: pitch and phonemes. Here, we examined the additivity of the mismatch negativity (MMN) indexing the early interactions between vowels and pitch when sung. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants heard frequent sung vowels and rare stimuli deviating in pitch only, in vowel only, or in both pitch and vowel. The task was to watch a silent movie while ignoring the sounds. All three types of deviants elicited both an MMN and a P3a ERP component. The observed MMNs were of similar amplitude for the three types of deviants and the P3a was larger for double deviants. The MMNs to deviance in vowel and deviance in pitch were not additive. The underadditivity of the MMN responses suggests that vowel and pitch differences are processed by interacting neural networks. The results indicate that vowel and pitch are processed as integrated units, even at a pre-attentive level. Music-processing specificity thus rests on more complex dimensions of music and speech. 2009 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Intrinsic fundamental frequency of vowels is moderated by regional dialect

PubMed Central

Jacewicz, Ewa; Fox, Robert Allen

2015-01-01

There has been a long-standing debate whether the intrinsic fundamental frequency (IF0) of vowels is an automatic consequence of articulation or whether it is independently controlled by speakers to perceptually enhance vowel contrasts along the height dimension. This paper provides evidence from regional variation in American English that IF0 difference between high and low vowels is, in part, controlled and varies across dialects. The sources of this F0 control are socio-cultural and cannot be attributed to differences in the vowel inventory size. The socially motivated enhancement was found only in prosodically prominent contexts. PMID:26520352

Effect of Domain Initial Strengthening on Vowel Height and Backness Contrasts in French: Acoustic and Ultrasound Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Georgeton, Laurianne; Antolík, Tanja Kocjancic; Fougeron, Cécile

2016-01-01

Purpose: Phonetic variation due to domain initial strengthening was investigated with respect to the acoustic and articulatory distinctiveness of vowels within a subset of the French oral vowel system /i, e, ?, a, o, u/, organized along 4 degrees of height for the front vowels and 2 degrees of backness at the close and midclose height levels.…

Acoustic Analysis of Persian Vowels in Cochlear Implant Users: A Comparison With Hearing-impaired Children Using Hearing Aid and Normal-hearing Children.

PubMed

Jafari, Narges; Yadegari, Fariba; Jalaie, Shohreh

2016-11-01

Vowel production in essence is auditorily controlled; hence, the role of the auditory feedback in vowel production is very important. The purpose of this study was to compare formant frequencies and vowel space in Persian-speaking deaf children with cochlear implantation (CI), hearing-impaired children with hearing aid (HA), and their normal-hearing (NH) peers. A total of 40 prelingually children with hearing impairment and 20 NH groups participated in this study. Participants were native Persian speakers. The average of first formant frequency (F 1 ) and second formant frequency (F 2 ) of the six vowels were measured using Praat software (version 5.1.44). One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the differences between the three3 groups. The mean value of F 1 for vowel /i/ was significantly different (between CI and NH children and also between HA and NH groups) (F 2, 57  = 9.229, P < 0.001). For vowel /a/, the mean value of F 1 was significantly different (between HA and NH groups) (F 2, 57  = 3.707, P < 0.05). Regarding the second formant frequency, a post hoc Tukey test revealed that the differences were between HA and NH children (P < 0.05). F 2 for vowel /o/ was significantly different (F 2, 57  = 4.572, P < 0.05). Also, the mean value of F 2 for vowel /a/ was significantly different (F 2, 57  = 3.184, P < 0.05). About 1 year after implantation, the formants shift closer to those of the NH listeners who tend to have more expanded vowel spaces than hearing-impaired listeners with hearing aids. Probably, this condition is because CI has a subtly positive impact on the place of articulation of vowels. Copyright © 2016 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effects of gender on the production of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic: A sociophonetic study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abudalbuh, Mujdey D.

Emphasis, or pharyngealization, is a distinctive phonetic phenomenon and a phonemic feature of Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. The goal of this study is to investigate the effect of gender on the production of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic as manifested on the consonants themselves as well as on the adjacent vowels. To this end, 22 speakers of Jordanian Arabic, 12 males and 10 females, participated in a production experiment where they produced monosyllabic minimal CVC pairs contrasted on the basis of the presence of a word-initial plain or emphatic consonant. Several acoustic parameters were measured including Voice Onset Time (VOT), friction duration, the spectral mean of the friction noise, vowel duration and the formant frequencies (F1-F3) of the target vowels. The results of this study indicated that VOT is a reliable acoustic correlate of emphasis in Jordanian Arabic only for voiceless stops whose emphatic VOT was significantly shorter than their plain VOT. Also, emphatic fricatives were shorter than plain fricatives. Emphatic vowels were found to be longer than plain vowels. Overall, the results showed that emphatic vowels were characterized by a raised F1 at the onset and midpoint of the vowel, lowered F2 throughout the vowel, and raised F3 at the onset and offset of the vowel relative to the corresponding values of the plain vowels. Finally, results using Nearey's (1978) normalization algorithm indicated that emphasis was more acoustically evident in the speech of males than in the speech of females in terms of the F-pattern. The results are discussed from a sociolinguistic perspective in light of the previous literature and the notion of linguistic feminism.

A narrow band pattern-matching model of vowel perception

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hillenbrand, James M.; Houde, Robert A.

2003-02-01

The purpose of this paper is to propose and evaluate a new model of vowel perception which assumes that vowel identity is recognized by a template-matching process involving the comparison of narrow band input spectra with a set of smoothed spectral-shape templates that are learned through ordinary exposure to speech. In the present simulation of this process, the input spectra are computed over a sufficiently long window to resolve individual harmonics of voiced speech. Prior to template creation and pattern matching, the narrow band spectra are amplitude equalized by a spectrum-level normalization process, and the information-bearing spectral peaks are enhanced by a ``flooring'' procedure that zeroes out spectral values below a threshold function consisting of a center-weighted running average of spectral amplitudes. Templates for each vowel category are created simply by averaging the narrow band spectra of like vowels spoken by a panel of talkers. In the present implementation, separate templates are used for men, women, and children. The pattern matching is implemented with a simple city-block distance measure given by the sum of the channel-by-channel differences between the narrow band input spectrum (level-equalized and floored) and each vowel template. Spectral movement is taken into account by computing the distance measure at several points throughout the course of the vowel. The input spectrum is assigned to the vowel template that results in the smallest difference accumulated over the sequence of spectral slices. The model was evaluated using a large database consisting of 12 vowels in /hVd/ context spoken by 45 men, 48 women, and 46 children. The narrow band model classified vowels in this database with a degree of accuracy (91.4%) approaching that of human listeners.

Vowels Development in Babbling of typically developing 6-to-12-month old Persian-learning Infants.

PubMed

Fotuhi, Mina; Yadegari, Fariba; Teymouri, Robab

2017-10-01

Pre-linguistic vocalizations including early consonants, vowels, and their combinations into syllables are considered as important predictors of the speech and language development. The purpose of this study was to examine vowel development in babblings of normally developing Persian-learning infants. Eight typically developing 6-8-month-old Persian-learning infants (3 boys and 5 girls) participated in this 4-month longitudinal descriptive-analytic study. A weekly 30-60-minute audio- and video-recording was obtained at home from the comfort state vocalizations of infants and the mother-child interactions. A total of 74:02:03 hours of vocalizations were phonetically transcribed. Seven vowels comprising /i/,/e/,/a/,/u/,/o/,/ɑ/, and /ә/ were identified in the babblings. The inter-rater reliability was obtained for 20% of vocalizations. The data were analyzed by repeated measures ANOVA and Pearson's correlation coefficient using SPSS software version 20. The results showed that two vowels /a/ (46.04) and /e/ (23.60) were produced with the highest mean frequency of occurrence, respectively. Regarding front/back dimension, the front vowels were the most prominent ones (71.87); in terms of height, low (46.78) and mid (32.45) vowels occurred maximally. A good inter-rater reliability was obtained (0.99, P < .01). The increased frequency of occurrence of the low and mid front vowels in the current study was consistent with previous studies on the emergence of vowels in pre-linguistic vocalization in other languages.

Exceptionality in vowel harmony

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Szeredi, Daniel

Vowel harmony has been of great interest in phonological research. It has been widely accepted that vowel harmony is a phonetically natural phenomenon, which means that it is a common pattern because it provides advantages to the speaker in articulation and to the listener in perception. Exceptional patterns proved to be a challenge to the phonetically grounded analysis as they, by their nature, introduce phonetically disadvantageous sequences to the surface form, that consist of harmonically different vowels. Such forms are found, for example in the Finnish stem tuoli 'chair' or in the Hungarian suffixed form hi:d-hoz 'to the bridge', both word forms containing a mix of front and back vowels. There has recently been evidence shown that there might be a phonetic level explanation for some exceptional patterns, as the possibility that some vowels participating in irregular stems (like the vowel [i] in the Hungarian stem hi:d 'bridge' above) differ in some small phonetic detail from vowels in regular stems. The main question has not been raised, though: does this phonetic detail matter for speakers? Would they use these minor differences when they have to categorize a new word as regular or irregular? A different recent trend in explaining morphophonological exceptionality by looking at the phonotactic regularities characteristic of classes of stems based on their morphological behavior. Studies have shown that speakers are aware of these regularities, and use them as cues when they have to decide what class a novel stem belongs to. These sublexical phonotactic regularities have already been shown to be present in some exceptional patterns vowel harmony, but many questions remain open: how is learning the static generalization linked to learning the allomorph selection facet of vowel harmony? How much does the effect of consonants on vowel harmony matter, when compared to the effect of vowel-to-vowel correspondences? This dissertation aims to test these two ideas -- that speakers use phonetic cues and/or that they use sublexical phonotactic regularities in categorizing stems as regular or irregular -- and attempt to answer the more detailed questions, like the effect of consonantal patterns on exceptional patterns or the link between allomorph selection and static phonotactic generalizations as well. The phonetic hypothesis is tested on the Hungarian antiharmonicity pattern (stems with front vowels consistently selecting back suffixes, like in the example hi:d-hoz 'to the bridge' above), and the results indicate that while there may be some small phonetic differences between vowels in regular and irregular stems, speakers do not use these, or even enhanced differences when they have to categorize stems. The sublexical hypothesis is tested and confirmed by looking at the disharmonicity pattern in Finnish. In Finnish, stems that contain both back and certain front vowels are frequent and perfectly grammatical, like in the example tuoli 'chair' above, while the mixing of back and some other front vowels is very rare and mostly confined to loanwords like amatoori 'amateur'. It will be seen that speakers do use sublexical phonotactic regularities to decide on the acceptability of novel stems, but certain patterns that are phonetically or phonologically more natural (vowel-to-vowel correspondences) seem to matter much more than other effects (like consonantal effects). Finally, a computational account will be given on how exceptionality might be learned by speakers by using maximum entropy grammars available in the literature to simulate the acquisition of the Finnish disharmonicity pattern. It will be shown that in order to clearly model the overall behavior on the exact pattern, the learner has to have access not only to the lexicon, but also to the allomorph selection patterns in the language.

Dynamic Spectral Structure Specifies Vowels for Adults and Children

PubMed Central

Nittrouer, Susan; Lowenstein, Joanna H.

2014-01-01

The dynamic specification account of vowel recognition suggests that formant movement between vowel targets and consonant margins is used by listeners to recognize vowels. This study tested that account by measuring contributions to vowel recognition of dynamic (i.e., time-varying) spectral structure and coarticulatory effects on stationary structure. Adults and children (four-and seven-year-olds) were tested with three kinds of consonant-vowel-consonant syllables: (1) unprocessed; (2) sine waves that preserved both stationary coarticulated and dynamic spectral structure; and (3) vocoded signals that primarily preserved that stationary, but not dynamic structure. Sections of two lengths were removed from syllable middles: (1) half the vocalic portion; and (2) all but the first and last three pitch periods. Adults performed accurately with unprocessed and sine-wave signals, as long as half the syllable remained; their recognition was poorer for vocoded signals, but above chance. Seven-year-olds performed more poorly than adults with both sorts of processed signals, but disproportionately worse with vocoded than sine-wave signals. Most four-year-olds were unable to recognize vowels at all with vocoded signals. Conclusions were that both dynamic and stationary coarticulated structures support vowel recognition for adults, but children attend to dynamic spectral structure more strongly because early phonological organization favors whole words. PMID:25536845

Spectral timbre perception in ferrets: discrimination of artificial vowels under different listening conditions.

PubMed

Bizley, Jennifer K; Walker, Kerry M M; King, Andrew J; Schnupp, Jan W H

2013-01-01

Spectral timbre is an acoustic feature that enables human listeners to determine the identity of a spoken vowel. Despite its importance to sound perception, little is known about the neural representation of sound timbre and few psychophysical studies have investigated timbre discrimination in non-human species. In this study, ferrets were positively conditioned to discriminate artificial vowel sounds in a two-alternative-forced-choice paradigm. Animals quickly learned to discriminate the vowel sound /u/ from /ε/ and were immediately able to generalize across a range of voice pitches. They were further tested in a series of experiments designed to assess how well they could discriminate these vowel sounds under different listening conditions. First, a series of morphed vowels was created by systematically shifting the location of the first and second formant frequencies. Second, the ferrets were tested with single formant stimuli designed to assess which spectral cues they could be using to make their decisions. Finally, vowel discrimination thresholds were derived in the presence of noise maskers presented from either the same or a different spatial location. These data indicate that ferrets show robust vowel discrimination behavior across a range of listening conditions and that this ability shares many similarities with human listeners.

Auditory detection of non-speech and speech stimuli in noise: Effects of listeners' native language background.

PubMed

Liu, Chang; Jin, Su-Hyun

2015-11-01

This study investigated whether native listeners processed speech differently from non-native listeners in a speech detection task. Detection thresholds of Mandarin Chinese and Korean vowels and non-speech sounds in noise, frequency selectivity, and the nativeness of Mandarin Chinese and Korean vowels were measured for Mandarin Chinese- and Korean-native listeners. The two groups of listeners exhibited similar non-speech sound detection and frequency selectivity; however, the Korean listeners had better detection thresholds of Korean vowels than Chinese listeners, while the Chinese listeners performed no better at Chinese vowel detection than the Korean listeners. Moreover, thresholds predicted from an auditory model highly correlated with behavioral thresholds of the two groups of listeners, suggesting that detection of speech sounds not only depended on listeners' frequency selectivity, but also might be affected by their native language experience. Listeners evaluated their native vowels with higher nativeness scores than non-native listeners. Native listeners may have advantages over non-native listeners when processing speech sounds in noise, even without the required phonetic processing; however, such native speech advantages might be offset by Chinese listeners' lower sensitivity to vowel sounds, a characteristic possibly resulting from their sparse vowel system and their greater cognitive and attentional demands for vowel processing.

Spectral timbre perception in ferrets; discrimination of artificial vowels under different listening conditions

PubMed Central

Bizley, Jennifer K; Walker, Kerry MM; King, Andrew J; Schnupp, Jan WH

2013-01-01

Spectral timbre is an acoustic feature that enables human listeners to determine the identity of a spoken vowel. Despite its importance to sound perception, little is known about the neural representation of sound timbre and few psychophysical studies have investigated timbre discrimination in non-human species. In this study, ferrets were positively conditioned to discriminate artificial vowel sounds in a two-alternative-forced-choice paradigm. Animals quickly learned to discriminate the vowel sound /u/ from /ε/, and were immediately able to generalize across a range of voice pitches. They were further tested in a series of experiments designed to assess how well they could discriminate these vowel sounds under different listening conditions. First, a series of morphed vowels was created by systematically shifting the location of the first and second formant frequencies. Second, the ferrets were tested with single formant stimuli designed to assess which spectral cues they could be using to make their decisions. Finally, vowel discrimination thresholds were derived in the presence of noise maskers presented from either the same or a different spatial location. These data indicate that ferrets show robust vowel discrimination behavior across a range of listening conditions and that this ability shares many similarities with human listeners. PMID:23297909

Typological Asymmetries in Round Vowel Harmony: Support from Artificial Grammar Learning

PubMed Central

Finley, Sara

2012-01-01

Providing evidence for the universal tendencies of patterns in the world’s languages can be difficult, as it is impossible to sample all possible languages, and linguistic samples are subject to interpretation. However, experimental techniques such as artificial grammar learning paradigms make it possible to uncover the psychological reality of claimed universal tendencies. This paper addresses learning of phonological patterns (systematic tendencies in the sounds in language). Specifically, I explore the role of phonetic grounding in learning round harmony, a phonological process in which words must contain either all round vowels ([o, u]) or all unround vowels ([i, e]). The phonetic precursors to round harmony are such that mid vowels ([o, e]), which receive the greatest perceptual benefit from harmony, are most likely to trigger harmony. High vowels ([i, u]), however, are cross-linguistically less likely to trigger round harmony. Adult participants were exposed to a miniature language that contained a round harmony pattern in which the harmony source triggers were either high vowels ([i, u]) (poor harmony source triggers) or mid vowels ([o, e]) (ideal harmony source triggers). Only participants who were exposed to the ideal mid vowel harmony source triggers were successfully able to generalize the harmony pattern to novel instances, suggesting that perception and phonetic naturalness play a role in learning. PMID:23264713

Phonetic Modification of Vowel Space in Storybook Speech to Infants up to 2 Years of Age

PubMed Central

Burnham, Evamarie B.; Wieland, Elizabeth A.; Kondaurova, Maria V.; McAuley, J. Devin; Bergeson, Tonya R.

2015-01-01

Purpose A large body of literature has indicated vowel space area expansion in infant-directed (ID) speech compared with adult-directed (AD) speech, which may promote language acquisition. The current study tested whether this expansion occurs in storybook speech read to infants at various points during their first 2 years of life. Method In 2 studies, mothers read a storybook containing target vowels in ID and AD speech conditions. Study 1 was longitudinal, with 11 mothers recorded when their infants were 3, 6, and 9 months old. Study 2 was cross-sectional, with 48 mothers recorded when their infants were 3, 9, 13, or 20 months old (n = 12 per group). The 1st and 2nd formants of vowels /i/, /ɑ/, and /u/ were measured, and vowel space area and dispersion were calculated. Results Across both studies, 1st and/or 2nd formant frequencies shifted systematically for /i/ and /u/ vowels in ID compared with AD speech. No difference in vowel space area or dispersion was found. Conclusions The results suggest that a variety of communication and situational factors may affect phonetic modifications in ID speech, but that vowel space characteristics in speech to infants stay consistent across the first 2 years of life. PMID:25659121

Vocal Tract Images Reveal Neural Representations of Sensorimotor Transformation During Speech Imitation

PubMed Central

Carey, Daniel; Miquel, Marc E.; Evans, Bronwen G.; Adank, Patti; McGettigan, Carolyn

2017-01-01

Abstract Imitating speech necessitates the transformation from sensory targets to vocal tract motor output, yet little is known about the representational basis of this process in the human brain. Here, we address this question by using real-time MR imaging (rtMRI) of the vocal tract and functional MRI (fMRI) of the brain in a speech imitation paradigm. Participants trained on imitating a native vowel and a similar nonnative vowel that required lip rounding. Later, participants imitated these vowels and an untrained vowel pair during separate fMRI and rtMRI runs. Univariate fMRI analyses revealed that regions including left inferior frontal gyrus were more active during sensorimotor transformation (ST) and production of nonnative vowels, compared with native vowels; further, ST for nonnative vowels activated somatomotor cortex bilaterally, compared with ST of native vowels. Using test representational similarity analysis (RSA) models constructed from participants’ vocal tract images and from stimulus formant distances, we found that RSA searchlight analyses of fMRI data showed either type of model could be represented in somatomotor, temporal, cerebellar, and hippocampal neural activation patterns during ST. We thus provide the first evidence of widespread and robust cortical and subcortical neural representation of vocal tract and/or formant parameters, during prearticulatory ST. PMID:28334401

A comparison of vowel formant frequencies in the babbling of infants exposed to Canadian English and Canadian French

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mattock, Karen; Rvachew, Susan; Polka, Linda; Turner, Sara

2005-04-01

It is well established that normally developing infants typically enter the canonical babbling stage of production between 6 and 8 months of age. However, whether the linguistic environment affects babbling, either in terms of the phonetic inventory of vowels produced by infants [Oller & Eiler (1982)] or the acoustics of vowel formants [Boysson-Bardies et al. (1989)] is controversial. The spontaneous speech of 42 Canadian English- and Canadian French-learning infants aged 8 to 11, 12 to 15 and 16 to 18 months of age was recorded and digitized to yield a total of 1253 vowels that were spectrally analyzed and statistically compared for differences in first and second formant frequencies. Language-specific influences on vowel acoustics were hypothesized. Preliminary results reveal changes in formant frequencies as a function of age and language background. There is evidence of decreases over age in the F1 values of French but not English infants vowels, and decreases over age in the F2 values of English but not French infants vowels. The notion of an age-related shift in infants attention to language-specific acoustic features and the implications of this for early vocal development as well as for the production of Canadian English and Canadian French vowels will be discussed.

Vocal Tract Images Reveal Neural Representations of Sensorimotor Transformation During Speech Imitation.

PubMed

Carey, Daniel; Miquel, Marc E; Evans, Bronwen G; Adank, Patti; McGettigan, Carolyn

2017-05-01

Imitating speech necessitates the transformation from sensory targets to vocal tract motor output, yet little is known about the representational basis of this process in the human brain. Here, we address this question by using real-time MR imaging (rtMRI) of the vocal tract and functional MRI (fMRI) of the brain in a speech imitation paradigm. Participants trained on imitating a native vowel and a similar nonnative vowel that required lip rounding. Later, participants imitated these vowels and an untrained vowel pair during separate fMRI and rtMRI runs. Univariate fMRI analyses revealed that regions including left inferior frontal gyrus were more active during sensorimotor transformation (ST) and production of nonnative vowels, compared with native vowels; further, ST for nonnative vowels activated somatomotor cortex bilaterally, compared with ST of native vowels. Using test representational similarity analysis (RSA) models constructed from participants' vocal tract images and from stimulus formant distances, we found that RSA searchlight analyses of fMRI data showed either type of model could be represented in somatomotor, temporal, cerebellar, and hippocampal neural activation patterns during ST. We thus provide the first evidence of widespread and robust cortical and subcortical neural representation of vocal tract and/or formant parameters, during prearticulatory ST. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

Effect of vowel context on test-retest nasalance score variability in children with and without cleft palate.

PubMed

Ha, Seunghee; Jung, Seungeun; Koh, Kyung S

2018-06-01

The purpose of this study was to determine whether test-retest nasalance score variability differs between Korean children with and without cleft palate (CP) and vowel context influences variability in nasalance score. Thirty-four 3-to-5-year-old children with and without CP participated in the study. Three 8-syllable speech stimuli devoid of nasal consonants were used for data collection. Each stimulus was loaded with high, low, or mixed vowels, respectively. All participants were asked to repeat the speech stimuli twice after the examiner, and an immediate test-retest nasalance score was assessed with no headgear change. Children with CP exhibited significantly greater absolute difference in nasalance scores than children without CP. Variability in nasalance scores was significantly different for the vowel context, and the high vowel sentence showed a significantly larger difference in nasalance scores than the low vowel sentence. The cumulative frequencies indicated that, for children with CP in the high vowel sentence, only 8 of 17 (47%) repeated nasalance scores were within 5 points. Test-retest nasalance score variability was greater for children with CP than children without CP, and there was greater variability for the high vowel sentence(s) for both groups. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Speaking rate effects on locus equation slope.

PubMed

Berry, Jeff; Weismer, Gary

2013-11-01

A locus equation describes a 1st order regression fit to a scatter of vowel steady-state frequency values predicting vowel onset frequency values. Locus equation coefficients are often interpreted as indices of coarticulation. Speaking rate variations with a constant consonant-vowel form are thought to induce changes in the degree of coarticulation. In the current work, the hypothesis that locus slope is a transparent index of coarticulation is examined through the analysis of acoustic samples of large-scale, nearly continuous variations in speaking rate. Following the methodological conventions for locus equation derivation, data pooled across ten vowels yield locus equation slopes that are mostly consistent with the hypothesis that locus equations vary systematically with coarticulation. Comparable analyses between different four-vowel pools reveal variations in the locus slope range and changes in locus slope sensitivity to rate change. Analyses across rate but within vowels are substantially less consistent with the locus hypothesis. Taken together, these findings suggest that the practice of vowel pooling exerts a non-negligible influence on locus outcomes. Results are discussed within the context of articulatory accounts of locus equations and the effects of speaking rate change.

Study of acoustic correlates associate with emotional speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

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

2004-10-01

This study investigates the acoustic characteristics of four different emotions expressed in speech. The aim is to obtain detailed acoustic knowledge on how a speech signal is modulated by changes from neutral to a certain emotional state. Such knowledge is necessary for automatic emotion recognition and classification and emotional speech synthesis. Speech data obtained from two semi-professional actresses are analyzed and compared. Each subject produces 211 sentences with four different emotions; neutral, sad, angry, happy. We analyze changes in temporal and acoustic parameters such as magnitude and variability of segmental duration, fundamental frequency and the first three formant frequencies as a function of emotion. Acoustic differences among the emotions are also explored with mutual information computation, multidimensional scaling and acoustic likelihood comparison with normal speech. Results indicate that speech associated with anger and happiness is characterized by longer duration, shorter interword silence, higher pitch and rms energy with wider ranges. Sadness is distinguished from other emotions by lower rms energy and longer interword silence. Interestingly, the difference in formant pattern between [happiness/anger] and [neutral/sadness] are better reflected in back vowels such as /a/(/father/) than in front vowels. Detailed results on intra- and interspeaker variability will be reported.

Morphometric Differences of Vocal Tract Articulators in Different Loudness Conditions in Singing

PubMed Central

Echternach, Matthias; Burk, Fabian; Burdumy, Michael; Traser, Louisa; Richter, Bernhard

2016-01-01

Introduction Dynamic MRI analysis of phonation has gathered interest in voice and speech physiology. However, there are limited data addressing the extent to which articulation is dependent on loudness. Material and Methods 12 professional singer subjects of different voice classifications were analysed concerning the vocal tract profiles recorded with dynamic real-time MRI with 25fps in different pitch and loudness conditions. The subjects were asked to sing ascending scales on the vowel /a/ in three loudness conditions (comfortable = mf, very soft = pp, very loud = ff, respectively). Furthermore, fundamental frequency and sound pressure level were analysed from the simultaneously recorded optical audio signal after noise cancellation. Results The data show articulatory differences with respect to changes of both pitch and loudness. Here, lip opening and pharynx width were increased. While the vertical larynx position was rising with pitch it was lower for greater loudness. Especially, the lip opening and pharynx width were more strongly correlated with the sound pressure level than with pitch. Conclusion For the vowel /a/ loudness has an effect on articulation during singing which should be considered when articulatory vocal tract data are interpreted. PMID:27096935

Automated speech analysis applied to laryngeal disease categorization.

PubMed

Gelzinis, A; Verikas, A; Bacauskiene, M

2008-07-01

The long-term goal of the work is a decision support system for diagnostics of laryngeal diseases. Colour images of vocal folds, a voice signal, and questionnaire data are the information sources to be used in the analysis. This paper is concerned with automated analysis of a voice signal applied to screening of laryngeal diseases. The effectiveness of 11 different feature sets in classification of voice recordings of the sustained phonation of the vowel sound /a/ into a healthy and two pathological classes, diffuse and nodular, is investigated. A k-NN classifier, SVM, and a committee build using various aggregation options are used for the classification. The study was made using the mixed gender database containing 312 voice recordings. The correct classification rate of 84.6% was achieved when using an SVM committee consisting of four members. The pitch and amplitude perturbation measures, cepstral energy features, autocorrelation features as well as linear prediction cosine transform coefficients were amongst the feature sets providing the best performance. In the case of two class classification, using recordings from 79 subjects representing the pathological and 69 the healthy class, the correct classification rate of 95.5% was obtained from a five member committee. Again the pitch and amplitude perturbation measures provided the best performance.

Analysis and Classification of Voice Pathologies Using Glottal Signal Parameters.

PubMed

Forero M, Leonardo A; Kohler, Manoela; Vellasco, Marley M B R; Cataldo, Edson

2016-09-01

The classification of voice diseases has many applications in health, in diseases treatment, and in the design of new medical equipment for helping doctors in diagnosing pathologies related to the voice. This work uses the parameters of the glottal signal to help the identification of two types of voice disorders related to the pathologies of the vocal folds: nodule and unilateral paralysis. The parameters of the glottal signal are obtained through a known inverse filtering method, and they are used as inputs to an Artificial Neural Network, a Support Vector Machine, and also to a Hidden Markov Model, to obtain the classification, and to compare the results, of the voice signals into three different groups: speakers with nodule in the vocal folds; speakers with unilateral paralysis of the vocal folds; and speakers with normal voices, that is, without nodule or unilateral paralysis present in the vocal folds. The database is composed of 248 voice recordings (signals of vowels production) containing samples corresponding to the three groups mentioned. In this study, a larger database was used for the classification when compared with similar studies, and its classification rate is superior to other studies, reaching 97.2%. Copyright © 2016 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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

Differential processing of consonants and vowels in lexical access through reading.

PubMed

New, Boris; Araújo, Verónica; Nazzi, Thierry

2008-12-01

Do consonants and vowels have the same importance during reading? Recently, it has been proposed that consonants play a more important role than vowels for language acquisition and adult speech processing. This proposal has started receiving developmental support from studies showing that infants are better at processing specific consonantal than vocalic information while learning new words. This proposal also received support from adult speech processing. In our study, we directly investigated the relative contributions of consonants and vowels to lexical access while reading by using a visual masked-priming lexical decision task. Test items were presented following four different primes: identity (e.g., for the word joli, joli), unrelated (vabu), consonant-related (jalu), and vowel-related (vobi). Priming was found for the identity and consonant-related conditions, but not for the vowel-related condition. These results establish the privileged role of consonants during lexical access while reading.

The Effect of Timbre, Pitch, and Vibrato on Vocal Pitch-Matching Accuracy.

PubMed

Duvvuru, Sirisha; Erickson, Molly

2016-05-01

This study seeks to examine how target stimulus timbre, vibrato, pitch, and singer classification affect pitch-matching accuracy. This is a repeated-measures factorial design. Source signals were synthesized with a source slope of -12 dB/octave with and without vibrato at each of the pitches, C4, B4, and F5. These source signals were filtered using five formant patterns (A-E) constituting a total of 30 stimuli (5 formant patterns × 3 pitches × 2 vibrato conditions). Twelve sopranos and 11 mezzo-sopranos with at least 3 years of individual voice training were recruited from the University Of Tennessee, Knoxville, School of Music and the Knoxville Opera Company. Each singer attempted to match the pitch of all 30 stimuli presented twice in a random order. Results indicated that there was no significant effect of formant pattern on pitch-matching accuracy. With increasing pitch from C4 to F5, pitch-matching accuracy increased in midpoint of the vowel condition but not in prephonatory set condition. Mezzo-sopranos moved toward being in tune from prephonatory to midpoint of the vowel. However, sopranos at C4 sang closer to being in tune at prephonatory but lowered the pitch at the midpoint of the vowel. Presence or absence of vibrato did not affect the pitch-matching accuracy. However, the interesting finding of the study was that singers attempted to match the timbre of stimuli with vibrato. The results of this study show that pitch matching is a complex process affected by many parameters. Copyright © 2016 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Vowel category dependence of the relationship between palate height, tongue height, and oral area.

PubMed

Hasegawa-Johnson, Mark; Pizza, Shamala; Alwan, Abeer; Cha, Jul Setsu; Haker, Katherine

2003-06-01

This article evaluates intertalker variance of oral area, logarithm of the oral area, tongue height, and formant frequencies as a function of vowel category. The data consist of coronal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences and acoustic recordings of 5 talkers, each producing 11 different vowels. Tongue height (left, right, and midsagittal), palate height, and oral area were measured in 3 coronal sections anterior to the oropharyngeal bend and were subjected to multivariate analysis of variance, variance ratio analysis, and regression analysis. The primary finding of this article is that oral area (between palate and tongue) showed less intertalker variance during production of vowels with an oral place of articulation (palatal and velar vowels) than during production of vowels with a uvular or pharyngeal place of articulation. Although oral area variance is place dependent, percentage variance (log area variance) is not place dependent. Midsagittal tongue height in the molar region was positively correlated with palate height during production of palatal vowels, but not during production of nonpalatal vowels. Taken together, these results suggest that small oral areas are characterized by relatively talker-independent vowel targets and that meeting these talker-independent targets is important enough that each talker adjusts his or her own tongue height to compensate for talker-dependent differences in constriction anatomy. Computer simulation results are presented to demonstrate that these results may be explained by an acoustic control strategy: When talkers with very different anatomical characteristics try to match talker-independent formant targets, the resulting area variances are minimized near the primary vocal tract constriction.

Reading Arabic Texts: Effects of Text Type, Reader Type and Vowelization.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abu-Rabia, Salim

1998-01-01

Investigates the effect of vowels on reading accuracy in Arabic orthography. Finds that vowels had a significant effect on reading accuracy of poor and skilled readers in reading each of four kinds of texts. (NH)

Auditory temporal-order processing of vowel sequences by young and elderly listeners1

PubMed Central

Fogerty, Daniel; Humes, Larry E.; Kewley-Port, Diane

2010-01-01

This project focused on the individual differences underlying observed variability in temporal processing among older listeners. Four measures of vowel temporal-order identification were completed by young (N=35; 18–31 years) and older (N=151; 60–88 years) listeners. Experiments used forced-choice, constant-stimuli methods to determine the smallest stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between brief (40 or 70 ms) vowels that enabled identification of a stimulus sequence. Four words (pit, pet, pot, and put) spoken by a male talker were processed to serve as vowel stimuli. All listeners identified the vowels in isolation with better than 90% accuracy. Vowel temporal-order tasks included the following: (1) monaural two-item identification, (2) monaural four-item identification, (3) dichotic two-item vowel identification, and (4) dichotic two-item ear identification. Results indicated that older listeners had more variability and performed poorer than young listeners on vowel-identification tasks, although a large overlap in distributions was observed. Both age groups performed similarly on the dichotic ear-identification task. For both groups, the monaural four-item and dichotic two-item tasks were significantly harder than the monaural two-item task. Older listeners’ SOA thresholds improved with additional stimulus exposure and shorter dichotic stimulus durations. Individual differences of temporal-order performance among the older listeners demonstrated the influence of cognitive measures, but not audibility or age. PMID:20370033

Quantitative and descriptive comparison of four acoustic analysis systems: vowel measurements.

PubMed

Burris, Carlyn; Vorperian, Houri K; Fourakis, Marios; Kent, Ray D; Bolt, Daniel M

2014-02-01

This study examines accuracy and comparability of 4 trademarked acoustic analysis software packages (AASPs): Praat, WaveSurfer, TF32, and CSL by using synthesized and natural vowels. Features of AASPs are also described. Synthesized and natural vowels were analyzed using each of the AASP's default settings to secure 9 acoustic measures: fundamental frequency (F0), formant frequencies (F1-F4), and formant bandwidths (B1-B4). The discrepancy between the software measured values and the input values (synthesized, previously reported, and manual measurements) was used to assess comparability and accuracy. Basic AASP features are described. Results indicate that Praat, WaveSurfer, and TF32 generate accurate and comparable F0 and F1-F4 data for synthesized vowels and adult male natural vowels. Results varied by vowel for women and children, with some serious errors. Bandwidth measurements by AASPs were highly inaccurate as compared with manual measurements and published data on formant bandwidths. Values of F0 and F1-F4 are generally consistent and fairly accurate for adult vowels and for some child vowels using the default settings in Praat, WaveSurfer, and TF32. Manipulation of default settings yields improved output values in TF32 and CSL. Caution is recommended especially before accepting F1-F4 results for children and B1-B4 results for all speakers.

Auditory temporal-order processing of vowel sequences by young and elderly listeners.

PubMed

Fogerty, Daniel; Humes, Larry E; Kewley-Port, Diane

2010-04-01

This project focused on the individual differences underlying observed variability in temporal processing among older listeners. Four measures of vowel temporal-order identification were completed by young (N=35; 18-31 years) and older (N=151; 60-88 years) listeners. Experiments used forced-choice, constant-stimuli methods to determine the smallest stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between brief (40 or 70 ms) vowels that enabled identification of a stimulus sequence. Four words (pit, pet, pot, and put) spoken by a male talker were processed to serve as vowel stimuli. All listeners identified the vowels in isolation with better than 90% accuracy. Vowel temporal-order tasks included the following: (1) monaural two-item identification, (2) monaural four-item identification, (3) dichotic two-item vowel identification, and (4) dichotic two-item ear identification. Results indicated that older listeners had more variability and performed poorer than young listeners on vowel-identification tasks, although a large overlap in distributions was observed. Both age groups performed similarly on the dichotic ear-identification task. For both groups, the monaural four-item and dichotic two-item tasks were significantly harder than the monaural two-item task. Older listeners' SOA thresholds improved with additional stimulus exposure and shorter dichotic stimulus durations. Individual differences of temporal-order performance among the older listeners demonstrated the influence of cognitive measures, but not audibility or age.

The Effectiveness of Vowel Production Training with Real-Time Spectrographic Displays for Children with Profound Hearing Impairment.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ertmer, David Joseph

1994-01-01

The effectiveness of vowel production training which incorporated direct instruction in combination with spectrographic models and feedback was assessed for two children who exhibited profound hearing impairment. A multiple-baseline design across behaviors, with replication across subjects was implemented to determine if vowel production accuracy improved following the introduction of treatment. Listener judgments of vowel correctness were obtained during the baseline, training, and follow-up phases of the study. Data were analyzed through visual inspection of changes in levels of accuracy, changes in trends of accuracy, and changes in variability of accuracy within and across phases. One subject showed significant improvement of all three trained vowel targets; the second subject for the first trained target only (Kolmogorov-Smirnov Two Sample Test). Performance trends during training sessions suggest that continued treatment would have resulted in further improvement for both subjects. Vowel duration, fundamental frequency, and the frequency locations of the first and second formants were measured before and after training. Acoustic analysis revealed highly individualized changes in the frequency locations of F1 and F2. Vowels which received the most training were maintained at higher levels than those which were introduced later in training, Some generalization of practiced vowel targets to untrained words was observed in both subjects. A bias towards judging productions as "correct" was observed for both subjects during self-evaluation tasks using spectrographic feedback.

Reading accuracy and speed of vowelized and unvowelized scripts among dyslexic readers of Hebrew: the road not taken.

PubMed

Schiff, Rachel; Katzir, Tami; Shoshan, Noa

2013-07-01

The present study examined the effects of orthographic transparency on reading ability of children with dyslexia in two Hebrew scripts. The study explored the reading accuracy and speed of vowelized and unvowelized Hebrew words of fourth-grade children with dyslexia. A comparison was made to typically developing readers of two age groups: a group matched by chronological age and a group of children who are 2 years younger, presumably at the end of the reading acquisition process. An additional purpose was to investigate the role of vowelization in the reading ability of unvowelized script among readers with dyslexia in an attempt to assess whether vowelization plays a mediating role for reading speed of unvowelized scripts. The present study found no significant differences in reading accuracy and speed between vowelized and unvowelized scripts among fourth-grade readers with dyslexia. The reading speed of fourth-graders with dyslexia was similar to typically developing second-graders for both the vowelized and unvowelized words. However, fourth-grade children with dyslexia performed lower than the typically developing second-graders in the reading accuracy of vowelized script. Furthermore, for readers with dyslexia, accuracy in reading both vowelized and unvowelized words mediated the reading speed of unvowelized scripts. These results may be a sign that Hebrew-speaking children with dyslexia have severe difficulties that prevent them from developing strategies for more efficient reading.

Production and perception of whispered vowels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kiefte, Michael

2005-09-01

Information normally associated with pitch, such as intonation, can still be conveyed in whispered speech despite the absence of voicing. For example, it is possible to whisper the question ``You are going today?'' without any syntactic information to distinguish this sentence from a simple declarative. It has been shown that pitch change in whispered speech is correlated with the simultaneous raising or lowering of several formants [e.g., M. Kiefte, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116, 2546 (2004)]. However, spectral peak frequencies associated with formants have been identified as important correlates to vowel identity. Spectral peak frequencies may serve two roles in the perception of whispered speech: to indicate both vowel identity and intended pitch. Data will be presented to examine the relative importance of several acoustic properties including spectral peak frequencies and spectral shape parameters in both the production and perception of whispered vowels. Speakers were asked to phonate and whisper vowels at three different pitches across a range of roughly a musical fifth. It will be shown that relative spectral change is preserved within vowels across intended pitches in whispered speech. In addition, several models of vowel identification by listeners will be presented. [Work supported by SSHRC.

Prosodic domain-initial effects on the acoustic structure of vowels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fox, Robert Allen; Jacewicz, Ewa; Salmons, Joseph

2003-10-01

In the process of language change, vowels tend to shift in ``chains,'' leading to reorganizations of entire vowel systems over time. A long research tradition has described such patterns, but little is understood about what factors motivate such shifts. Drawing data from changes in progress in American English dialects, the broad hypothesis is tested that changes in vowel systems are related to prosodic organization and stress patterns. Changes in vowels under greater prosodic prominence correlate directly with, and likely underlie, historical patterns of shift. This study examines acoustic characteristics of vowels at initial edges of prosodic domains [Fougeron and Keating, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 101, 3728-3740 (1997)]. The investigation is restricted to three distinct prosodic levels: utterance (sentence-initial), phonological phrase (strong branch of a foot), and syllable (weak branch of a foot). The predicted changes in vowels /e/ and /ɛ/ in two American English dialects (from Ohio and Wisconsin) are examined along a set of acoustic parameters: duration, formant frequencies (including dynamic changes over time), and fundamental frequency (F0). In addition to traditional methodology which elicits list-like intonation, a design is adapted to examine prosodic patterns in more typical sentence intonations. [Work partially supported by NIDCD R03 DC005560-01.

Non-native Speech Perception Training Using Vowel Subsets: Effects of Vowels in Sets and Order of Training

PubMed Central

Nishi, Kanae; Kewley-Port, Diane

2008-01-01

Purpose Nishi and Kewley-Port (2007) trained Japanese listeners to perceive nine American English monophthongs and showed that a protocol using all nine vowels (fullset) produced better results than the one using only the three more difficult vowels (subset). The present study extended the target population to Koreans and examined whether protocols combining the two stimulus sets would provide more effective training. Method Three groups of five Korean listeners were trained on American English vowels for nine days using one of the three protocols: fullset only, first three days on subset then six days on fullset, or first six days on fullset then three days on subset. Participants' performance was assessed by pre- and post-training tests, as well as by a mid-training test. Results 1) Fullset training was also effective for Koreans; 2) no advantage was found for the two combined protocols over the fullset only protocol, and 3) sustained “non-improvement” was observed for training using one of the combined protocols. Conclusions In using subsets for training American English vowels, care should be taken not only in the selection of subset vowels, but also for the training orders of subsets. PMID:18664694

Discrimination of speaker sex and size when glottal-pulse rate and vocal-tract length are controlled.

PubMed

Smith, David R R; Walters, Thomas C; Patterson, Roy D

2007-12-01

A recent study [Smith and Patterson, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 118, 3177-3186 (2005)] demonstrated that both the glottal-pulse rate (GPR) and the vocal-tract length (VTL) of vowel sounds have a large effect on the perceived sex and age (or size) of a speaker. The vowels for all of the "different" speakers in that study were synthesized from recordings of the sustained vowels of one, adult male speaker. This paper presents a follow-up study in which a range of vowels were synthesized from recordings of four different speakers--an adult man, an adult woman, a young boy, and a young girl--to determine whether the sex and age of the original speaker would have an effect upon listeners' judgments of whether a vowel was spoken by a man, woman, boy, or girl, after they were equated for GPR and VTL. The sustained vowels of the four speakers were scaled to produce the same combinations of GPR and VTL, which covered the entire range normally encountered in every day life. The results show that listeners readily distinguish children from adults based on their sustained vowels but that they struggle to distinguish the sex of the speaker.

A comprehensive three-dimensional cortical map of vowel space.

PubMed

Scharinger, Mathias; Idsardi, William J; Poe, Samantha

2011-12-01

Mammalian cortex is known to contain various kinds of spatial encoding schemes for sensory information including retinotopic, somatosensory, and tonotopic maps. Tonotopic maps are especially interesting for human speech sound processing because they encode linguistically salient acoustic properties. In this study, we mapped the entire vowel space of a language (Turkish) onto cortical locations by using the magnetic N1 (M100), an auditory-evoked component that peaks approximately 100 msec after auditory stimulus onset. We found that dipole locations could be structured into two distinct maps, one for vowels produced with the tongue positioned toward the front of the mouth (front vowels) and one for vowels produced in the back of the mouth (back vowels). Furthermore, we found spatial gradients in lateral-medial, anterior-posterior, and inferior-superior dimensions that encoded the phonetic, categorical distinctions between all the vowels of Turkish. Statistical model comparisons of the dipole locations suggest that the spatial encoding scheme is not entirely based on acoustic bottom-up information but crucially involves featural-phonetic top-down modulation. Thus, multiple areas of excitation along the unidimensional basilar membrane are mapped into higher dimensional representations in auditory cortex.

Mechanisms of Vowel Variation in African American English.

PubMed

Holt, Yolanda Feimster

2018-02-15

This research explored mechanisms of vowel variation in African American English by comparing 2 geographically distant groups of African American and White American English speakers for participation in the African American Shift and the Southern Vowel Shift. Thirty-two male (African American: n = 16, White American controls: n = 16) lifelong residents of cities in eastern and western North Carolina produced heed,hid,heyd,head,had,hod,hawed,whod,hood,hoed,hide,howed,hoyd, and heard 3 times each in random order. Formant frequency, duration, and acoustic analyses were completed for the vowels /i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, ɑ, ɔ, u, ʊ, o, aɪ, aʊ, oɪ, ɝ/ produced in the listed words. African American English speakers show vowel variation. In the west, the African American English speakers are participating in the Southern Vowel Shift and hod fronting of the African American Shift. In the east, neither the African American English speakers nor their White peers are participating in the Southern Vowel Shift. The African American English speakers show limited participation in the African American Shift. The results provide evidence of regional and socio-ethnic variation in African American English in North Carolina.

Enriching User-Oriented Class Associations for Library Classification Schemes.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pu, Hsiao-Tieh; Yang, Chyan

2003-01-01

Explores the possibility of adding user-oriented class associations to hierarchical library classification schemes. Analyses a log of book circulation records from a university library in Taiwan and shows that classification schemes can be made more adaptable by analyzing circulation patterns of similar users. (Author/LRW)

An Acoustic Study of Vowels Produced by Alaryngeal Speakers in Taiwan.

PubMed

Liao, Jia-Shiou

2016-11-01

This study investigated the acoustic properties of 6 Taiwan Southern Min vowels produced by 10 laryngeal speakers (LA), 10 speakers with a pneumatic artificial larynx (PA), and 8 esophageal speakers (ES). Each of the 6 monophthongs of Taiwan Southern Min (/i, e, a, ɔ, u, ə/) was represented by a Taiwan Southern Min character and appeared randomly on a list 3 times (6 Taiwan Southern Min characters × 3 repetitions = 18 tokens). Each Taiwan Southern Min character in this study has the same syllable structure, /V/, and all were read with tone 1 (high and level). Acoustic measurements of the 1st formant, 2nd formant, and 3rd formant were taken for each vowel. Then, vowel space areas (VSAs) enclosed by /i, a, u/ were calculated for each group of speakers. The Euclidean distance between vowels in the pairs /i, a/, /i, u/, and /a, u/ was also calculated and compared across the groups. PA and ES have higher 1st or 2nd formant values than LA for each vowel. The distance is significantly shorter between vowels in the corner vowel pairs /i, a/ and /i, u/. PA and ES have a significantly smaller VSA compared with LA. In accordance with previous studies, alaryngeal speakers have higher formant frequency values than LA because they have a shortened vocal tract as a result of their total laryngectomy. Furthermore, the resonance frequencies are inversely related to the length of the vocal tract (on the basis of the assumption of the source filter theory). PA and ES have a smaller VSA and shorter distances between corner vowels compared with LA, which may be related to speech intelligibility. This hypothesis needs further support from future study.

Japanese Listeners' Perceptions of Phonotactic Violations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fais, Laurel; Kajikawa, Sachiyo; Werker, Janet; Amano, Shigeaki

2005-01-01

The canonical form for Japanese words is (Consonant)Vowel(Consonant) Vowel[approximately]. However, a regular process of high vowel devoicing between voiceless consonants and word-finally after voiceless consonants results in consonant clusters and word-final consonants, apparent violations of that phonotactic pattern. We investigated Japanese…

High-speed imaging of vocal fold vibrations and larynx movements within vocalizations of different vowels.

PubMed

Maurer, D; Hess, M; Gross, M

1996-12-01

Theoretic investigations of the "source-filter" model have indicated a pronounced acoustic interaction of glottal source and vocal tract. Empirical investigations of formant pattern variations apart from changes in vowel identity have demonstrated a direct relationship between the fundamental frequency and the patterns. As a consequence of both findings, independence of phonation and articulation may be limited in the speech process. Within the present study, possible interdependence of phonation and phoneme was investigated: vocal fold vibrations and larynx position for vocalizations of different vowels in a healthy man and woman were examined by high-speed light-intensified digital imaging. We found 1) different movements of the vocal folds for vocalizations of different vowel identities within one speaker and at similar fundamental frequency, and 2) constant larynx position within vocalization of one vowel identity, but different positions for vocalizations of different vowel identities. A possible relationship between the vocal fold vibrations and the phoneme is discussed.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Advancing Methods for Analyzing Dialect Variation.

PubMed

Clopper, Cynthia G

2017-07-01

Documenting and analyzing dialect variation is traditionally the domain of dialectology and sociolinguistics. However, modern approaches to acoustic analysis of dialect variation have their roots in Peterson and Barney's [(1952). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 24, 175-184] foundational work on the acoustic analysis of vowels that was published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) over 6 decades ago. Although Peterson and Barney (1952) were not primarily concerned with dialect variation, their methods laid the groundwork for the acoustic methods that are still used by scholars today to analyze vowel variation within and across languages. In more recent decades, a number of methodological advances in the study of vowel variation have been published in JASA, including work on acoustic vowel overlap and vowel normalization. The goal of this special issue was to honor that tradition by bringing together a set of papers describing the application of emerging acoustic, articulatory, and computational methods to the analysis of dialect variation in vowels and beyond.

Now you hear it, now you don't: vowel devoicing in Japanese infant-directed speech.

PubMed

Fais, Laurel; Kajikawa, Sachiyo; Amano, Shigeaki; Werker, Janet F

2010-03-01

In this work, we examine a context in which a conflict arises between two roles that infant-directed speech (IDS) plays: making language structure salient and modeling the adult form of a language. Vowel devoicing in fluent adult Japanese creates violations of the canonical Japanese consonant-vowel word structure pattern by systematically devoicing particular vowels, yielding surface consonant clusters. We measured vowel devoicing rates in a corpus of infant- and adult-directed Japanese speech, for both read and spontaneous speech, and found that the mothers in our study preserve the fluent adult form of the language and mask underlying phonological structure by devoicing vowels in infant-directed speech at virtually the same rates as those for adult-directed speech. The results highlight the complex interrelationships among the modifications to adult speech that comprise infant-directed speech, and that form the input from which infants begin to build the eventual mature form of their native language.

Speaking fundamental frequency and vowel formant frequencies: effects on perception of gender.

PubMed

Gelfer, Marylou Pausewang; Bennett, Quinn E

2013-09-01

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the contribution of vowel formant frequencies to gender identification in connected speech, the distinctiveness of vowel formants in males versus females, and how ambiguous speaking fundamental frequencies (SFFs) and vowel formants might affect perception of gender. Multivalent experimental. Speakers subjects (eight tall males, eight short females, and seven males and seven females of "middle" height) were recorded saying two carrier phrases to elicit the vowels /i/ and /α/ and a sentence. The gender/height groups were selected to (presumably) maximize formant differences between some groups (tall vs short) and minimize differences between others (middle height). Each subjects' samples were digitally altered to distinct SFFs (116, 145, 155, 165, and 207 Hz) to represent SFFs typical of average males, average females, and in an ambiguous range. Listeners judged the gender of each randomized altered speech sample. Results indicated that female speakers were perceived as female even with an SFF in the typical male range. For male speakers, gender perception was less accurate at SFFs of 165 Hz and higher. Although the ranges of vowel formants had considerable overlap between genders, significant differences in formant frequencies of males and females were seen. Vowel formants appeared to be important to perception of gender, especially for SFFs in the range of 145-165 Hz; however, formants may be a more salient cue in connected speech when compared with isolated vowels or syllables. Copyright © 2013 The Voice Foundation. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Good Phonic Generalizations for Decoding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gates, Louis

2007-01-01

An exhaustive analysis of 88,641 individual letters and letter combinations within 16,928 words drawn from the Zeno, et al. word list unveiled remarkable phonic transparency. The individual letter and letter combinations sorted into just six general categories: three basic categories of vowels (single vowels, vowel digraphs, and final…

Assessment of sexual orientation using the hemodynamic brain response to visual sexual stimuli.

PubMed

Ponseti, Jorge; Granert, Oliver; Jansen, Olav; Wolff, Stephan; Mehdorn, Hubertus; Bosinski, Hartmut; Siebner, Hartwig

2009-06-01

The assessment of sexual orientation is of importance to the diagnosis and treatment of sex offenders and paraphilic disorders. Phallometry is considered gold standard in objectifying sexual orientation, yet this measurement has been criticized because of its intrusiveness and limited reliability. To evaluate whether the spatial response pattern to sexual stimuli as revealed by a change in blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal can be used for individual classification of sexual orientation. We used a preexisting functional MRI (fMRI) data set that had been acquired in a nonclinical sample of 12 heterosexual men and 14 homosexual men. During fMRI, participants were briefly exposed to pictures of same-sex and opposite-sex genitals. Data analysis involved four steps: (i) differences in the BOLD response to female and male sexual stimuli were calculated for each subject; (ii) these contrast images were entered into a group analysis to calculate whole-brain difference maps between homosexual and heterosexual participants; (iii) a single expression value was computed for each subject expressing its correspondence to the group result; and (iv) based on these expression values, Fisher's linear discriminant analysis and the kappa-nearest neighbor classification method were used to predict the sexual orientation of each subject. Sensitivity and specificity of the two classification methods in predicting individual sexual orientation. Both classification methods performed well in predicting individual sexual orientation with a mean accuracy of >85% (Fisher's linear discriminant analysis: 92% sensitivity, 85% specificity; kappa-nearest neighbor classification: 88% sensitivity, 92% specificity). Despite the small sample size, the functional response patterns of the brain to sexual stimuli contained sufficient information to predict individual sexual orientation with high accuracy. These results suggest that fMRI-based classification methods hold promise for the diagnosis of paraphilic disorders (e.g., pedophilia).

Enhancing Vowel Discrimination Using Constructed Spelling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stewart, Katherine; Hayashi, Yusuke; Saunders, Kathryn

2010-01-01

In a computerized task, an adult with intellectual disabilities learned to construct consonant-vowel-consonant words in the presence of corresponding spoken words. During the initial assessment, the participant demonstrated high accuracy on one word group (containing the vowel-consonant units "it" and "un") but low accuracy on the other group…

Interspeaker Variability in Hard Palate Morphology and Vowel Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lammert, Adam; Proctor, Michael; Narayanan, Shrikanth

2013-01-01

Purpose: Differences in vocal tract morphology have the potential to explain interspeaker variability in speech production. The potential acoustic impact of hard palate shape was examined in simulation, in addition to the interplay among morphology, articulation, and acoustics in real vowel production data. Method: High-front vowel production from…

Acoustic Analysis on the Palatalized Vowels of Modern Mongolian

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bulgantamir, Sangidkhorloo

2015-01-01

In Modern Mongolian the palatalized vowels [a?, ??, ?? ] before palatalized consonants are considered as phoneme allophones according to the most scholars. Nevertheless theses palatalized vowels have the distinctive features what could be proved by the minimal pairs and nowadays this question is open and not profoundly studied. The purpose of this…

Effects of Long-Term Tracheostomy on Spectral Characteristics of Vowel Production.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kamen, Ruth Saletsky; Watson, Ben C.

1991-01-01

Eight preschool children who underwent tracheotomy during the prelingual period were compared to matched controls on a variety of speech measures. Children with tracheotomies showed reduced acoustic vowel space, suggesting they were limited in their ability to produce extreme vocal tract configurations for vowels postdecannulation. Oral motor…

Mechanisms of Vowel Variation in African American English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holt, Yolanda Feimster

2018-01-01

Purpose: This research explored mechanisms of vowel variation in African American English by comparing 2 geographically distant groups of African American and White American English speakers for participation in the African American Shift and the Southern Vowel Shift. Method: Thirty-two male (African American: n = 16, White American controls: n =…

Children Use Vowels to Help Them Spell Consonants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hayes, Heather; Treiman, Rebecca; Kessler, Brett

2006-01-01

English spelling is highly inconsistent in terms of simple sound-to-spelling correspondences but is more consistent when context is taken into account. For example, the choice between "ch" and "tch" is determined by the preceding vowel ("coach," "roach" vs. "catch," "hatch"). We investigated children's sensitivity to vowel context when spelling…

Influences of Tone on Vowel Articulation in Mandarin Chinese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shaw, Jason A.; Chen, Wei-rong; Proctor, Michael I.; Derrick, Donald

2016-01-01

Purpose: Models of speech production often abstract away from shared physiology in pitch control and lingual articulation, positing independent control of tone and vowel units. We assess the validity of this assumption in Mandarin Chinese by evaluating the stability of lingual articulation for vowels across variation in tone. Method:…

NON-GRAMMATICAL APOPHONY IN ENGLISH.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

WESCOTT, ROGER W.

AN APOPHONE MAY BE DEFINED GENERALLY AS A POLYSYLLABIC VOWEL SEQUENCE SUCH THAT EACH CONTAINED VOWEL IS LOWER OR MORE RETRACTED THAN THE VOWEL WHICH PRECEDES IT --"SING, SANG, SUNG," AND "CLINK, CLANK, CLUNK" ARE EXAMPLES IN ENGLISH. FOR NEARLY EVERY CASE OF GRAMMATICAL APOPHONY IN ENGLISH THERE IS A NON-GRAMMATICAL (YET…

Perceptual Adaptation of Voice Gender Discrimination with Spectrally Shifted Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Tianhao; Fu, Qian-Jie

2011-01-01

Purpose: To determine whether perceptual adaptation improves voice gender discrimination of spectrally shifted vowels and, if so, which acoustic cues contribute to the improvement. Method: Voice gender discrimination was measured for 10 normal-hearing subjects, during 5 days of adaptation to spectrally shifted vowels, produced by processing the…

Vowel Representations in the Invented Spellings of Spanish-English Bilingual Kindergartners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Raynolds, Laura B.; Uhry, Joanna K.; Brunner, Jessica

2013-01-01

The study compared the invented spelling of vowels in kindergarten native Spanish speaking children with that of English monolinguals. It examined whether, after receiving phonics instruction for short vowels, the spelling of native Spanish-speaking kindergartners would contain phonological errors that were influenced by their first language.…

Congruent and Incongruent Semantic Context Influence Vowel Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wotton, J. M.; Elvebak, R. L.; Moua, L. C.; Heggem, N. M.; Nelson, C. A.; Kirk, K. M.

2011-01-01

The influence of sentence context on the recognition of naturally spoken vowels degraded by reverberation and Gaussian noise was investigated. Target words were paired to have similar consonant sounds but different vowels (e.g., map/mop) and were embedded early in sentences which provided three types of semantic context. Fifty-eight…

Bite Block Vowel Production in Apraxia of Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jacks, Adam

2008-01-01

Purpose: This study explored vowel production and adaptation to articulatory constraints in adults with acquired apraxia of speech (AOS) plus aphasia. Method: Five adults with acquired AOS plus aphasia and 5 healthy control participants produced the vowels [iota], [epsilon], and [ash] in four word-length conditions in unconstrained and bite block…

Cross-modal associations in synaesthesia: Vowel colours in the ear of the beholder.

PubMed

Moos, Anja; Smith, Rachel; Miller, Sam R; Simmons, David R

2014-01-01

Human speech conveys many forms of information, but for some exceptional individuals (synaesthetes), listening to speech sounds can automatically induce visual percepts such as colours. In this experiment, grapheme-colour synaesthetes and controls were asked to assign colours, or shades of grey, to different vowel sounds. We then investigated whether the acoustic content of these vowel sounds influenced participants' colour and grey-shade choices. We found that both colour and grey-shade associations varied systematically with vowel changes. The colour effect was significant for both participant groups, but significantly stronger and more consistent for synaesthetes. Because not all vowel sounds that we used are "translatable" into graphemes, we conclude that acoustic-phonetic influences co-exist with established graphemic influences in the cross-modal correspondences of both synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes.

Early sound symbolism for vowel sounds.

PubMed

Spector, Ferrinne; Maurer, Daphne

2013-01-01

Children and adults consistently match some words (e.g., kiki) to jagged shapes and other words (e.g., bouba) to rounded shapes, providing evidence for non-arbitrary sound-shape mapping. In this study, we investigated the influence of vowels on sound-shape matching in toddlers, using four contrasting pairs of nonsense words differing in vowel sound (/i/ as in feet vs. /o/ as in boat) and four rounded-jagged shape pairs. Crucially, we used reduplicated syllables (e.g., kiki vs. koko) rather than confounding vowel sound with consonant context and syllable variability (e.g., kiki vs. bouba). Toddlers consistently matched words with /o/ to rounded shapes and words with /i/ to jagged shapes (p < 0.01). The results suggest that there may be naturally biased correspondences between vowel sound and shape.

Early sound symbolism for vowel sounds

PubMed Central

Spector, Ferrinne; Maurer, Daphne

2013-01-01

Children and adults consistently match some words (e.g., kiki) to jagged shapes and other words (e.g., bouba) to rounded shapes, providing evidence for non-arbitrary sound–shape mapping. In this study, we investigated the influence of vowels on sound–shape matching in toddlers, using four contrasting pairs of nonsense words differing in vowel sound (/i/ as in feet vs. /o/ as in boat) and four rounded–jagged shape pairs. Crucially, we used reduplicated syllables (e.g., kiki vs. koko) rather than confounding vowel sound with consonant context and syllable variability (e.g., kiki vs. bouba). Toddlers consistently matched words with /o/ to rounded shapes and words with /i/ to jagged shapes (p < 0.01). The results suggest that there may be naturally biased correspondences between vowel sound and shape. PMID:24349684

Vowel change across three age groups of speakers in three regional varieties of American English

PubMed Central

Jacewicz, Ewa; Fox, Robert A.; Salmons, Joseph

2011-01-01

This acoustic study examines sound (vowel) change in apparent time across three successive generations of 123 adult female speakers ranging in age from 20 to 65 years old, representing three regional varieties of American English, typical of western North Carolina, central Ohio and southeastern Wisconsin. A set of acoustic measures characterized the dynamic nature of formant trajectories, the amount of spectral change over the course of vowel duration and the position of the spectral centroid. The study found a set of systematic changes to /I, ε, æ/ including positional changes in the acoustic space (mostly lowering of the vowels) and significant variation in formant dynamics (increased monophthongization). This common sound change is evident in both emphatic (articulated clearly) and nonemphatic (casual) productions and occurs regardless of dialect-specific vowel dispersions in the vowel space. The cross-generational and cross-dialectal patterns of variation found here support an earlier report by Jacewicz, Fox, and Salmons (2011) which found this recent development in these three dialect regions in isolated citation-form words. While confirming the new North American Shift in different styles of production, the study underscores the importance of addressing the stress-related variation in vowel production in a careful and valid assessment of sound change. PMID:22125350

Locus equations and coarticulation in three Australian languages.

PubMed

Graetzer, Simone; Fletcher, Janet; Hajek, John

2015-02-01

Locus equations were applied to F2 data for bilabial, alveolar, retroflex, palatal, and velar plosives in three Australian languages. In addition, F2 variance at the vowel-consonant boundary, and, by extension, consonantal coarticulatory sensitivity, was measured. The locus equation slopes revealed that there were place-dependent differences in the magnitude of vowel-to-consonant coarticulation. As in previous studies, the non-coronal (bilabial and velar) consonants tended to be associated with the highest slopes, palatal consonants tended to be associated with the lowest slopes, and alveolar and retroflex slopes tended to be low to intermediate. Similarly, F2 variance measurements indicated that non-coronals displayed greater coarticulatory sensitivity to adjacent vowels than did coronals. Thus, both the magnitude of vowel-to-consonant coarticulation and the magnitude of consonantal coarticulatory sensitivity were seen to vary inversely with the magnitude of consonantal articulatory constraint. The findings indicated that, unlike results reported previously for European languages such as English, anticipatory vowel-to-consonant coarticulation tends to exceed carryover coarticulation in these Australian languages. Accordingly, on the F2 variance measure, consonants tended to be more sensitive to the coarticulatory effects of the following vowel. Prosodic prominence of vowels was a less significant factor in general, although certain language-specific patterns were observed.

A comparison of vowel productions in prelingually deaf children using cochlear implants, severe hearing-impaired children using conventional hearing aids and normal-hearing children.

PubMed

Baudonck, Nele; Van Lierde, K; Dhooge, I; Corthals, P

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study was to compare vowel productions by deaf cochlear implant (CI) children, hearing-impaired hearing aid (HA) children and normal-hearing (NH) children. 73 children [mean age: 9;14 years (years;months)] participated: 40 deaf CI children, 34 moderately to profoundly hearing-impaired HA children and 42 NH children. For the 3 corner vowels [a], [i] and [u], F(1), F(2) and the intrasubject SD were measured using the Praat software. Spectral separation between these vowel formants and vowel space were calculated. The significant effects in the CI group all pertain to a higher intrasubject variability in formant values, whereas the significant effects in the HA group all pertain to lower formant values. Both hearing-impaired subgroups showed a tendency toward greater intervowel distances and vowel space. Several subtle deviations in the vowel production of deaf CI children and hearing-impaired HA children could be established, using a well-defined acoustic analysis. CI children as well as HA children in this study tended to overarticulate, which hypothetically can be explained by a lack of auditory feedback and an attempt to compensate it by proprioceptive feedback during articulatory maneuvers. Copyright © 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel.

The relationship between native allophonic experience with vowel duration and perception of the English tense/lax vowel contrast by Spanish and Russian listeners.

PubMed

Kondaurova, Maria V; Francis, Alexander L

2008-12-01

Two studies explored the role of native language use of an acoustic cue, vowel duration, in both native and non-native contexts in order to test the hypothesis that non-native listeners' reliance on vowel duration instead of vowel quality to distinguish the English tense/lax vowel contrast could be explained by the role of duration as a cue in native phonological contrasts. In the first experiment, native Russian, Spanish, and American English listeners identified stimuli from a beat/bit continuum varying in nine perceptually equal spectral and duration steps. English listeners relied predominantly on spectrum, but showed some reliance on duration. Russian and Spanish speakers relied entirely on duration. In the second experiment, three tests examined listeners' use of vowel duration in native contrasts. Duration was equally important for the perception of lexical stress for all three groups. However, English listeners relied more on duration as a cue to postvocalic consonant voicing than did native Spanish or Russian listeners, and Spanish listeners relied on duration more than did Russian listeners. Results suggest that, although allophonic experience may contribute to cross-language perceptual patterns, other factors such as the application of statistical learning mechanisms and the influence of language-independent psychoacoustic proclivities cannot be ruled out.

The relationship between native allophonic experience with vowel duration and perception of the English tense∕lax vowel contrast by Spanish and Russian listeners

PubMed Central

Kondaurova, Maria V.; Francis, Alexander L.

2008-01-01

Two studies explored the role of native language use of an acoustic cue, vowel duration, in both native and non-native contexts in order to test the hypothesis that non-native listeners’ reliance on vowel duration instead of vowel quality to distinguish the English tense∕lax vowel contrast could be explained by the role of duration as a cue in native phonological contrasts. In the first experiment, native Russian, Spanish, and American English listeners identified stimuli from a beat∕bit continuum varying in nine perceptually equal spectral and duration steps. English listeners relied predominantly on spectrum, but showed some reliance on duration. Russian and Spanish speakers relied entirely on duration. In the second experiment, three tests examined listeners’ use of vowel duration in native contrasts. Duration was equally important for the perception of lexical stress for all three groups. However, English listeners relied more on duration as a cue to postvocalic consonant voicing than did native Spanish or Russian listeners, and Spanish listeners relied on duration more than did Russian listeners. Results suggest that, although allophonic experience may contribute to cross-language perceptual patterns, other factors such as the application of statistical learning mechanisms and the influence of language-independent psychoacoustic proclivities cannot be ruled out. PMID:19206820

The effect of L1 orthography on non-native vowel perception.

PubMed

Escudero, Paola; Wanrooij, Karin

2010-01-01

Previous research has shown that orthography influences the learning and processing of spoken non-native words. In this paper, we examine the effect of L1 orthography on non-native sound perception. In Experiment 1, 204 Spanish learners of Dutch and a control group of 20 native speakers of Dutch were asked to classify Dutch vowel tokens by choosing from auditorily presented options, in one task, and from the orthographic representations of Dutch vowels, in a second task. The results show that vowel categorization varied across tasks: the most difficult vowels in the purely auditory task were the easiest in the orthographic task and, conversely, vowels with a relatively high success rate in the purely auditory task were poorly classified in the orthographic task. The results of Experiment 2 with 22 monolingual Peruvian Spanish listeners replicated the main results of Experiment 1 and confirmed the existence of orthographic effects. Together, the two experiments show that when listening to auditory stimuli only, native speakers of Spanish have great difficulty classifying certain Dutch vowels, regardless of the amount of experience they may have with the Dutch language. Importantly, the pairing of auditory stimuli with orthographic labels can help or hinder Spanish listeners' sound categorization, depending on the specific sound contrast.

Acoustic characteristics of different target vowels during the laryngeal telescopy.

PubMed

Shu, Min-Tsan; Lee, Kuo-Shen; Chang, Chin-Wen; Hsieh, Li-Chun; Yang, Cheng-Chien

2014-10-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the acoustic characteristics of target vowels phonated in normal voice persons while performing laryngeal telescopy. The acoustic characteristics are compared to show the extent of possible difference to speculate their impact on phonation function. Thirty-four male subjects aged 20-39 years with normal voice were included in this study. The target vowels were /i/ and /ɛ/. Recording of voice samples was done under natural phonation and during laryngeal telescopy. The acoustic analysis included the parameters of fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer and noise-to-harmonic ratio. The sound of a target vowel /ɛ/ was perceived identical in more than 90% of the subjects by the examiner and speech language pathologist during the telescopy. Both /i/ and /ɛ/ sounds showed significant difference when compared with the results under natural phonation. There was no significant difference between /i/ and /ɛ/ during the telescopy. The present study showed that change in target vowels during laryngeal telescopy makes no significant difference in the acoustic characteristics. The results may lead to the speculation that the phonation mechanism was not affected significantly by different vowels during the telescopy. This study may suggest that in the principle of comfortable phonation, introduction of the target vowels /i/ and /ɛ/ is practical. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Articulatory Changes in Vowel Production following STN DBS and Levodopa Intake in Parkinson's Disease

PubMed Central

Cantin, Léo; Prud'Homme, Michel; Langlois, Mélanie

2015-01-01

Purpose. To investigate the impact of deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus (STN DBS) and levodopa intake on vowel articulation in dysarthric speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD). Methods. Vowel articulation was assessed in seven Quebec French speakers diagnosed with idiopathic PD who underwent STN DBS. Assessments were conducted on- and off-medication, first prior to surgery and then 1 year later. All recordings were made on-stimulation. Vowel articulation was measured using acoustic vowel space and formant centralization ratio. Results. Compared to the period before surgery, vowel articulation was reduced after surgery when patients were off-medication, while it was better on-medication. The impact of levodopa intake on vowel articulation changed with STN DBS: before surgery, levodopa impaired articulation, while it no longer had a negative effect after surgery. Conclusions. These results indicate that while STN DBS could lead to a direct deterioration in articulation, it may indirectly improve it by reducing the levodopa dose required to manage motor symptoms. These findings suggest that, with respect to speech production, STN DBS and levodopa intake cannot be investigated separately because the two are intrinsically linked. Along with motor symptoms, speech production should be considered when optimizing therapeutic management of patients with PD. PMID:26558134

Some new classification methods for hyperspectral remote sensing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Du, Pei-jun; Chen, Yun-hao; Jones, Simon; Ferwerda, Jelle G.; Chen, Zhi-jun; Zhang, Hua-peng; Tan, Kun; Yin, Zuo-xia

2006-10-01

Hyperspectral Remote Sensing (HRS) is one of the most significant recent achievements of Earth Observation Technology. Classification is the most commonly employed processing methodology. In this paper three new hyperspectral RS image classification methods are analyzed. These methods are: Object-oriented FIRS image classification, HRS image classification based on information fusion and HSRS image classification by Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN). OMIS FIRS image is used as the example data. Object-oriented techniques have gained popularity for RS image classification in recent years. In such method, image segmentation is used to extract the regions from the pixel information based on homogeneity criteria at first, and spectral parameters like mean vector, texture, NDVI and spatial/shape parameters like aspect ratio, convexity, solidity, roundness and orientation for each region are calculated, finally classification of the image using the region feature vectors and also using suitable classifiers such as artificial neural network (ANN). It proves that object-oriented methods can improve classification accuracy since they utilize information and features both from the point and the neighborhood, and the processing unit is a polygon (in which all pixels are homogeneous and belong to the class). HRS image classification based on information fusion, divides all bands of the image into different groups initially, and extracts features from every group according to the properties of each group. Three levels of information fusion: data level fusion, feature level fusion and decision level fusion are used to HRS image classification. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) can perform well in RS image classification. In order to promote the advances of ANN used for HIRS image classification, Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN), the most commonly used neural network, is used to HRS image classification.

The contribution of waveform interactions to the perception of concurrent vowels.

PubMed

Assmann, P F; Summerfield, Q

1994-01-01

Models of the auditory and phonetic analysis of speech must account for the ability of listeners to extract information from speech when competing voices are present. When two synthetic vowels are presented simultaneously and monaurally, listeners can exploit cues provided by a difference in fundamental frequency (F0) between the vowels to help determine their phonemic identities. Three experiments examined the effects of stimulus duration on the perception of such "double vowels." Experiment 1 confirmed earlier findings that a difference in F0 provides a smaller advantage when the duration of the stimulus is brief (50 ms rather than 200 ms). With brief stimuli, there may be insufficient time for attentional mechanisms to switch from the "dominant" member of the pair to the "nondominant" vowel. Alternatively, brief segments may restrict the availability of cues that are distributed over the time course of a longer segment of a double vowel. In experiment 1, listeners did not perform better when the same 50-ms segment was presented four times in succession (with 100-ms silent intervals) rather than only once, suggesting that limits on attention switching do not underlie the duration effect. However, performance improved in some conditions when four successive 50-ms segments were extracted from the 200-ms double vowels and presented in sequence, again with 100-ms silent intervals. Similar improvements were observed in experiment 2 between performance with the first 50-ms segment and one or more of the other three segments when the segments were presented individually. Experiment 3 demonstrated that part of the improvement observed in experiments 1 and 2 could be attributed to waveform interactions that either reinforce or attenuate harmonics that lie near vowel formants. Such interactions were beneficial only when the difference in F0 was small (0.25-1 semitone). These results are compatible with the idea that listeners benefit from small differences in F0 by performing a sequence of analyses of different time segments of a double vowel to determine where the formants of the constituent vowels are best defined.

Discrimination of Phonemic Vowel Length by Japanese Infants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sato, Yutaka; Sogabe, Yuko; Mazuka, Reiko

2010-01-01

Japanese has a vowel duration contrast as one component of its language-specific phonemic repertory to distinguish word meanings. It is not clear, however, how a sensitivity to vowel duration can develop in a linguistic context. In the present study, using the visual habituation-dishabituation method, the authors evaluated infants' abilities to…

Cross-Linguistic Differences in the Immediate Serial Recall of Consonants versus Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kissling, Elizabeth M.

2012-01-01

The current study investigated native English and native Arabic speakers' phonological short-term memory for sequences of consonants and vowels. Phonological short-term memory was assessed in immediate serial recall tasks conducted in Arabic and English for both groups. Participants (n = 39) heard series of six consonant-vowel syllables and wrote…

Evaluating Computational Models in Cognitive Neuropsychology: The Case from the Consonant/Vowel Distinction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Knobel, Mark; Caramazza, Alfonso

2007-01-01

Caramazza et al. [Caramazza, A., Chialant, D., Capasso, R., & Miceli, G. (2000). Separable processing of consonants and vowels. "Nature," 403(6768), 428-430.] report two patients who exhibit a double dissociation between consonants and vowels in speech production. The patterning of this double dissociation cannot be explained by appealing to…

The Effects of Surgical Rapid Maxillary Expansion (SRME) on Vowel Formants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sari, Emel; Kilic, Mehmet Akif

2009-01-01

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of surgical rapid maxillary expansion (SRME) on vowel production. The subjects included 12 patients, whose speech were considered perceptually normal, that had undergone surgical RME for expansion of a narrow maxilla. They uttered the following Turkish vowels, ([a], [[epsilon

The Vietnamese Vowel System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Emerich, Giang Huong

2012-01-01

In this dissertation, I provide a new analysis of the Vietnamese vowel system as a system with fourteen monophthongs and nineteen diphthongs based on phonetic and phonological data. I propose that these Vietnamese contour vowels - /ie/, /[turned m]?/ and /uo/-should be grouped with these eleven monophthongs /i e epsilon a [turned a] ? ? [turned m]…

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…

Criteria for the Segmentation of Vowels on Duplex Oscillograms.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Naeser, Margaret A.

This paper develops criteria for the segmentation of vowels on duplex oscillograms. Previous vowel duration studies have primarily used sound spectrograms. The use of duplex oscillograms, rather than sound spectrograms, permits faster production (real time) at less expense (adding machine paper may be used). The speech signal can be more spread…

Articulatory Changes in Muscle Tension Dysphonia: Evidence of Vowel Space Expansion Following Manual Circumlaryngeal Therapy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roy, Nelson; Nissen, Shawn L.; Dromey, Christopher; Sapir, Shimon

2009-01-01

In a preliminary study, we documented significant changes in formant transitions associated with successful manual circumlaryngeal treatment (MCT) of muscle tension dysphonia (MTD), suggesting improvement in speech articulation. The present study explores further the effects of MTD on vowel articulation by means of additional vowel acoustic…

Call Me Alix, Not Elix: Vowels Are More Important than Consonants in Own-Name Recognition at 5 Months

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bouchon, Camillia; Floccia, Caroline; Fux, Thibaut; Adda-Decker, Martine; Nazzi, Thierry

2015-01-01

Consonants and vowels differ acoustically and articulatorily, but also functionally: Consonants are more relevant for lexical processing, and vowels for prosodic/syntactic processing. These functional biases could be powerful bootstrapping mechanisms for learning language, but their developmental origin remains unclear. The relative importance of…

Shallow and Deep Orthographies in Hebrew: The Role of Vowelization in Reading Development for Unvowelized Scripts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schiff, Rachel

2012-01-01

The present study explored the speed, accuracy, and reading comprehension of vowelized versus unvowelized scripts among 126 native Hebrew speaking children in second, fourth, and sixth grades. Findings indicated that second graders read and comprehended vowelized scripts significantly more accurately and more quickly than unvowelized scripts,…

Acoustic Typology of Vowel Inventories and Dispersion Theory: Insights from a Large Cross-Linguistic Corpus

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Becker-Kristal, Roy

2010-01-01

This dissertation examines the relationship between the structural, phonemic properties of vowel inventories and their acoustic phonetic realization, with particular focus on the adequacy of Dispersion Theory, which maintains that inventories are structured so as to maximize perceptual contrast between their component vowels. In order to assess…

The Sound of Mute Vowels in Auditory Word-Stem Completion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beland, Renee; Prunet, Jean-Francois; Peretz, Isabelle

2009-01-01

Some studies have argued that orthography can influence speakers when they perform oral language tasks. Words containing a mute vowel provide well-suited stimuli to investigate this phenomenon because mute vowels, such as the second "e" in "vegetable", are present orthographically but absent phonetically. Using an auditory word-stem completion…

Cross-modal associations in synaesthesia: Vowel colours in the ear of the beholder

PubMed Central

Moos, Anja; Smith, Rachel; Miller, Sam R.; Simmons, David R.

2014-01-01

Human speech conveys many forms of information, but for some exceptional individuals (synaesthetes), listening to speech sounds can automatically induce visual percepts such as colours. In this experiment, grapheme–colour synaesthetes and controls were asked to assign colours, or shades of grey, to different vowel sounds. We then investigated whether the acoustic content of these vowel sounds influenced participants' colour and grey-shade choices. We found that both colour and grey-shade associations varied systematically with vowel changes. The colour effect was significant for both participant groups, but significantly stronger and more consistent for synaesthetes. Because not all vowel sounds that we used are “translatable” into graphemes, we conclude that acoustic–phonetic influences co-exist with established graphemic influences in the cross-modal correspondences of both synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes. PMID:25469218

Medial-Vowel Writing Difficulty in Korean Syllabic Writing: A Characteristic Sign of Alzheimer's Disease

PubMed Central

Yoon, Ji Hye; Jeong, Yong

2018-01-01

Background and Purpose Korean-speaking patients with a brain injury may show agraphia that differs from that of English-speaking patients due to the unique features of Hangul syllabic writing. Each grapheme in Hangul must be arranged from left to right and/or top to bottom within a square space to form a syllable, which requires greater visuospatial abilities than when writing the letters constituting an alphabetic writing system. Among the Hangul grapheme positions within a syllable, the position of a vowel is important because it determines the writing direction and the whole configuration in Korean syllabic writing. Due to the visuospatial characteristics of the Hangul vowel, individuals with early-onset Alzheimer's disease (EOAD) may experiences differences between the difficulties of writing Hangul vowels and consonants due to prominent visuospatial dysfunctions caused by parietal lesions. Methods Eighteen patients with EOAD and 18 age-and-education-matched healthy adults participated in this study. The participants were requested to listen to and write 30 monosyllabic characters that consisted of an initial consonant, medial vowel, and final consonant with a one-to-one phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence. We measured the writing time for each grapheme, the pause time between writing the initial consonant and the medial vowel (P1), and the pause time between writing the medial vowel and the final consonant (P2). Results All grapheme writing and pause times were significantly longer in the EOAD group than in the controls. P1 was also significantly longer than P2 in the EOAD group. Conclusions Patients with EOAD might require a higher judgment ability and longer processing time for determining the visuospatial grapheme position before writing medial vowels. This finding suggests that a longer pause time before writing medial vowels is an early marker of visuospatial dysfunction in patients with EOAD. PMID:29504296

Medial-Vowel Writing Difficulty in Korean Syllabic Writing: A Characteristic Sign of Alzheimer's Disease.

PubMed

Yoon, Ji Hye; Jeong, Yong; Na, Duk L

2018-04-01

Korean-speaking patients with a brain injury may show agraphia that differs from that of English-speaking patients due to the unique features of Hangul syllabic writing. Each grapheme in Hangul must be arranged from left to right and/or top to bottom within a square space to form a syllable, which requires greater visuospatial abilities than when writing the letters constituting an alphabetic writing system. Among the Hangul grapheme positions within a syllable, the position of a vowel is important because it determines the writing direction and the whole configuration in Korean syllabic writing. Due to the visuospatial characteristics of the Hangul vowel, individuals with early-onset Alzheimer's disease (EOAD) may experiences differences between the difficulties of writing Hangul vowels and consonants due to prominent visuospatial dysfunctions caused by parietal lesions. Eighteen patients with EOAD and 18 age-and-education-matched healthy adults participated in this study. The participants were requested to listen to and write 30 monosyllabic characters that consisted of an initial consonant, medial vowel, and final consonant with a one-to-one phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence. We measured the writing time for each grapheme, the pause time between writing the initial consonant and the medial vowel (P1), and the pause time between writing the medial vowel and the final consonant (P2). All grapheme writing and pause times were significantly longer in the EOAD group than in the controls. P1 was also significantly longer than P2 in the EOAD group. Patients with EOAD might require a higher judgment ability and longer processing time for determining the visuospatial grapheme position before writing medial vowels. This finding suggests that a longer pause time before writing medial vowels is an early marker of visuospatial dysfunction in patients with EOAD. Copyright © 2018 Korean Neurological Association.

A Comparison of Persian Vowel Production in Hearing-Impaired Children Using a Cochlear Implant and Normal-Hearing Children.

PubMed

Jafari, Narges; Drinnan, Michael; Mohamadi, Reyhane; Yadegari, Fariba; Nourbakhsh, Mandana; Torabinezhad, Farhad

2016-05-01

Normal-hearing (NH) acuity and auditory feedback control are crucial for human voice production and articulation. The lack of auditory feedback in individuals with profound hearing impairment changes their vowel production. The purpose of this study was to compare Persian vowel production in deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) and that in NH children. The participants were 20 children (12 girls and 8 boys) with age range of 5 years; 1 month to 9 years. All patients had congenital hearing loss and received a multichannel CI at an average age of 3 years. They had at least 6 months experience of their current device (CI). The control group consisted of 20 NH children (12 girls and 8 boys) with age range of 5 to 9 years old. The two groups were matched by age. Participants were native Persian speakers who were asked to produce the vowels /i/, /e/, /ӕ/, /u/, /o/, and /a/. The averages for first formant frequency (F1) and second formant frequency (F2) of six vowels were measured using Praat software (Version 5.1.44, Boersma & Weenink, 2012). The independent samples t test was conducted to assess the differences in F1 and F2 values and the area of the vowel space between the two groups. Mean values of F1 were increased in CI children; the mean values of F1 for vowel /i/ and /a/, F2 for vowel /a/ and /o/ were significantly different (P < 0.05). The changes in F1 and F2 showed a centralized vowel space for CI children. F1 is increased in CI children, probably because CI children tend to overarticulate. We hypothesis this is due to a lack of auditory feedback; there is an attempt by hearing-impaired children to compensate via proprioceptive feedback during articulatory process. Copyright © 2016 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Comprehensive 4-stage categorization of bicuspid aortic valve leaflet morphology by cardiac MRI in 386 patients.

PubMed

Murphy, I G; Collins, J; Powell, A; Markl, M; McCarthy, P; Malaisrie, S C; Carr, J C; Barker, A J

2017-08-01

Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) disease is heterogeneous and related to valve dysfunction and aortopathy. Appropriate follow up and surveillance of patients with BAV may depend on correct phenotypic categorization. There are multiple classification schemes, however a need exists to comprehensively capture commissure fusion, leaflet asymmetry, and valve orifice orientation. Our aim was to develop a BAV classification scheme for use at MRI to ascertain the frequency of different phenotypes and the consistency of BAV classification. The BAV classification scheme builds on the Sievers surgical BAV classification, adding valve orifice orientation, partial leaflet fusion and leaflet asymmetry. A single observer successfully applied this classification to 386 of 398 Cardiac MRI studies. Repeatability of categorization was ascertained with intraobserver and interobserver kappa scores. Sensitivity and specificity of MRI findings was determined from operative reports, where available. Fusion of the right and left leaflets accounted for over half of all cases. Partial leaflet fusion was seen in 46% of patients. Good interobserver agreement was seen for orientation of the valve opening (κ = 0.90), type (κ = 0.72) and presence of partial fusion (κ = 0.83, p < 0.0001). Retrospective review of operative notes showed sensitivity and specificity for orientation (90, 93%) and for Sievers type (73, 87%). The proposed BAV classification schema was assessed by MRI for its reliability to classify valve morphology in addition to illustrating the wide heterogeneity of leaflet size, orifice orientation, and commissural fusion. The classification may be helpful in further understanding the relationship between valve morphology, flow derangement and aortopathy.

Analysis of Acoustic Features in Speakers with Cognitive Disorders and Speech Impairments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Saz, Oscar; Simón, Javier; Rodríguez, W. Ricardo; Lleida, Eduardo; Vaquero, Carlos

2009-12-01

This work presents the results in the analysis of the acoustic features (formants and the three suprasegmental features: tone, intensity and duration) of the vowel production in a group of 14 young speakers suffering different kinds of speech impairments due to physical and cognitive disorders. A corpus with unimpaired children's speech is used to determine the reference values for these features in speakers without any kind of speech impairment within the same domain of the impaired speakers; this is 57 isolated words. The signal processing to extract the formant and pitch values is based on a Linear Prediction Coefficients (LPCs) analysis of the segments considered as vowels in a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based Viterbi forced alignment. Intensity and duration are also based in the outcome of the automated segmentation. As main conclusion of the work, it is shown that intelligibility of the vowel production is lowered in impaired speakers even when the vowel is perceived as correct by human labelers. The decrease in intelligibility is due to a 30% of increase in confusability in the formants map, a reduction of 50% in the discriminative power in energy between stressed and unstressed vowels and to a 50% increase of the standard deviation in the length of the vowels. On the other hand, impaired speakers keep good control of tone in the production of stressed and unstressed vowels.

A one-year longitudinal study of English and Japanese vowel production by Japanese adults and children in an English-speaking setting

PubMed Central

Oh, Grace E.; Guion-Anderson, Susan; Aoyama, Katsura; Flege, James E.; Akahane-Yamada, Reiko; Yamada, Tsuneo

2011-01-01

The effect of age of acquisition on first- and second-language vowel production was investigated. Eight English vowels were produced by Native Japanese (NJ) adults and children as well as by age-matched Native English (NE) adults and children. Productions were recorded shortly after the NJ participants’ arrival in the USA and then one year later. In agreement with previous investigations [Aoyama, et al., J. Phon. 32, 233–250 (2004)], children were able to learn more, leading to higher accuracy than adults in a year’s time. Based on the spectral quality and duration comparisons, NJ adults had more accurate production at Time 1, but showed no improvement over time. The NJ children’s productions, however, showed significant differences from the NE children’s for English “new” vowels /ɪ/, /ε/, /ɑ/, /ʌ/ and /ʊ/ at Time 1, but produced all eight vowels in a native-like manner at Time 2. An examination of NJ speakers’ productions of Japanese /i/, /a/, /u/ over time revealed significant changes for the NJ Child Group only. Japanese /i/ and /a/ showed changes in production that can be related to second language (L2) learning. The results suggest that L2 vowel production is affected importantly by age of acquisition and that there is a dynamic interaction, whereby the first and second language vowels affect each other. PMID:21603058

Electrophysiological correlates of grapheme-phoneme conversion.

PubMed

Huang, Koongliang; Itoh, Kosuke; Suwazono, Shugo; Nakada, Tsutomu

2004-08-19

The cortical processes underlying grapheme-phoneme conversion were investigated by event-related potentials (ERPs). The task consisted of silent reading or vowel-matching of three Japanese hiragana characters, each representing a consonant-vowel syllable. At earlier latencies, typical components of the visual ERP, namely, P1 (110 ms), N1 (170 ms) and P2 (300 ms), were elicited in the temporo-occipital area for both tasks as well as control task (observing the orthographic shapes of three Korean characters). Following these earlier components, two sustained negativities were identified. The earlier sustained negativity, referred here to as SN1, was found in both the silent-reading and vowel-matching task but not in the control task. The scalp distribution of SN1 was over the left occipito-temporal area, with maximum amplitude over O1. The amplitude of SN1 was larger in the vowel-matching task compared to the silent-reading task, consistent with previous reports that ERP amplitude correlates with task difficulty. SN2, the later sustained negativity, was only observed in the vowel-matching task. The scalp distribution of SN2 was over the midsagittal centro-parietal area with maximum amplitude over Cz. Elicitation of SN2 in the vowel-matching task suggested that the vowel-matching task requires a wider range of neural activities exceeding the established conventional area of language processing.

[Pilot study of the acoustic values of the vowels in Spanish as indicators of the severity of dysarthria].

PubMed

Delgado-Hernandez, J

2017-02-01

The acoustic analysis is a tool that provides objective data on changes of speech in dysarthria. To evaluate, in the ataxic dysarthria, the relationship between the vowel space area (VSA), the formant centralization ratio (FCR) and the mean of the primary distances with the speech intelligibility. A sample of fourteen Spanish speakers, ten with dysarthria and four controls, was used. The values of first and second formants in 140 vowels extracted of 140 words were analyzed. To calculate the level of intelligibility seven listeners were involved and a task of identification verbal stimuli was used. The dysarthric subjects have less contrast between middle and high vowels and between back vowels. Significant differences in the VSA, FCR and mean of the primary distances compared to control subjects (p = 0.007, 0.005 and 0.030, respectively) are observed. Regression analysis show the relationship between VSA and the mean of primary distances with the level of speech intelligibility (r = 0.60 and 0.74, respectively). Ataxic dysarthria subjects have lower contrast and vowel centralization in carrying out the vowels. The acoustic measures studied in this preliminary work have a high sensitivity in the detection of dysarthria but only the VSA and the mean of primary distances provide information on the severity of this type of speech disturbance.

The Interplay between Input and Initial Biases: Asymmetries in Vowel Perception during the First Year of Life

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pons, Ferran; Albareda-Castellot, Barbara; Sebastian-Galles, Nuria

2012-01-01

Vowels with extreme articulatory-acoustic properties act as natural referents. Infant perceptual asymmetries point to an underlying bias favoring these referent vowels. However, as language experience is gathered, distributional frequency of speech sounds could modify this initial bias. The perception of the /i/-/e/ contrast was explored in 144…

Directional Asymmetries in Vowel Perception of Adult Nonnative Listeners Do Not Change over Time with Language Experience

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kriengwatana, Buddhamas Pralle; Escudero, Paola

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study tested an assumption of the Natural Referent Vowel (Polka & Bohn, 2011) framework, namely, that directional asymmetries in adult vowel perception can be influenced by language experience. Method: Data from participants reported in Escudero and Williams (2014) were analyzed. Spanish participants categorized the Dutch vowels…

Predicting Reading in Vowelized and Unvowelized Arabic Script: An Investigation of Reading in First and Second Grades

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Asadi, Ibrahim A.; Khateb, Asaid

2017-01-01

This study examined the orthographic transparency of Arabic by investigating the contribution of phonological awareness (PA), vocabulary, and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) to reading vowelized and unvowelized words. The results from first and second grade children showed that PA contribution was similar in the vowelized and unvowelized…

Vowel Acoustic Space Development in Children: A Synthesis of Acoustic and Anatomic Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vorperian, Houri K.; Kent, Ray D.

2007-01-01

Purpose: This article integrates published acoustic data on the development of vowel production. Age specific data on formant frequencies are considered in the light of information on the development of the vocal tract (VT) to create an anatomic-acoustic description of the maturation of the vowel acoustic space for English. Method: Literature…

Phonology, Decoding, and Lexical Compensation in Vowel Spelling Errors Made by Children with Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bernstein, Stuart E.

2009-01-01

A descriptive study of vowel spelling errors made by children first diagnosed with dyslexia (n = 79) revealed that phonological errors, such as "bet" for "bat", outnumbered orthographic errors, such as "bate" for "bait". These errors were more frequent in nonwords than words, suggesting that lexical context helps with vowel spelling. In a second…

Intersensory Redundancy Facilitates Learning of Arbitrary Relations between Vowel Sounds and Objects in Seven-Month-Old Infants.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gogate, Lakshmi J.; Bahrick, Lorraine E.

1998-01-01

Investigated 7-month olds' ability to relate vowel sounds with objects when intersensory redundancy was present versus absent. Found that infants detected a mismatch in the vowel-object pairs in the moving-synchronous condition but not in the still or moving-asynchronous condition, demonstrating that temporal synchrony between vocalizations and…

Now You Hear It, Now You Don't: Vowel Devoicing in Japanese Infant-Directed Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fais, Laurel; Kajikawa, Sachiyo; Amano, Shigeaki; Werker, Janet F.

2010-01-01

In this work, we examine a context in which a conflict arises between two roles that infant-directed speech (IDS) plays: making language structure salient and modeling the adult form of a language. Vowel devoicing in fluent adult Japanese creates violations of the canonical Japanese consonant-vowel word structure pattern by systematically…

Perceptual Training of Second-Language Vowels: Does Musical Ability Play a Role?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ghaffarvand Mokari, Payam; Werner, Stefan

2018-01-01

The present study attempts to extend the research on the effects of phonetic training on the production and perception of second-language (L2) vowels. We also examined whether success in learning L2 vowels through high-variability intensive phonetic training is related to the learners' general musical abilities. Forty Azerbaijani learners of…

Toward a Systematic Evaluation of Vowel Target Events across Speech Tasks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kuo, Christina

2011-01-01

The core objective of this study was to examine whether acoustic variability of vowel production in American English, across speaking tasks, is systematic. Ten male speakers who spoke a relatively homogeneous Wisconsin dialect produced eight monophthong vowels (in hVd and CVC contexts) in four speaking tasks, including clear-speech, citation form,…

Neural Correlates of Temporal Auditory Processing in Developmental Dyslexia during German Vowel Length Discrimination: An fMRI Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Steinbrink, Claudia; Groth, Katarina; Lachmann, Thomas; Riecker, Axel

2012-01-01

This fMRI study investigated phonological vs. auditory temporal processing in developmental dyslexia by means of a German vowel length discrimination paradigm (Groth, Lachmann, Riecker, Muthmann, & Steinbrink, 2011). Behavioral and fMRI data were collected from dyslexics and controls while performing same-different judgments of vowel duration in…

Multichannel Compression: Effects of Reduced Spectral Contrast on Vowel Identification

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bor, Stephanie; Souza, Pamela; Wright, Richard

2008-01-01

Purpose: To clarify if large numbers of wide dynamic range compression channels provide advantages for vowel identification and to measure its acoustic effects. Methods: Eight vowels produced by 12 talkers in the /hVd/ context were compressed using 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 channels. Formant contrast indices (mean formant peak minus mean formant trough;…

Quantitative and Descriptive Comparison of Four Acoustic Analysis Systems: Vowel Measurements

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burris, Carlyn; Vorperian, Houri K.; Fourakis, Marios; Kent, Ray D.; Bolt, Daniel M.

2014-01-01

Purpose: This study examines accuracy and comparability of 4 trademarked acoustic analysis software packages (AASPs): Praat, WaveSurfer, TF32, and CSL by using synthesized and natural vowels. Features of AASPs are also described. Method: Synthesized and natural vowels were analyzed using each of the AASP's default settings to secure 9…

Morphological Parsing and the Use of Segmentation Cues in Reading Finnish Compounds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bertram, Raymond; Pollatsek, Alexander; Hyona, Jukka

2004-01-01

This eye movement study investigated the use of two types of segmentation cues in processing long Finnish compounds. The cues were related to the vowel quality properties of the constituents and properties of the consonant starting the second constituent. In Finnish, front vowels never appear with back vowels in a lexeme, but different quality…

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…

Early and Late Spanish-English Bilingual Adults' Perception of American English Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baigorri, Miriam

2016-01-01

Increasing numbers of Hispanic immigrants are entering the US (US Census Bureau, 2011) and are learning American English (AE) as a second language (L2). Many may experience difficulty in understanding AE. Accurate perception of AE vowels is important because vowels carry a large part of the speech signal (Kewley-Port, Burkle, & Lee, 2007). The…

Phonological Representations in Children's Native and Non-native Lexicon

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Simon, Ellen; Sjerps, Matthias J.; Fikkert, Paula

2014-01-01

This study investigated the phonological representations of vowels in children's native and non-native lexicons. Two experiments were mispronunciation tasks (i.e., a vowel in words was substituted by another vowel from the same language). These were carried out by Dutch-speaking 9-12-year-old children and Dutch-speaking adults, in their…

Characteristics of the Lax Vowel Space in Dysarthria

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tjaden, Kris; Rivera, Deanna; Wilding, Gregory; Turner, Greg S.

2005-01-01

It has been hypothesized that lax vowels may be relatively unaffected by dysarthria, owing to the reduced vocal tract shapes required for these phonetic events (G. S. Turner, K. Tjaden, & G. Weismer, 1995). It also has been suggested that lax vowels may be especially susceptible to speech mode effects (M. A. Picheny, N. I. Durlach, & L. D. Braida,…

Reverberation impairs brainstem temporal representations of voiced vowel sounds: challenging “periodicity-tagged” segregation of competing speech in rooms

PubMed Central

Sayles, Mark; Stasiak, Arkadiusz; Winter, Ian M.

2015-01-01

The auditory system typically processes information from concurrently active sound sources (e.g., two voices speaking at once), in the presence of multiple delayed, attenuated and distorted sound-wave reflections (reverberation). Brainstem circuits help segregate these complex acoustic mixtures into “auditory objects.” Psychophysical studies demonstrate a strong interaction between reverberation and fundamental-frequency (F0) modulation, leading to impaired segregation of competing vowels when segregation is on the basis of F0 differences. Neurophysiological studies of complex-sound segregation have concentrated on sounds with steady F0s, in anechoic environments. However, F0 modulation and reverberation are quasi-ubiquitous. We examine the ability of 129 single units in the ventral cochlear nucleus (VCN) of the anesthetized guinea pig to segregate the concurrent synthetic vowel sounds /a/ and /i/, based on temporal discharge patterns under closed-field conditions. We address the effects of added real-room reverberation, F0 modulation, and the interaction of these two factors, on brainstem neural segregation of voiced speech sounds. A firing-rate representation of single-vowels' spectral envelopes is robust to the combination of F0 modulation and reverberation: local firing-rate maxima and minima across the tonotopic array code vowel-formant structure. However, single-vowel F0-related periodicity information in shuffled inter-spike interval distributions is significantly degraded in the combined presence of reverberation and F0 modulation. Hence, segregation of double-vowels' spectral energy into two streams (corresponding to the two vowels), on the basis of temporal discharge patterns, is impaired by reverberation; specifically when F0 is modulated. All unit types (primary-like, chopper, onset) are similarly affected. These results offer neurophysiological insights to perceptual organization of complex acoustic scenes under realistically challenging listening conditions. PMID:25628545

Verbal short-term memory as an articulatory system: evidence from an alternative paradigm.

PubMed

Cheung, Him; Wooltorton, Lana

2002-01-01

In a series of experiments, the role of articulatory rehearsal in verbal [corrected] short-term memory was examined via a shadowing-plus-recall paradigm. In this paradigm, subjects shadowed a word target presented closely after an auditory memory list before they recalled the list. The phonological relationship between the shadowing target and the final item on the memory list was manipulated. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that targets sounding similar to the list-final memory item generally took longer to shadow than unrelated targets. This inhibitory effect of phonological relatedness was more pronounced with tense- than lax-vowel pseudoword recall lists. The interaction between vowel tenseness and phonological relatedness was replicated in Experiment 3 using shorter lists of real words. In Experiment 4, concurrent articulation was applied during list learning to block rehearsal; consequently, neither the phonological relatedness effect nor its interaction with vowel tenseness emerged. Experiments 5 and 6 manipulated the occurrence frequencies and lexicality of the recall items, respectively, instead of vowel tenseness. Unlike vowel tenseness, these non-articulatory memory factors failed to interact with the phonological relatedness effect. Experiment 7 orthogonally manipulated the vowel tenseness and frequencies of the recall items; slowing in shadowing times due to phonological relatedness was modulated by vowel tenseness but not frequency. Taken together, these results suggest that under the present paradigm, the modifying effect of vowel tenseness on the magnitude of slowing in shadowing due to phonological relatedness is indicative of a prominent articulatory component in verbal short-term retention. The shadowing-plus-recall approach avoids confounding overt recall into internal memory processing, which is an inherent problem of the traditional immediate serial recall and span tasks.

Reliable jitter and shimmer measurements in voice clinics: the relevance of vowel, gender, vocal intensity, and fundamental frequency effects in a typical clinical task.

PubMed

Brockmann, Meike; Drinnan, Michael J; Storck, Claudio; Carding, Paul N

2011-01-01

The aims of this study were to examine vowel and gender effects on jitter and shimmer in a typical clinical voice task while correcting for the confounding effects of voice sound pressure level (SPL) and fundamental frequency (F(0)). Furthermore the relative effect sizes of vowel, gender, voice SPL, and F(0) were assessed, and recommendations for clinical measurements were derived. With this cross-sectional single cohort study, 57 healthy adults (28 women, 29 men) aged 20-40 years were investigated. Three phonations of /a/, /o/, and /i/ at "normal" voice loudness were analyzed using Praat (software). The effects of vowel, gender, voice SPL, and F(0) on jitter and shimmer were assessed using descriptive and inferential (analysis of covariance) statistics. The effect sizes were determined with the eta-squared statistic. Vowels, gender, voice SPL, and F(0), each had significant effects either on jitter or on shimmer, or both. Voice SPL was the most important factor, whereas vowel, gender, and F(0) effects were comparatively small. Because men had systematically higher voice SPL, the gender effects on jitter and shimmer were smaller when correcting for SPL and F(0). Surprisingly, in clinical assessments, voice SPL has the single biggest impact on jitter and shimmer. Vowel and gender effects were clinically important, whereas fundamental frequency had a relatively small influence. Phonations at a predefined voice SPL (80 dB minimum) and vowel (/a/) would enhance measurement reliability. Furthermore, gender-specific thresholds applying these guidelines should be established. However, the efficiency of these measures should be verified and tested with patients. Copyright © 2011 The Voice Foundation. All rights reserved.

A Psychological Experiment on the Correspondence between Colors and Voiced Vowels in Non-synesthetes'

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miyahara, Tomoko; Koda, Ai; Sekiguchi, Rikuko; Amemiya, Toshihiko

In this study, we investigated the nature of cross-modal associations between colors and vowels. In Experiment 1, we examined the patterns of synesthetic correspondence between colors and vowels in a perceptual similarity experiment. The results were as follows: red was chosen for /a/, yellow was chosen for /i/, and blue was chosen for /o/ significantly more than any other vowels. Interestingly this pattern of correspondence is similar to the pattern of colored hearing reported by synesthetes. In Experiment 2, we investigated the robustness of these cross-modal associations using an implicit association test (IAT). A clear congruence effect was found. Participants responded faster in congruent conditions (/i/ and yellow, /o/ and blue) than in incongruent conditions (/i/ and blue, /o/ and yellow). This result suggests that the weak synesthesia between vowels and colors in non-synesthtes is not the fact of mere conscious choice, but reflects some underlying implicit associations.

[Object-oriented remote sensing image classification in epidemiological studies of visceral leishmaniasis in urban areas].

PubMed

Almeida, Andréa Sobral de; Werneck, Guilherme Loureiro; Resendes, Ana Paula da Costa

2014-08-01

This study explored the use of object-oriented classification of remote sensing imagery in epidemiological studies of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in urban areas. To obtain temperature and environmental information, an object-oriented classification approach was applied to Landsat 5 TM scenes from the city of Teresina, Piauí State, Brazil. For 1993-1996, VL incidence rates correlated positively with census tracts covered by dense vegetation, grass/pasture, and bare soil and negatively with areas covered by water and densely populated areas. In 2001-2006, positive correlations were found with dense vegetation, grass/pasture, bare soil, and densely populated areas and negative correlations with occupied urban areas with some vegetation. Land surface temperature correlated negatively with VL incidence in both periods. Object-oriented classification can be useful to characterize landscape features associated with VL in urban areas and to help identify risk areas in order to prioritize interventions.

The Prosodic Licensing of Coda Consonants in Early Speech: Interactions with Vowel Length

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miles, Kelly; Yuen, Ivan; Cox, Felicity; Demuth, Katherine

2016-01-01

English has a word-minimality requirement that all open-class lexical items must contain at least two moras of structure, forming a bimoraic foot (Hayes, 1995).Thus, a word with either a long vowel, or a short vowel and a coda consonant, satisfies this requirement. This raises the question of when and how young children might learn this…

/ae/ versus /?/: Vowel Fossilization in the Pronunciation of Turkish English Majors: Rehabilitation 1

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Demirezen, Mehmet

2017-01-01

In North American English (NAE) and British English, [ae] and [?] are open vowel phonemes which are articulated by a speaker easily without a build-up of air pressure. Among all English vowels, the greatest problem for most Turkish majors of English is the discrimination of [ae] and [?]. In English, [ae] is called the "short a" or ash,…

An Index of Phonic Patterns by Vowel Types. AVKO "Great Idea" Reprint Series No. 622.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCabe, Don

Intended for the use of teachers or diagnosticians, this booklet presents charts that list various phonic patterns, word families, or "rimes" associated with specific vowel patterns. Lists in the booklet are arranged according to the 14 basic vowel phonemes in English (including long a, long e, long i, long aw, short ah, and short u).…

The Processing of Consonants and Vowels during Letter Identity and Letter Position Assignment in Visual-Word Recognition: An ERP Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vergara-Martinez, Marta; Perea, Manuel; Marin, Alejandro; Carreiras, Manuel

2011-01-01

Recent research suggests that there is a processing distinction between consonants and vowels in visual-word recognition. Here we conjointly examine the time course of consonants and vowels in processes of letter identity and letter position assignment. Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read words and pseudowords in…

English Vowel Spaces Produced by Japanese Speakers: The Smaller Point Vowels' and the Greater Schwas'

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tomita, Kaoru; Yamada, Jun; Takatsuka, Shigenobu

2010-01-01

This study investigated how Japanese-speaking learners of English pronounce the three point vowels /i/, /u/, and /a/ appearing in the first and second monosyllabic words of English noun phrases, and the schwa /[image omitted]/ appearing in English disyllabic words. First and second formant (F1 and F2) values were measured for four Japanese…

Effects of Short- and Long-Term Changes in Auditory Feedback on Vowel and Sibilant Contrasts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lane, Harlan; Matthies, Melanie L.; Guenther, Frank H.; Denny, Margaret; Perkell, Joseph S.; Stockmann, Ellen; Tiede, Mark; Vick, Jennell; Zandipour, Majid

2007-01-01

Purpose: To assess the effects of short- and long-term changes in auditory feedback on vowel and sibilant contrasts and to evaluate hypotheses arising from a model of speech motor planning. Method: The perception and production of vowel and sibilant contrasts were measured in 8 postlingually deafened adults prior to activation of their cochlear…

Hiatus Resolution in Spanish: An Experimental Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Souza, Benjamin J.

2010-01-01

In Spanish, adjacent vowels across and within word boundaries are either in hiatus or form a diphthong. Generally, when either of the unstressed high vowels /i/ and /u/ appears next to any of the other vowels /e/, /a/, or /o/ the result is a diphthong (i.e., "puerta" "door" less than [pwer.ta], "miel" "honey" less than [mjel], and so on). All…

Vowel Height Allophony and Dorsal Place Contrasts in Cochabamba Quechua.

PubMed

Gallagher, Gillian

2016-01-01

This paper reports on the results of two studies investigating the role of allophony in cueing phonemic contrasts. In Cochabamba Quechua, the uvularvelar place distinction is often cued by additional differences in the height of the surrounding vowels. An acoustic study documents the lowering effect of a preceding tautomorphemic or a following heteromorphemic uvular on the high vowels /i u/. A discrimination study finds that vowel height is a significant cue to the velar-uvular place contrast. These findings support a view of contrasts as collections of distinguishing properties, as opposed to oppositions in a single distinctive feature. © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel.

The processing of consonants and vowels during letter identity and letter position assignment in visual-word recognition: an ERP study.

PubMed

Vergara-Martínez, Marta; Perea, Manuel; Marín, Alejandro; Carreiras, Manuel

2011-09-01

Recent research suggests that there is a processing distinction between consonants and vowels in visual-word recognition. Here we conjointly examine the time course of consonants and vowels in processes of letter identity and letter position assignment. Event related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read words and pseudowords in a lexical decision task. The stimuli were displayed under different conditions in a masked priming paradigm with a 50-ms SOA: (i) identity/baseline condition e.g., chocolate-CHOCOLATE); (ii) vowels-delayed condition (e.g., choc_l_te-CHOCOLATE); (iii) consonants-delayed condition (cho_o_ate-CHOCOLATE); (iv) consonants-transposed condition (cholocate-CHOCOLATE); (v) vowels-transposed condition (chocalote-CHOCOLATE), and (vi) unrelated condition (editorial-CHOCOLATE). Results showed earlier ERP effects and longer reaction times for the delayed-letter compared to the transposed-letter conditions. Furthermore, at early stages of processing, consonants may play a greater role during letter identity processing. Differences between vowels and consonants regarding letter position assignment are discussed in terms of a later phonological level involved in lexical retrieval. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Perceptual prothesis in native Spanish speakers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Theodore, Rachel M.; Schmidt, Anna M.

2003-04-01

Previous research suggests a perceptual bias exists for native phonotactics [D. Massaro and M. Cohen, Percept. Psychophys. 34, 338-348 (1983)] such that listeners report nonexistent segments when listening to stimuli that violate native phonotactics [E. Dupoux, K. Kakehi, Y. Hirose, C. Pallier, and J. Mehler, J. Exp. Psychol.: Human Percept. Perform. 25, 1568-1578 (1999)]. This study investigated how native-language experience affects second language processing, focusing on how native Spanish speakers perceive the English clusters /st/, /sp/, and /sk/, which represent phonotactically illegal forms in Spanish. To preserve native phonotactics, Spanish speakers often produce prothetic vowels before English words beginning with /s/ clusters. Is the influence of native phonotactics also present in the perception of illegal clusters? A stimuli continuum ranging from no vowel (e.g., ``sku'') to a full vowel (e.g., ``esku'') before the cluster was used. Four final vowel contexts were used for each cluster, resulting in 12 sCV and 12 VsCV nonword endpoints. English and Spanish listeners were asked to discriminate between pairs differing in vowel duration and to identify the presence or absence of a vowel before the cluster. Results will be discussed in terms of implications for theories of second language speech perception.

Variability in English vowels is comparable in articulation and acoustics

PubMed Central

Noiray, Aude; Iskarous, Khalil; Whalen, D. H.

2014-01-01

The nature of the links between speech production and perception has been the subject of longstanding debate. The present study investigated the articulatory parameter of tongue height and the acoustic F1-F0 difference for the phonological distinction of vowel height in American English front vowels. Multiple repetitions of /i, ɪ, e, ε, æ/ in [(h)Vd] sequences were recorded in seven adult speakers. Articulatory (ultrasound) and acoustic data were collected simultaneously to provide a direct comparison of variability in vowel production in both domains. Results showed idiosyncratic patterns of articulation for contrasting the three front vowel pairs /i-ɪ/, /e-ε/ and /ε-æ/ across subjects, with the degree of variability in vowel articulation comparable to that observed in the acoustics for all seven participants. However, contrary to what was expected, some speakers showed reversals for tongue height for /ɪ/-/e/ that was also reflected in acoustics with F1 higher for /ɪ/ than for /e/. The data suggest the phonological distinction of height is conveyed via speaker-specific articulatory-acoustic patterns that do not strictly match features descriptions. However, the acoustic signal is faithful to the articulatory configuration that generated it, carrying the crucial information for perceptual contrast. PMID:25101144

Vowel space development in a child acquiring English and Spanish from birth

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Andruski, Jean; Kim, Sahyang; Nathan, Geoffrey; Casielles, Eugenia; Work, Richard

2005-04-01

To date, research on bilingual first language acquisition has tended to focus on the development of higher levels of language, with relatively few analyses of the acoustic characteristics of bilingual infants' and childrens' speech. Since monolingual infants begin to show perceptual divisions of vowel space that resemble adult native speakers divisions by about 6 months of age [Kuhl et al., Science 255, 606-608 (1992)], bilingual childrens' vowel production may provide evidence of their awareness of language differences relatively early during language development. This paper will examine the development of vowel categories in a child whose mother is a native speaker of Castilian Spanish, and whose father is a native speaker of American English. Each parent speaks to the child only in her/his native language. For this study, recordings made at the ages of 2;5 and 2;10 were analyzed and F1-F2 measurements were made of vowels from the stressed syllables of content words. The development of vowel space is compared across ages within each language, and across languages at each age. In addition, the child's productions are compared with the mother's and father's vocalic productions, which provide the predominant input in Spanish and English respectively.

The Acoustic Correlates of Breathy Voice: a Study of Source-Vowel INTERACTION{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00} {00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00} {00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00} {00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}{00}.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, Yeong-Fen Emily

This thesis is the result of an investigation of the source-vowel interaction from the point of view of perception. Major objectives include the identification of the acoustic correlates of breathy voice and the disclosure of the interdependent relationship between the perception of vowel identity and breathiness. Two experiments were conducted to achieve these objectives. In the first experiment, voice samples from one control group and seven patient groups were compared. The control group consisted of five female and five male adults. The ten normals were recruited to perform a sustained vowel phonation task with constant pitch and loudness. The voice samples of seventy patients were retrieved from a hospital data base, with vowels extracted from sentences repeated by patients at their habitual pitch and loudness. The seven patient groups were divided, based on a unique combination of patients' measures on mean flow rate and glottal resistance. Eighteen acoustic variables were treated with a three-way (Gender x Group x Vowel) ANOVA. Parameters showing a significant female-male difference as well as group differences, especially those between the presumed breathy group and the other groups, were identified as relevant to the distinction of breathy voice. As a result, F1-F3 amplitude difference and slope were found to be most effective in distinguishing breathy voice. Other acoustic correlates of breathy voice included F1 bandwidth, RMS-H1 amplitude difference, and F1-F2 amplitude difference and slope. In the second experiment, a formant synthesizer was used to generate vowel stimuli with varying spectral tilt and F1 bandwidth. Thirteen native American English speakers made dissimilarity judgements on paired stimuli in terms of vowel identity and breathiness. Listeners' perceptual vowel spaces were found to be affected by changes in the acoustic correlates of breathy voice. The threshold of detecting a change of vocal quality in the breathiness domain was also found to be vowel-dependent.

Effect of the loss of auditory feedback on segmental parameters of vowels of postlingually deafened speakers.

PubMed

Schenk, Barbara S; Baumgartner, Wolf Dieter; Hamzavi, Jafar Sasan

2003-12-01

The most obvious and best documented changes in speech of postlingually deafened speakers are the rate, fundamental frequency, and volume (energy). These changes are due to the lack of auditory feedback. But auditory feedback affects not only the suprasegmental parameters of speech. The aim of this study was to determine the change at the segmental level of speech in terms of vowel formants. Twenty-three postlingually deafened and 18 normally hearing speakers were recorded reading a German text. The frequencies of the first and second formants and the vowel spaces of selected vowels in word-in-context condition were compared. All first formant frequencies (F1) of the postlingually deafened speakers were significantly different from those of the normally hearing people. The values of F1 were higher for the vowels /e/ (418+/-61 Hz compared with 359+/-52 Hz, P=0.006) and /o/ (459+/-58 compared with 390+/-45 Hz, P=0.0003) and lower for /a/ (765+/-115 Hz compared with 851+/-146 Hz, P=0.038). The second formant frequency (F2) only showed a significant increase for the vowel/e/(2016+/-347 Hz compared with 2279+/-250 Hz, P=0.012). The postlingually deafened people were divided into two subgroups according to duration of deafness (shorter/longer than 10 years of deafness). There was no significant difference in formant changes between the two groups. Our report demonstrated an effect of auditory feedback also on segmental features of speech of postlingually deafened people.

Direct Mapping of Acoustics to Phonology: On the Lexical Encoding of Front Rounded Vowels in L1 English-L2 French Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Darcy, Isabelle; Dekydtspotter, Laurent; Sprouse, Rex A.; Glover, Justin; Kaden, Christiane; McGuire, Michael; Scott, John H. G.

2012-01-01

It is well known that adult US-English-speaking learners of French experience difficulties acquiring high /y/-/u/ and mid /oe/-/[openo]/ front vs. back rounded vowel contrasts in French. This study examines the acquisition of these French vowel contrasts at two levels: phonetic categorization and lexical representations. An ABX categorization task…

Vowel Development in an Emergent Mandarin-English Bilingual Child: A Longitudinal Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Jing; Fox, Robert A.; Jacewicz, Ewa

2015-01-01

This longitudinal case study documents the emergence of bilingualism in a young monolingual Mandarin boy on the basis of an acoustic analysis of his vowel productions recorded via a picture-naming task over 20 months following his enrollment in an all-English (L2) preschool at the age of 3;7. The study examined (1) his initial L2 vowel space, (2)…

The Acquisition of Phonetic Details: Evidence from the Production of English Reduced Vowels by Korean Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Han, Jeong-Im; Hwang, Jong-Bai; Choi, Tae-Hwan

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the acquisition of non-contrastive phonetic details of a second language. Reduced vowels in English are realized as a schwa or barred- i depending on their phonological contexts, but Korean has no reduced vowels. Two groups of Korean learners of English who differed according to the experience of residence…

Neural Processing of Acoustic Duration and Phonological German Vowel Length: Time Courses of Evoked Fields in Response to Speech and Nonspeech Signals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tomaschek, Fabian; Truckenbrodt, Hubert; Hertrich, Ingo

2013-01-01

Recent experiments showed that the perception of vowel length by German listeners exhibits the characteristics of categorical perception. The present study sought to find the neural activity reflecting categorical vowel length and the short-long boundary by examining the processing of non-contrastive durations and categorical length using MEG.…

Objected-oriented remote sensing image classification method based on geographic ontology model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chu, Z.; Liu, Z. J.; Gu, H. Y.

2016-11-01

Nowadays, with the development of high resolution remote sensing image and the wide application of laser point cloud data, proceeding objected-oriented remote sensing classification based on the characteristic knowledge of multi-source spatial data has been an important trend on the field of remote sensing image classification, which gradually replaced the traditional method through improving algorithm to optimize image classification results. For this purpose, the paper puts forward a remote sensing image classification method that uses the he characteristic knowledge of multi-source spatial data to build the geographic ontology semantic network model, and carries out the objected-oriented classification experiment to implement urban features classification, the experiment uses protégé software which is developed by Stanford University in the United States, and intelligent image analysis software—eCognition software as the experiment platform, uses hyperspectral image and Lidar data that is obtained through flight in DaFeng City of JiangSu as the main data source, first of all, the experiment uses hyperspectral image to obtain feature knowledge of remote sensing image and related special index, the second, the experiment uses Lidar data to generate nDSM(Normalized DSM, Normalized Digital Surface Model),obtaining elevation information, the last, the experiment bases image feature knowledge, special index and elevation information to build the geographic ontology semantic network model that implement urban features classification, the experiment results show that, this method is significantly higher than the traditional classification algorithm on classification accuracy, especially it performs more evidently on the respect of building classification. The method not only considers the advantage of multi-source spatial data, for example, remote sensing image, Lidar data and so on, but also realizes multi-source spatial data knowledge integration and application of the knowledge to the field of remote sensing image classification, which provides an effective way for objected-oriented remote sensing image classification in the future.

Creating a Canonical Scientific and Technical Information Classification System for NCSTRL+

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Tiffany, Melissa E.; Nelson, Michael L.

1998-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to describe the new subject classification system for the NCSTRL+ project. NCSTRL+ is a canonical digital library (DL) based on the Networked Computer Science Technical Report Library (NCSTRL). The current NCSTRL+ classification system uses the NASA Scientific and Technical (STI) subject classifications, which has a bias towards the aerospace, aeronautics, and engineering disciplines. Examination of other scientific and technical information classification systems showed similar discipline-centric weaknesses. Traditional, library-oriented classification systems represented all disciplines, but were too generalized to serve the needs of a scientific and technically oriented digital library. Lack of a suitable existing classification system led to the creation of a lightweight, balanced, general classification system that allows the mapping of more specialized classification schemes into the new framework. We have developed the following classification system to give equal weight to all STI disciplines, while being compact and lightweight.

Different Timescales for the Neural Coding of Consonant and Vowel Sounds

PubMed Central

Perez, Claudia A.; Engineer, Crystal T.; Jakkamsetti, Vikram; Carraway, Ryan S.; Perry, Matthew S.

2013-01-01

Psychophysical, clinical, and imaging evidence suggests that consonant and vowel sounds have distinct neural representations. This study tests the hypothesis that consonant and vowel sounds are represented on different timescales within the same population of neurons by comparing behavioral discrimination with neural discrimination based on activity recorded in rat inferior colliculus and primary auditory cortex. Performance on 9 vowel discrimination tasks was highly correlated with neural discrimination based on spike count and was not correlated when spike timing was preserved. In contrast, performance on 11 consonant discrimination tasks was highly correlated with neural discrimination when spike timing was preserved and not when spike timing was eliminated. These results suggest that in the early stages of auditory processing, spike count encodes vowel sounds and spike timing encodes consonant sounds. These distinct coding strategies likely contribute to the robust nature of speech sound representations and may help explain some aspects of developmental and acquired speech processing disorders. PMID:22426334

Gender differences in global-local perception? Evidence from orientation and shape judgments.

PubMed

Kimchi, Ruth; Amishav, Rama; Sulitzeanu-Kenan, Anat

2009-01-01

Direct examinations of gender differences in global-local processing are sparse, and the results are inconsistent. We examined this issue with a visuospatial judgment task and with a shape judgment task. Women and men were presented with hierarchical stimuli that varied in closure (open or closed shape) or in line orientation (oblique or horizontal/vertical) at the global or local level. The task was to classify the stimuli on the basis of the variation at the global level (global classification) or at the local level (local classification). Women's classification by closure (global or local) was more accurate than men's for stimuli that varied in closure on both levels, suggesting a female advantage in discriminating shape properties. No gender differences were observed in global-local processing bias. Women and men exhibited a global advantage, and they did not differ in their speed of global or local classification, with only one exception. Women were slower than men in local classification by orientation when the to-be-classified lines were embedded in a global line with a different orientation. This finding suggests that women are more distracted than men by misleading global oriented context when performing local orientation judgments, perhaps because women and men differ in their ability to use cognitive schemes to compensate for the distracting effects of the global context. Our findings further suggest that whether or not gender differences arise depends not only on the nature of the visual task but also on the visual context.

Mapping the Speech Code: Cortical Responses Linking the Perception and Production of Vowels

PubMed Central

Schuerman, William L.; Meyer, Antje S.; McQueen, James M.

2017-01-01

The acoustic realization of speech is constrained by the physical mechanisms by which it is produced. Yet for speech perception, the degree to which listeners utilize experience derived from speech production has long been debated. In the present study, we examined how sensorimotor adaptation during production may affect perception, and how this relationship may be reflected in early vs. late electrophysiological responses. Participants first performed a baseline speech production task, followed by a vowel categorization task during which EEG responses were recorded. In a subsequent speech production task, half the participants received shifted auditory feedback, leading most to alter their articulations. This was followed by a second, post-training vowel categorization task. We compared changes in vowel production to both behavioral and electrophysiological changes in vowel perception. No differences in phonetic categorization were observed between groups receiving altered or unaltered feedback. However, exploratory analyses revealed correlations between vocal motor behavior and phonetic categorization. EEG analyses revealed correlations between vocal motor behavior and cortical responses in both early and late time windows. These results suggest that participants' recent production behavior influenced subsequent vowel perception. We suggest that the change in perception can be best characterized as a mapping of acoustics onto articulation. PMID:28439232

The Korean Prevocalic Palatal Glide: A Comparison with the Russian Glide and Palatalization.

PubMed

Suh, Yunju; Hwang, Jiwon

2016-01-01

Phonetic studies of the Korean prevocalic glides have often suggested that they are shorter in duration than those of languages like English, and lack a prolonged steady state. In addition, the formant frequencies of the Korean labiovelar glide are reported to be greatly influenced by the following vowel. In this study the Korean prevocalic palatal glide is investigated vis-à-vis the two phonologically similar configurations of another language - the glide /j/ and the secondary palatalization of Russian, with regard to the inherent duration of the glide component, F2 trajectory, vowel-to-glide coarticulation and glide-to-vowel coarticulation. It is revealed that the Korean palatal glide is closer to the Russian palatalization in duration and F2 trajectory, indicating a lack of steady state, and to the Russian segmental glide in the vowel-to-glide coarticulation degree. When the glide-to-vowel coarticulation is considered, the Korean palatal glide is distinguished from both Russian categories. The results suggest that both the Korean palatal glide and the Russian palatalization involve significant articulatory overlap, the former with the vowel and the latter with the consonant. Phonological implications of such a difference in coarticulation pattern are discussed, as well as the comparison between the Korean labiovelar and palatal glides. © 2016 S. Karger AG, Basel.

On the nature of consonant/vowel differences in letter position coding: Evidence from developing and adult readers.

PubMed

Comesaña, Montserrat; Soares, Ana P; Marcet, Ana; Perea, Manuel

2016-11-01

In skilled adult readers, transposed-letter effects (jugde-JUDGE) are greater for consonant than for vowel transpositions. These differences are often attributed to phonological rather than orthographic processing. To examine this issue, we employed a scenario in which phonological involvement varies as a function of reading experience: A masked priming lexical decision task with 50-ms primes in adult and developing readers. Indeed, masked phonological priming at this prime duration has been consistently reported in adults, but not in developing readers (Davis, Castles, & Iakovidis, 1998). Thus, if consonant/vowel asymmetries in letter position coding with adults are due to phonological influences, transposed-letter priming should occur for both consonant and vowel transpositions in developing readers. Results with adults (Experiment 1) replicated the usual consonant/vowel asymmetry in transposed-letter priming. In contrast, no signs of an asymmetry were found with developing readers (Experiments 2-3). However, Experiments 1-3 did not directly test the existence of phonological involvement. To study this question, Experiment 4 manipulated the phonological prime-target relationship in developing readers. As expected, we found no signs of masked phonological priming. Thus, the present data favour an interpretation of the consonant/vowel dissociation in letter position coding as due to phonological rather than orthographic processing. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

A mathematical model of vowel identification by users of cochlear implants

PubMed Central

Sagi, Elad; Meyer, Ted A.; Kaiser, Adam R.; Teoh, Su Wooi; Svirsky, Mario A.

2010-01-01

A simple mathematical model is presented that predicts vowel identification by cochlear implant users based on these listeners’ resolving power for the mean locations of first, second, and∕or third formant energies along the implanted electrode array. This psychophysically based model provides hypotheses about the mechanism cochlear implant users employ to encode and process the input auditory signal to extract information relevant for identifying steady-state vowels. Using one free parameter, the model predicts most of the patterns of vowel confusions made by users of different cochlear implant devices and stimulation strategies, and who show widely different levels of speech perception (from near chance to near perfect). Furthermore, the model can predict results from the literature, such as Skinner, et al. [(1995). Ann. Otol. Rhinol. Laryngol. 104, 307–311] frequency mapping study, and the general trend in the vowel results of Zeng and Galvin’s [(1999). Ear Hear. 20, 60–74] studies of output electrical dynamic range reduction. The implementation of the model presented here is specific to vowel identification by cochlear implant users, but the framework of the model is more general. Computational models such as the one presented here can be useful for advancing knowledge about speech perception in hearing impaired populations, and for providing a guide for clinical research and clinical practice. PMID:20136228

Reducing language to rhythm: Amazonian Bora drummed language exploits speech rhythm for long-distance communication

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seifart, Frank; Meyer, Julien; Grawunder, Sven; Dentel, Laure

2018-04-01

Many drum communication systems around the world transmit information by emulating tonal and rhythmic patterns of spoken languages in sequences of drumbeats. Their rhythmic characteristics, in particular, have not been systematically studied so far, although understanding them represents a rare occasion for providing an original insight into the basic units of speech rhythm as selected by natural speech practices directly based on beats. Here, we analyse a corpus of Bora drum communication from the northwest Amazon, which is nowadays endangered with extinction. We show that four rhythmic units are encoded in the length of pauses between beats. We argue that these units correspond to vowel-to-vowel intervals with different numbers of consonants and vowel lengths. By contrast, aligning beats with syllables, mora or only vowel length yields inconsistent results. Moreover, we also show that Bora drummed messages conventionally select rhythmically distinct markers to further distinguish words. The two phonological tones represented in drummed speech encode only few lexical contrasts. Rhythm thus appears to crucially contribute to the intelligibility of drummed Bora. Our study provides novel evidence for the role of rhythmic structures composed of vowel-to-vowel intervals in the complex puzzle concerning the redundancy and distinctiveness of acoustic features embedded in speech.

Feedforward and feedback control in apraxia of speech: effects of noise masking on vowel production.

PubMed

Maas, Edwin; Mailend, Marja-Liisa; Guenther, Frank H

2015-04-01

This study was designed to test two hypotheses about apraxia of speech (AOS) derived from the Directions Into Velocities of Articulators (DIVA) model (Guenther et al., 2006): the feedforward system deficit hypothesis and the feedback system deficit hypothesis. The authors used noise masking to minimize auditory feedback during speech. Six speakers with AOS and aphasia, 4 with aphasia without AOS, and 2 groups of speakers without impairment (younger and older adults) participated. Acoustic measures of vowel contrast, variability, and duration were analyzed. Younger, but not older, speakers without impairment showed significantly reduced vowel contrast with noise masking. Relative to older controls, the AOS group showed longer vowel durations overall (regardless of masking condition) and a greater reduction in vowel contrast under masking conditions. There were no significant differences in variability. Three of the 6 speakers with AOS demonstrated the group pattern. Speakers with aphasia without AOS did not differ from controls in contrast, duration, or variability. The greater reduction in vowel contrast with masking noise for the AOS group is consistent with the feedforward system deficit hypothesis but not with the feedback system deficit hypothesis; however, effects were small and not present in all individual speakers with AOS. Theoretical implications and alternative interpretations of these findings are discussed.

Feedforward and Feedback Control in Apraxia of Speech: Effects of Noise Masking on Vowel Production

PubMed Central

Mailend, Marja-Liisa; Guenther, Frank H.

2015-01-01

Purpose This study was designed to test two hypotheses about apraxia of speech (AOS) derived from the Directions Into Velocities of Articulators (DIVA) model (Guenther et al., 2006): the feedforward system deficit hypothesis and the feedback system deficit hypothesis. Method The authors used noise masking to minimize auditory feedback during speech. Six speakers with AOS and aphasia, 4 with aphasia without AOS, and 2 groups of speakers without impairment (younger and older adults) participated. Acoustic measures of vowel contrast, variability, and duration were analyzed. Results Younger, but not older, speakers without impairment showed significantly reduced vowel contrast with noise masking. Relative to older controls, the AOS group showed longer vowel durations overall (regardless of masking condition) and a greater reduction in vowel contrast under masking conditions. There were no significant differences in variability. Three of the 6 speakers with AOS demonstrated the group pattern. Speakers with aphasia without AOS did not differ from controls in contrast, duration, or variability. Conclusion The greater reduction in vowel contrast with masking noise for the AOS group is consistent with the feedforward system deficit hypothesis but not with the feedback system deficit hypothesis; however, effects were small and not present in all individual speakers with AOS. Theoretical implications and alternative interpretations of these findings are discussed. PMID:25565143

Reducing language to rhythm: Amazonian Bora drummed language exploits speech rhythm for long-distance communication

PubMed Central

Grawunder, Sven; Dentel, Laure

2018-01-01

Many drum communication systems around the world transmit information by emulating tonal and rhythmic patterns of spoken languages in sequences of drumbeats. Their rhythmic characteristics, in particular, have not been systematically studied so far, although understanding them represents a rare occasion for providing an original insight into the basic units of speech rhythm as selected by natural speech practices directly based on beats. Here, we analyse a corpus of Bora drum communication from the northwest Amazon, which is nowadays endangered with extinction. We show that four rhythmic units are encoded in the length of pauses between beats. We argue that these units correspond to vowel-to-vowel intervals with different numbers of consonants and vowel lengths. By contrast, aligning beats with syllables, mora or only vowel length yields inconsistent results. Moreover, we also show that Bora drummed messages conventionally select rhythmically distinct markers to further distinguish words. The two phonological tones represented in drummed speech encode only few lexical contrasts. Rhythm thus appears to crucially contribute to the intelligibility of drummed Bora. Our study provides novel evidence for the role of rhythmic structures composed of vowel-to-vowel intervals in the complex puzzle concerning the redundancy and distinctiveness of acoustic features embedded in speech. PMID:29765620

Cross-language perception of Japanese vowel length contrasts: comparison of listeners from different first language backgrounds.

PubMed

Tsukada, Kimiko; Hirata, Yukari; Roengpitya, Rungpat

2014-06-01

The purpose of this research was to compare the perception of Japanese vowel length contrasts by 4 groups of listeners who differed in their familiarity with length contrasts in their first language (L1; i.e., American English, Italian, Japanese, and Thai). Of the 3 nonnative groups, native Thai listeners were expected to outperform American English and Italian listeners, because vowel length is contrastive in their L1. Native Italian listeners were expected to demonstrate a higher level of accuracy for length contrasts than American English listeners, because the former are familiar with consonant (but not vowel) length contrasts (i.e., singleton vs. geminate) in their L1. A 2-alternative forced-choice AXB discrimination test that included 125 trials was administered to all the participants, and the listeners' discrimination accuracy (d') was reported. As expected, Japanese listeners were more accurate than all 3 nonnative groups in their discrimination of Japanese vowel length contrasts. The 3 nonnative groups did not differ from one another in their discrimination accuracy despite varying experience with length contrasts in their L1. Only Thai listeners were more accurate in their length discrimination when the target vowel was long than when it was short. Being familiar with vowel length contrasts in L1 may affect the listeners' cross-language perception, but it does not guarantee that their L1 experience automatically results in efficient processing of length contrasts in unfamiliar languages. The extent of success may be related to how length contrasts are phonetically implemented in listeners' L1.

Central Tendency and Dispersion Measures of the Fundamental Frequencies of Four Vowels as Produced by Two Year-Old and Four-Year Children.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Monroe, Roberta Lynn

The intrinsic fundamental frequency effect among vowels is a vocalic phenomenon of adult speech in which high vowels have higher fundamental frequencies in relation to low vowels. Acoustic investigations of children's speech have shown that variability of the speech signal decreases as children's ages increase. Fundamental frequency measures have been suggested as an indirect metric for the development of laryngeal stability and coordination. Studies of the intrinsic fundamental frequency effect have been conducted among 8- and 9-year old children and in infants. The present study investigated this effect among 2- and 4-year old children. Eight 2-year old and eight 4-year old children produced four vowels, /ae/, /i/, /u/, and /a/, in CVC syllables. Three measures of fundamental frequency were taken. These were mean fundamental frequency, the intra-utterance standard deviation of the fundamental frequency, and the extent to which the cycle-to-cycle pattern of the fundamental frequency was predicted by a linear trend. An analysis of variance was performed to compare the two age groups, the four vowels, and the earlier and later repetitions of the CVC syllables. A significant difference between the two age groups was detected using the intra-utterance standard deviation of the fundamental frequency. Mean fundamental frequencies and linear trend analysis showed that voicing of the preceding consonant determined the statistical significance of the age-group comparisons. Statistically significant differences among the fundamental frequencies of the four vowels were not detected for either age group.

Speech evaluation after palatal augmentation in patients undergoing glossectomy.

PubMed

de Carvalho-Teles, Viviane; Sennes, Luiz Ubirajara; Gielow, Ingrid

2008-10-01

To assess, in patients undergoing glossectomy, the influence of the palatal augmentation prosthesis on the speech intelligibility and acoustic spectrographic characteristics of the formants of oral vowels in Brazilian Portuguese, specifically the first 3 formants (F1 [/a,e,u/], F2 [/o,ó,u/], and F3 [/a,ó/]). Speech evaluation with and without a palatal augmentation prosthesis using blinded randomized listener judgments. Tertiary referral center. Thirty-six patients (33 men and 3 women) aged 30 to 80 (mean [SD], 53.9 [10.5]) years underwent glossectomy (14, total glossectomy; 12, total glossectomy and partial mandibulectomy; 6, hemiglossectomy; and 4, subtotal glossectomy) with use of the augmentation prosthesis for at least 3 months before inclusion in the study. Spontaneous speech intelligibility (assessed by expert listeners using a 4-category scale) and spectrographic formants assessment. We found a statistically significant improvement of spontaneous speech intelligibility and the average number of correctly identified syllables with the use of the prosthesis (P < .05). Statistically significant differences occurred for the F1 values of the vowels /a,e,u/; for F2 values, there was a significant difference of the vowels /o,ó,u/; and for F3 values, there was a significant difference of the vowels /a,ó/ (P < .001). The palatal augmentation prosthesis improved the intelligibility of spontaneous speech and syllables for patients who underwent glossectomy. It also increased the F2 and F3 values for all vowels and the F1 values for the vowels /o,ó,u/. This effect brought the values of many vowel formants closer to normal.

Functional Connectivity Associated with Acoustic Stability During Vowel Production: Implications for Vocal-Motor Control

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

Abstract Vowels provide the acoustic foundation of communication through speech and song, but little is known about how the brain orchestrates their production. Positron emission tomography was used to study regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during sustained production of the vowel /a/. Acoustic and blood flow data from 13, normal, right-handed, native speakers of American English were analyzed to identify CBF patterns that predicted the stability of the first and second formants of this vowel. Formants are bands of resonance frequencies that provide vowel identity and contribute to voice quality. The results indicated that formant stability was directly associated with blood flow increases and decreases in both left- and right-sided brain regions. Secondary brain regions (those associated with the regions predicting formant stability) were more likely to have an indirect negative relationship with first formant variability, but an indirect positive relationship with second formant variability. These results are not definitive maps of vowel production, but they do suggest that the level of motor control necessary to produce stable vowels is reflected in the complexity of an underlying neural system. These results also extend a systems approach to functional image analysis, previously applied to normal and ataxic speech rate that is solely based on identifying patterns of brain activity associated with specific performance measures. Understanding the complex relationships between multiple brain regions and the acoustic characteristics of vocal stability may provide insight into the pathophysiology of the dysarthrias, vocal disorders, and other speech changes in neurological and psychiatric disorders. PMID:25295385

When infants talk, infants listen: pre-babbling infants prefer listening to speech with infant vocal properties.

PubMed

Masapollo, Matthew; Polka, Linda; Ménard, Lucie

2016-03-01

To learn to produce speech, infants must effectively monitor and assess their own speech output. Yet very little is known about how infants perceive speech produced by an infant, which has higher voice pitch and formant frequencies compared to adult or child speech. Here, we tested whether pre-babbling infants (at 4-6 months) prefer listening to vowel sounds with infant vocal properties over vowel sounds with adult vocal properties. A listening preference favoring infant vowels may derive from their higher voice pitch, which has been shown to attract infant attention in infant-directed speech (IDS). In addition, infants' nascent articulatory abilities may induce a bias favoring infant speech given that 4- to 6-month-olds are beginning to produce vowel sounds. We created infant and adult /i/ ('ee') vowels using a production-based synthesizer that simulates the act of speaking in talkers at different ages and then tested infants across four experiments using a sequential preferential listening task. The findings provide the first evidence that infants preferentially attend to vowel sounds with infant voice pitch and/or formants over vowel sounds with no infant-like vocal properties, supporting the view that infants' production abilities influence how they process infant speech. The findings with respect to voice pitch also reveal parallels between IDS and infant speech, raising new questions about the role of this speech register in infant development. Research exploring the underpinnings and impact of this perceptual bias can expand our understanding of infant language development. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Acoustic analyses of thyroidectomy-related changes in vowel phonation.

PubMed

Solomon, Nancy Pearl; Awan, Shaheen N; Helou, Leah B; Stojadinovic, Alexander

2012-11-01

Changes in vocal function that can occur after thyroidectomy were tracked with acoustic analyses of sustained vowel productions. The purpose was to determine which time-based or spectral/cepstral-based measures of two vowels were able to detect voice changes over time in patients undergoing thyroidectomy. Prospective, longitudinal, and observational clinical trial. Voice samples of sustained /ɑ/ and /i/ recorded from 70 adults before and approximately 2 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months after thyroid surgery were analyzed for jitter, shimmer, harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR), cepstral peak prominence (CPP), low-to-high ratio of spectral energy (L/H ratio), and the standard deviations of CPP and L/H ratio. Three trained listeners rated vowel and sentence productions for the four data collection sessions for each participant. For analysis purposes, participants were categorized post hoc according to voice outcome (VO) at their first postthyroidectomy assessment session. Shimmer, HNR, and CPP differed significantly across sessions; follow-up analyses revealed the strongest effect for CPP. CPP for /ɑ/ and /i/ differed significantly between groups of participants with normal versus negative (adverse) VO and between the pre- and 2-week postthyroidectomy sessions for the negative VO group. HNR, CPP, and L/H ratio differed across vowels, but both /ɑ/ and /i/ were similarly effective in tracking voice changes over time and differentiating VO groups. This study indicated that shimmer, HNR, and CPP determined from vowel productions can be used to track changes in voice over time as patients undergo and subsequently recover from thyroid surgery, with CPP being the strongest variable for this purpose. Evidence did not clearly reveal whether acoustic voice evaluations should include both /ɑ/ and /i/ vowels, but they should specify which vowel is used to allow for comparisons across studies and multiple clinical assessments. Copyright © 2012 The Voice Foundation. All rights reserved.

Consonant and Vowel Identification in Cochlear Implant Users Measured by Nonsense Words: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

PubMed

Rødvik, Arne Kirkhorn; von Koss Torkildsen, Janne; Wie, Ona Bø; Storaker, Marit Aarvaag; Silvola, Juha Tapio

2018-04-17

The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to establish a baseline of the vowel and consonant identification scores in prelingually and postlingually deaf users of multichannel cochlear implants (CIs) tested with consonant-vowel-consonant and vowel-consonant-vowel nonsense syllables. Six electronic databases were searched for peer-reviewed articles reporting consonant and vowel identification scores in CI users measured by nonsense words. Relevant studies were independently assessed and screened by 2 reviewers. Consonant and vowel identification scores were presented in forest plots and compared between studies in a meta-analysis. Forty-seven articles with 50 studies, including 647 participants, thereof 581 postlingually deaf and 66 prelingually deaf, met the inclusion criteria of this study. The mean performance on vowel identification tasks for the postlingually deaf CI users was 76.8% (N = 5), which was higher than the mean performance for the prelingually deaf CI users (67.7%; N = 1). The mean performance on consonant identification tasks for the postlingually deaf CI users was higher (58.4%; N = 44) than for the prelingually deaf CI users (46.7%; N = 6). The most common consonant confusions were found between those with same manner of articulation (/k/ as /t/, /m/ as /n/, and /p/ as /t/). The mean performance on consonant identification tasks for the prelingually and postlingually deaf CI users was found. There were no statistically significant differences between the scores for prelingually and postlingually deaf CI users. The consonants that were incorrectly identified were typically confused with other consonants with the same acoustic properties, namely, voicing, duration, nasality, and silent gaps. A univariate metaregression model, although not statistically significant, indicated that duration of implant use in postlingually deaf adults predict a substantial portion of their consonant identification ability. As there is no ceiling effect, a nonsense syllable identification test may be a useful addition to the standard test battery in audiology clinics when assessing the speech perception of CI users.

Comparison of transect sampling and object-oriented image classification methods of urbanizing catchments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Y.; Tenenbaum, D. E.

2009-12-01

The process of urbanization has major effects on both human and natural systems. In order to monitor these changes and better understand how urban ecological systems work, urban spatial structure and the variation needs to be first quantified at a fine scale. Because the land-use and land-cover (LULC) in urbanizing areas is highly heterogeneous, the classification of urbanizing environments is the most challenging field in remote sensing. Although a pixel-based method is a common way to do classification, the results are not good enough for many research objectives which require more accurate classification data in fine scales. Transect sampling and object-oriented classification methods are more appropriate for urbanizing areas. Tenenbaum used a transect sampling method using a computer-based facility within a widely available commercial GIS in the Glyndon Catchment and the Upper Baismans Run Catchment, Baltimore, Maryland. It was a two-tiered classification system, including a primary level (which includes 7 classes) and a secondary level (which includes 37 categories). The statistical information of LULC was collected. W. Zhou applied an object-oriented method at the parcel level in Gwynn’s Falls Watershed which includes the two previously mentioned catchments and six classes were extracted. The two urbanizing catchments are located in greater Baltimore, Maryland and drain into Chesapeake Bay. In this research, the two different methods are compared for 6 classes (woody, herbaceous, water, ground, pavement and structure). The comparison method uses the segments in the transect method to extract LULC information from the results of the object-oriented method. Classification results were compared in order to evaluate the difference between the two methods. The overall proportions of LULC classes from the two studies show that there is overestimation of structures in the object-oriented method. For the other five classes, the results from the two methods are similar, except for a difference in the proportions of the woody class. The segment to segment comparison shows that the resolution of the light detection and ranging (LIDAR) data used in the object-oriented method does affect the accuracy of the classification. Shadows of trees and structures are still a big problem in the object-oriented method. For classes that make up a small proportion of the catchments, such as water, neither method was capable of detecting them.

An Optimal Set of Flesh Points on Tongue and Lips for Speech-Movement Classification

PubMed Central

Samal, Ashok; Rong, Panying; Green, Jordan R.

2016-01-01

Purpose The authors sought to determine an optimal set of flesh points on the tongue and lips for classifying speech movements. Method The authors used electromagnetic articulographs (Carstens AG500 and NDI Wave) to record tongue and lip movements from 13 healthy talkers who articulated 8 vowels, 11 consonants, a phonetically balanced set of words, and a set of short phrases during the recording. We used a machine-learning classifier (support-vector machine) to classify the speech stimuli on the basis of articulatory movements. We then compared classification accuracies of the flesh-point combinations to determine an optimal set of sensors. Results When data from the 4 sensors (T1: the vicinity between the tongue tip and tongue blade; T4: the tongue-body back; UL: the upper lip; and LL: the lower lip) were combined, phoneme and word classifications were most accurate and were comparable with the full set (including T2: the tongue-body front; and T3: the tongue-body front). Conclusion We identified a 4-sensor set—that is, T1, T4, UL, LL—that yielded a classification accuracy (91%–95%) equivalent to that using all 6 sensors. These findings provide an empirical basis for selecting sensors and their locations for scientific and emerging clinical applications that incorporate articulatory movements. PMID:26564030

Single-trial analysis of the neural correlates of speech quality perception.

PubMed

Porbadnigk, Anne K; Treder, Matthias S; Blankertz, Benjamin; Antons, Jan-Niklas; Schleicher, Robert; Möller, Sebastian; Curio, Gabriel; Müller, Klaus-Robert

2013-10-01

Assessing speech quality perception is a challenge typically addressed in behavioral and opinion-seeking experiments. Only recently, neuroimaging methods were introduced, which were used to study the neural processing of quality at group level. However, our electroencephalography (EEG) studies show that the neural correlates of quality perception are highly individual. Therefore, it became necessary to establish dedicated machine learning methods for decoding subject-specific effects. The effectiveness of our methods is shown by the data of an EEG study that investigates how the quality of spoken vowels is processed neurally. Participants were asked to indicate whether they had perceived a degradation of quality (signal-correlated noise) in vowels, presented in an oddball paradigm. We find that the P3 amplitude is attenuated with increasing noise. Single-trial analysis allows one to show that this is partly due to an increasing jitter of the P3 component. A novel classification approach helps to detect trials with presumably non-conscious processing at the threshold of perception. We show that this approach uncovers a non-trivial confounder between neural hits and neural misses. The combined use of EEG signals and machine learning methods results in a significant 'neural' gain in sensitivity (in processing quality loss) when compared to standard behavioral evaluation; averaged over 11 subjects, this amounts to a relative improvement in sensitivity of 35%.

Marking Importance in Lectures: Interactive and Textual Orientation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Deroey, Katrien L. B.

2015-01-01

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of lexicogrammatical markers of important lecture points and proposes a classification in terms of their interactive and textual orientation. The importance markers were extracted from the British Academic Spoken English corpus using corpus-driven and corpus-based methods. The classification is based on…

Effects of prosodic boundary on /aC/ sequences: articulatory results

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tabain, Marija

2003-05-01

This study presents EMA (electromagnetic articulography) data on articulation of the vowel /a/ at different prosodic boundaries in French. Three speakers of metropolitan French produced utterances containing the vowel /a/, preceded by /tee/ and followed by one of six consonants /bee dee gee eff ess sh/ (three stops and three fricatives), with different prosodic boundaries intervening between the /a/ and the six different consonants. The prosodic boundaries investigated are the Utterance, the Intonational phrase, the Accentual phrase, and the Word. Data for the Tongue Tip, Tongue Body, and Jaw are presented. The articulatory data presented here were recorded at the same time as the acoustic data presented in Tabain [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113, 516-531 (2003)]. Analyses show that there is a strong effect on peak displacement of the vowel according to the prosodic hierarchy, with the stronger prosodic boundaries inducing a much lower Tongue Body and Jaw position than the weaker prosodic boundaries. Durations of both the opening movement into and the closing movement out of the vowel are also affected. Peak velocity of the articulatory movements is also examined, and, contrary to results for phrase-final lengthening, it is found that peak velocity of the opening movement into the vowel tends to increase with the higher prosodic boundaries, together with the increased magnitude of the movement between the consonant and the vowel. Results for the closing movement out of the vowel and into the consonant are not so clear. Since one speaker shows evidence of utterance-level articulatory declension, it is suggested that the competing constraints of articulatory declension and prosodic effects might explain some previous results on phrase-final lengthening.

Tracking the emergence of the consonant bias in visual-word recognition: evidence with developing readers.

PubMed

Soares, Ana Paula; Perea, Manuel; Comesaña, Montserrat

2014-01-01

Recent research with skilled adult readers has consistently revealed an advantage of consonants over vowels in visual-word recognition (i.e., the so-called "consonant bias"). Nevertheless, little is known about how early in development the consonant bias emerges. This work aims to address this issue by studying the relative contribution of consonants and vowels at the early stages of visual-word recognition in developing readers (2(nd) and 4(th) Grade children) and skilled adult readers (college students) using a masked priming lexical decision task. Target words starting either with a consonant or a vowel were preceded by a briefly presented masked prime (50 ms) that could be the same as the target (e.g., pirata-PIRATA [pirate-PIRATE]), a consonant-preserving prime (e.g., pureto-PIRATA), a vowel-preserving prime (e.g., gicala-PIRATA), or an unrelated prime (e.g., bocelo -PIRATA). Results revealed significant priming effects for the identity and consonant-preserving conditions in adult readers and 4(th) Grade children, whereas 2(nd) graders only showed priming for the identity condition. In adult readers, the advantage of consonants was observed both for words starting with a consonant or a vowel, while in 4(th) graders this advantage was restricted to words with an initial consonant. Thus, the present findings suggest that a Consonant/Vowel skeleton should be included in future (developmental) models of visual-word recognition and reading.

The Identification of High-pitched Sung Vowels in Sense and Nonsense Words by Professional Singers and Untrained Listeners.

PubMed

Deme, Andrea

2017-03-01

High-pitched sung vowels may be considered phonetically "underspecified" because of (i) the tuning of the F 1 to the f 0 accompanying pitch raising and (ii) the wide harmonic spacing of the voice source resulting in the undersampling of the vocal tract transfer function. Therefore, sung vowel intelligibility is expected to decrease as the f 0 increases. Based on the literature of speech perception, it is often suggested that sung vowels are better perceived if uttered in consonantal (CVC) context than in isolation even at high f 0 . The results for singing, however, are contradictory. In the present study, we further investigate this question. We compare vowel identification in sense and nonsense CVC sequences and show that the positive effect of the context disappears if the number of legal choices in a perception test is similar in both conditions, meaning that any positive effect of the CVC context may only stem from the smaller number of possible responses, i.e., from higher probabilities. Additionally, it is also tested whether the training in production (i.e., singing training) may also lead to a perceptual advantage of the singers over nonsingers in the identification of high-pitched sung vowels. The results show no advantage of this kind. Copyright © 2017 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effects of stimulus response compatibility on covert imitation of vowels.

PubMed

Adank, Patti; Nuttall, Helen; Bekkering, Harold; Maegherman, Gwijde

2018-03-13

When we observe someone else speaking, we tend to automatically activate the corresponding speech motor patterns. When listening, we therefore covertly imitate the observed speech. Simulation theories of speech perception propose that covert imitation of speech motor patterns supports speech perception. Covert imitation of speech has been studied with interference paradigms, including the stimulus-response compatibility paradigm (SRC). The SRC paradigm measures covert imitation by comparing articulation of a prompt following exposure to a distracter. Responses tend to be faster for congruent than for incongruent distracters; thus, showing evidence of covert imitation. Simulation accounts propose a key role for covert imitation in speech perception. However, covert imitation has thus far only been demonstrated for a select class of speech sounds, namely consonants, and it is unclear whether covert imitation extends to vowels. We aimed to demonstrate that covert imitation effects as measured with the SRC paradigm extend to vowels, in two experiments. We examined whether covert imitation occurs for vowels in a consonant-vowel-consonant context in visual, audio, and audiovisual modalities. We presented the prompt at four time points to examine how covert imitation varied over the distracter's duration. The results of both experiments clearly demonstrated covert imitation effects for vowels, thus supporting simulation theories of speech perception. Covert imitation was not affected by stimulus modality and was maximal for later time points.

A Formant Range Profile for Singers.

PubMed

Titze, Ingo R; Maxfield, Lynn M; Walker, Megan C

2017-05-01

Vowel selection is important in differentiating between singing styles. The timbre of the vocal instrument, which is related to its frequency spectrum, is governed by both the glottal sound source and the vowel choices made by singers. Consequently, the ability to modify the vowel space is a measure of how successfully a singer can maintain a desired timbre across a range of pitches. Formant range profiles were produced as a means of quantifying this ability. Seventy-seven subjects (including trained and untrained vocalists) participated, producing vowels with three intended mouth shapes: (1) neutral or speech-like, (2) megaphone-shaped (wide open mouth), and (3) inverted-megaphone-shaped (widened oropharynx with moderate mouth opening). The first and second formant frequencies (F 1 and F 2 ) were estimated with fry phonation for each shape and values were plotted in F1-F2 space. By taking four vowels of a quadrangle /i, æ, a, u/, the resulting area was quantified in kHz 2 (kHz squared) as a measure of the subject's ability to modify their vocal tract for spectral differences. Copyright © 2017 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Lip movements affect infants' audiovisual speech perception.

PubMed

Yeung, H Henny; Werker, Janet F

2013-05-01

Speech is robustly audiovisual from early in infancy. Here we show that audiovisual speech perception in 4.5-month-old infants is influenced by sensorimotor information related to the lip movements they make while chewing or sucking. Experiment 1 consisted of a classic audiovisual matching procedure, in which two simultaneously displayed talking faces (visual [i] and [u]) were presented with a synchronous vowel sound (audio /i/ or /u/). Infants' looking patterns were selectively biased away from the audiovisual matching face when the infants were producing lip movements similar to those needed to produce the heard vowel. Infants' looking patterns returned to those of a baseline condition (no lip movements, looking longer at the audiovisual matching face) when they were producing lip movements that did not match the heard vowel. Experiment 2 confirmed that these sensorimotor effects interacted with the heard vowel, as looking patterns differed when infants produced these same lip movements while seeing and hearing a talking face producing an unrelated vowel (audio /a/). These findings suggest that the development of speech perception and speech production may be mutually informative.

Sparseness of vowel category structure: Evidence from English dialect comparison

PubMed Central

Scharinger, Mathias; Idsardi, William J.

2014-01-01

Current models of speech perception tend to emphasize either fine-grained acoustic properties or coarse-grained abstract characteristics of speech sounds. We argue for a particular kind of 'sparse' vowel representations and provide new evidence that these representations account for the successful access of the corresponding categories. In an auditory semantic priming experiment, American English listeners made lexical decisions on targets (e.g. load) preceded by semantically related primes (e.g. pack). Changes of the prime vowel that crossed a vowel-category boundary (e.g. peck) were not treated as a tolerable variation, as assessed by a lack of priming, although the phonetic categories of the two different vowels considerably overlap in American English. Compared to the outcome of the same experiment with New Zealand English listeners, where such prime variations were tolerated, our experiment supports the view that phonological representations are important in guiding the mapping process from the acoustic signal to an abstract mental representation. Our findings are discussed with regard to current models of speech perception and recent findings from brain imaging research. PMID:24653528

A FORMANT RANGE PROFILE FOR SINGERS

PubMed Central

Titze, Ingo R.; Maxfield, Lynn; Walker, Megan

2016-01-01

Vowel selection is important in differentiating between singing styles. The timbre of the vocal instrument, which is related to its frequency spectrum, is governed by both the glottal sound source and the vowel choices made by singers. Consequently, the ability to modify the vowel space is a measure of how successfully a singer can maintain a desired timbre across a range of pitches. Formant range profiles (FRPs) were produced as a means of quantifying this ability. 77 subjects (including trained and untrained vocalists) participated, producing vowels with three intended mouth shapes, (1) neutral or speech-like, (2) megaphone-shaped (wide open mouth), and (3) inverted-megaphone-shaped (widened oropharynx with moderate mouth opening). The first and second formant frequencies (F1 and F2) were estimated with fry phonation for each shape and values were plotted in F1–F2 space. By taking four vowels of a quadrangle /i, æ, a, u/, the resulting area was quantified in kHz2 (kHz squared) as a measure of the subject’s ability to modify their vocal tract for spectral differences. PMID:28029556

Lexical reorganization in Brazilian Portuguese: an articulatory study

PubMed Central

Meireles, A. R.; Barbosa, P. A.

2008-01-01

This work, which is couched in the theoretical framework of Articulatory Phonology, deals with the influence of speech rate on the change/variation from antepenultimate stress words into penultimate stress words in Brazilian Portuguese. Both acoustic and articulatory (EMMA) studies were conducted. On the acoustic side, results show different patterns of post-stressed vowel reduction according to the word type. Some words reduced their medial post-stressed vowels more than their final post-stressed vowels, and others reduced their final post-stressed vowels more than their medial post-stressed vowels. On the articulatory side, results show that the coarticulation degree of the post-stressed consonants increases with speech rate. Also, with the use of a measure called proportional consonantal interval (PCI), it was found in measurements of articulation that such measure is influenced by the word type. Three different groups of words were found according to their PCI. These results show how dynamical aspects influenced by speech rate increase are related to the lexical process of change/variation from antepenultimate stress words into penultimate ones. PMID:19885366

Research on Remote Sensing Geological Information Extraction Based on Object Oriented Classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gao, Hui

2018-04-01

The northern Tibet belongs to the Sub cold arid climate zone in the plateau. It is rarely visited by people. The geological working conditions are very poor. However, the stratum exposures are good and human interference is very small. Therefore, the research on the automatic classification and extraction of remote sensing geological information has typical significance and good application prospect. Based on the object-oriented classification in Northern Tibet, using the Worldview2 high-resolution remote sensing data, combined with the tectonic information and image enhancement, the lithological spectral features, shape features, spatial locations and topological relations of various geological information are excavated. By setting the threshold, based on the hierarchical classification, eight kinds of geological information were classified and extracted. Compared with the existing geological maps, the accuracy analysis shows that the overall accuracy reached 87.8561 %, indicating that the classification-oriented method is effective and feasible for this study area and provides a new idea for the automatic extraction of remote sensing geological information.

[An object-based information extraction technology for dominant tree species group types].

PubMed

Tian, Tian; Fan, Wen-yi; Lu, Wei; Xiao, Xiang

2015-06-01

Information extraction for dominant tree group types is difficult in remote sensing image classification, howevers, the object-oriented classification method using high spatial resolution remote sensing data is a new method to realize the accurate type information extraction. In this paper, taking the Jiangle Forest Farm in Fujian Province as the research area, based on the Quickbird image data in 2013, the object-oriented method was adopted to identify the farmland, shrub-herbaceous plant, young afforested land, Pinus massoniana, Cunninghamia lanceolata and broad-leave tree types. Three types of classification factors including spectral, texture, and different vegetation indices were used to establish a class hierarchy. According to the different levels, membership functions and the decision tree classification rules were adopted. The results showed that the method based on the object-oriented method by using texture, spectrum and the vegetation indices achieved the classification accuracy of 91.3%, which was increased by 5.7% compared with that by only using the texture and spectrum.

28 CFR 345.20 - Position classification.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Position classification. 345.20 Section... INDUSTRIES (FPI) INMATE WORK PROGRAMS Position Classification § 345.20 Position classification. (a) Inmate... the objectives and principles of pay classification as a part of the routine orientation of new FPI...

28 CFR 345.20 - Position classification.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Position classification. 345.20 Section... INDUSTRIES (FPI) INMATE WORK PROGRAMS Position Classification § 345.20 Position classification. (a) Inmate... the objectives and principles of pay classification as a part of the routine orientation of new FPI...

28 CFR 345.20 - Position classification.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Position classification. 345.20 Section... INDUSTRIES (FPI) INMATE WORK PROGRAMS Position Classification § 345.20 Position classification. (a) Inmate... the objectives and principles of pay classification as a part of the routine orientation of new FPI...

28 CFR 345.20 - Position classification.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Position classification. 345.20 Section... INDUSTRIES (FPI) INMATE WORK PROGRAMS Position Classification § 345.20 Position classification. (a) Inmate... the objectives and principles of pay classification as a part of the routine orientation of new FPI...

28 CFR 345.20 - Position classification.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Position classification. 345.20 Section... INDUSTRIES (FPI) INMATE WORK PROGRAMS Position Classification § 345.20 Position classification. (a) Inmate... the objectives and principles of pay classification as a part of the routine orientation of new FPI...

Speech Research

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

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

Discovery of User-Oriented Class Associations for Enriching Library Classification Schemes.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pu, Hsiao-Tieh

2002-01-01

Presents a user-based approach to exploring the possibility of adding user-oriented class associations to hierarchical library classification schemes. Classes not grouped in the same subject hierarchies yet relevant to users' knowledge are obtained by analyzing a log book of a university library's circulation records, using collaborative filtering…

Single neural code for blur in subjects with different interocular optical blur orientation

PubMed Central

Radhakrishnan, Aiswaryah; Sawides, Lucie; Dorronsoro, Carlos; Peli, Eli; Marcos, Susana

2015-01-01

The ability of the visual system to compensate for differences in blur orientation between eyes is not well understood. We measured the orientation of the internal blur code in both eyes of the same subject monocularly by presenting pairs of images blurred with real ocular point spread functions (PSFs) of similar blur magnitude but varying in orientations. Subjects assigned a level of confidence to their selection of the best perceived image in each pair. Using a classification-images–inspired paradigm and applying a reverse correlation technique, a classification map was obtained from the weighted averages of the PSFs, representing the internal blur code. Positive and negative neural PSFs were obtained from the classification map, representing the neural blur for best and worse perceived blur, respectively. The neural PSF was found to be highly correlated in both eyes, even for eyes with different ocular PSF orientations (rPos = 0.95; rNeg = 0.99; p < 0.001). We found that in subjects with similar and with different ocular PSF orientations between eyes, the orientation of the positive neural PSF was closer to the orientation of the ocular PSF of the eye with the better optical quality (average difference was ∼10°), while the orientation of the positive and negative neural PSFs tended to be orthogonal. These results suggest a single internal code for blur with orientation driven by the orientation of the optical blur of the eye with better optical quality. PMID:26114678

Processing voiceless vowels in Japanese: Effects of language-specific phonological knowledge

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ogasawara, Naomi

2005-04-01

There has been little research on processing allophonic variation in the field of psycholinguistics. This study focuses on processing the voiced/voiceless allophonic alternation of high vowels in Japanese. Three perception experiments were conducted to explore how listeners parse out vowels with the voicing alternation from other segments in the speech stream and how the different voicing statuses of the vowel affect listeners' word recognition process. The results from the three experiments show that listeners use phonological knowledge of their native language for phoneme processing and for word recognition. However, interactions of the phonological and acoustic effects are observed to be different in each process. The facilitatory phonological effect and the inhibitory acoustic effect cancel out one another in phoneme processing; while in word recognition, the facilitatory phonological effect overrides the inhibitory acoustic effect.

Recognition of Emotions in Mexican Spanish Speech: An Approach Based on Acoustic Modelling of Emotion-Specific Vowels

PubMed Central

Caballero-Morales, Santiago-Omar

2013-01-01

An approach for the recognition of emotions in speech is presented. The target language is Mexican Spanish, and for this purpose a speech database was created. The approach consists in the phoneme acoustic modelling of emotion-specific vowels. For this, a standard phoneme-based Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system was built with Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), where different phoneme HMMs were built for the consonants and emotion-specific vowels associated with four emotional states (anger, happiness, neutral, sadness). Then, estimation of the emotional state from a spoken sentence is performed by counting the number of emotion-specific vowels found in the ASR's output for the sentence. With this approach, accuracy of 87–100% was achieved for the recognition of emotional state of Mexican Spanish speech. PMID:23935410

The Role of Secondary-Stressed and Unstressed-Unreduced Syllables in Word Recognition: Acoustic and Perceptual Studies with Russian Learners of English.

PubMed

Banzina, Elina; Dilley, Laura C; Hewitt, Lynne E

2016-08-01

The importance of secondary-stressed (SS) and unstressed-unreduced (UU) syllable accuracy for spoken word recognition in English is as yet unclear. An acoustic study first investigated Russian learners' of English production of SS and UU syllables. Significant vowel quality and duration reductions in Russian-spoken SS and UU vowels were found, likely due to a transfer of native phonological features. Next, a cross-modal phonological priming technique combined with a lexical decision task assessed the effect of inaccurate SS and UU syllable productions on native American English listeners' speech processing. Inaccurate UU vowels led to significant inhibition of lexical access, while reduced SS vowels revealed less interference. The results have implications for understanding the role of SS and UU syllables for word recognition and English pronunciation instruction.

Tracking the Emergence of the Consonant Bias in Visual-Word Recognition: Evidence with Developing Readers

PubMed Central

Soares, Ana Paula; Perea, Manuel; Comesaña, Montserrat

2014-01-01

Recent research with skilled adult readers has consistently revealed an advantage of consonants over vowels in visual-word recognition (i.e., the so-called “consonant bias”). Nevertheless, little is known about how early in development the consonant bias emerges. This work aims to address this issue by studying the relative contribution of consonants and vowels at the early stages of visual-word recognition in developing readers (2nd and 4th Grade children) and skilled adult readers (college students) using a masked priming lexical decision task. Target words starting either with a consonant or a vowel were preceded by a briefly presented masked prime (50 ms) that could be the same as the target (e.g., pirata-PIRATA [pirate-PIRATE]), a consonant-preserving prime (e.g., pureto-PIRATA), a vowel-preserving prime (e.g., gicala-PIRATA), or an unrelated prime (e.g., bocelo -PIRATA). Results revealed significant priming effects for the identity and consonant-preserving conditions in adult readers and 4th Grade children, whereas 2nd graders only showed priming for the identity condition. In adult readers, the advantage of consonants was observed both for words starting with a consonant or a vowel, while in 4th graders this advantage was restricted to words with an initial consonant. Thus, the present findings suggest that a Consonant/Vowel skeleton should be included in future (developmental) models of visual-word recognition and reading. PMID:24523917

Acoustic and Perceptual Analyses of Adductor Spasmodic Dysphonia in Mandarin-speaking Chinese.

PubMed

Chen, Zhipeng; Li, Jingyuan; Ren, Qingyi; Ge, Pingjiang

2018-02-12

The objective of this study was to examine the perceptual structure and acoustic characteristics of speech of patients with adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD) in Mandarin. Case-Control Study MATERIALS AND METHODS: For the estimation of dysphonia level, perceptual and acoustic analysis were used for patients with ADSD (N = 20) and the control group (N = 20) that are Mandarin-Chinese speakers. For both subgroups, a sustained vowel and connected speech samples were obtained. The difference of perceptual and acoustic parameters between the two subgroups was assessed and analyzed. For acoustic assessment, the percentage of phonatory breaks (PBs) of connected reading and the percentage of aperiodic segments and frequency shifts (FS) of vowel and reading in patients with ADSD were significantly worse than controls, the mean harmonics-to-noise ratio and the fundamental frequency standard deviation of vowel as well. For perceptual evaluation, the rating of speech and vowel in patients with ADSD are significantly higher than controls. The percentage of aberrant acoustic events (PB, frequency shift, and aperiodic segment) and the fundamental frequency standard deviation and mean harmonics-to-noise ratio were significantly correlated with the perceptual rating in the vowel and reading productions. The perceptual and acoustic parameters of connected vowel and reading in patients with ADSD are worse than those in normal controls, and could validly and reliably estimate dysphonia of ADSD in Mandarin-speaking Chinese. Copyright © 2017 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Categorical vowel perception enhances the effectiveness and generalization of auditory feedback in human-machine-interfaces.

PubMed

Larson, Eric; Terry, Howard P; Canevari, Margaux M; Stepp, Cara E

2013-01-01

Human-machine interface (HMI) designs offer the possibility of improving quality of life for patient populations as well as augmenting normal user function. Despite pragmatic benefits, utilizing auditory feedback for HMI control remains underutilized, in part due to observed limitations in effectiveness. The goal of this study was to determine the extent to which categorical speech perception could be used to improve an auditory HMI. Using surface electromyography, 24 healthy speakers of American English participated in 4 sessions to learn to control an HMI using auditory feedback (provided via vowel synthesis). Participants trained on 3 targets in sessions 1-3 and were tested on 3 novel targets in session 4. An "established categories with text cues" group of eight participants were trained and tested on auditory targets corresponding to standard American English vowels using auditory and text target cues. An "established categories without text cues" group of eight participants were trained and tested on the same targets using only auditory cuing of target vowel identity. A "new categories" group of eight participants were trained and tested on targets that corresponded to vowel-like sounds not part of American English. Analyses of user performance revealed significant effects of session and group (established categories groups and the new categories group), and a trend for an interaction between session and group. Results suggest that auditory feedback can be effectively used for HMI operation when paired with established categorical (native vowel) targets with an unambiguous cue.

Biomechanically Preferred Consonant-Vowel Combinations Fail to Appear in Adult Spoken Corpora

PubMed Central

Whalen, D. H.; Giulivi, Sara; Nam, Hosung; Levitt, Andrea G.; Hallé, Pierre; Goldstein, Louis M.

2012-01-01

Certain consonant/vowel (CV) combinations are more frequent than would be expected from the individual C and V frequencies alone, both in babbling and, to a lesser extent, in adult language, based on dictionary counts: Labial consonants co-occur with central vowels more often than chance would dictate; coronals co-occur with front vowels, and velars with back vowels (Davis & MacNeilage, 1994). Plausible biomechanical explanations have been proposed, but it is also possible that infants are mirroring the frequency of the CVs that they hear. As noted, previous assessments of adult language were based on dictionaries; these “type” counts are incommensurate with the babbling measures, which are necessarily “token” counts. We analyzed the tokens in two spoken corpora for English, two for French and one for Mandarin. We found that the adult spoken CV preferences correlated with the type counts for Mandarin and French, not for English. Correlations between the adult spoken corpora and the babbling results had all three possible outcomes: significantly positive (French), uncorrelated (Mandarin), and significantly negative (English). There were no correlations of the dictionary data with the babbling results when we consider all nine combinations of consonants and vowels. The results indicate that spoken frequencies of CV combinations can differ from dictionary (type) counts and that the CV preferences apparent in babbling are biomechanically driven and can ignore the frequencies of CVs in the ambient spoken language. PMID:23420980

Object oriented classification of high resolution data for inventory of horticultural crops

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hebbar, R.; Ravishankar, H. M.; Trivedi, S.; Subramoniam, S. R.; Uday, R.; Dadhwal, V. K.

2014-11-01

High resolution satellite images are associated with large variance and thus, per pixel classifiers often result in poor accuracy especially in delineation of horticultural crops. In this context, object oriented techniques are powerful and promising methods for classification. In the present study, a semi-automatic object oriented feature extraction model has been used for delineation of horticultural fruit and plantation crops using Erdas Objective Imagine. Multi-resolution data from Resourcesat LISS-IV and Cartosat-1 have been used as source data in the feature extraction model. Spectral and textural information along with NDVI were used as inputs for generation of Spectral Feature Probability (SFP) layers using sample training pixels. The SFP layers were then converted into raster objects using threshold and clump function resulting in pixel probability layer. A set of raster and vector operators was employed in the subsequent steps for generating thematic layer in the vector format. This semi-automatic feature extraction model was employed for classification of major fruit and plantations crops viz., mango, banana, citrus, coffee and coconut grown under different agro-climatic conditions. In general, the classification accuracy of about 75-80 per cent was achieved for these crops using object based classification alone and the same was further improved using minimal visual editing of misclassified areas. A comparison of on-screen visual interpretation with object oriented approach showed good agreement. It was observed that old and mature plantations were classified more accurately while young and recently planted ones (3 years or less) showed poor classification accuracy due to mixed spectral signature, wider spacing and poor stands of plantations. The results indicated the potential use of object oriented approach for classification of high resolution data for delineation of horticultural fruit and plantation crops. The present methodology is applicable at local levels and future development is focused on up-scaling the methodology for generation of fruit and plantation crop maps at regional and national level which is important for creation of database for overall horticultural crop development.

Characterizing resonant component in speech: A different view of tracking fundamental frequency

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dong, Bin

2017-05-01

Inspired by the nonlinearity and nonstationarity and the modulations in speech, Hilbert-Huang Transform and cyclostationarity analysis are employed to investigate the speech resonance in vowel in sequence. Cyclostationarity analysis is not directly manipulated on the target vowel, but on its intrinsic mode functions one by one. Thanks to the equivalence between the fundamental frequency in speech and the cyclic frequency in cyclostationarity analysis, the modulation intensity distributions of the intrinsic mode functions provide much information for the estimation of the fundamental frequency. To highlight the relationship between frequency and time, the pseudo-Hilbert spectrum is proposed to replace the Hilbert spectrum here. After contrasting the pseudo-Hilbert spectra of and the modulation intensity distributions of the intrinsic mode functions, it finds that there is usually one intrinsic mode function which works as the fundamental component of the vowel. Furthermore, the fundamental frequency of the vowel can be determined by tracing the pseudo-Hilbert spectrum of its fundamental component along the time axis. The later method is more robust to estimate the fundamental frequency, when meeting nonlinear components. Two vowels [a] and [i], picked up from a speech database FAU Aibo Emotion Corpus, are applied to validate the above findings.

DIMENSION-BASED STATISTICAL LEARNING OF VOWELS

PubMed Central

Liu, Ran; Holt, Lori L.

2015-01-01

Speech perception depends on long-term representations that reflect regularities of the native language. However, listeners rapidly adapt when speech acoustics deviate from these regularities due to talker idiosyncrasies such as foreign accents and dialects. To better understand these dual aspects of speech perception, we probe native English listeners’ baseline perceptual weighting of two acoustic dimensions (spectral quality and vowel duration) towards vowel categorization and examine how they subsequently adapt to an “artificial accent” that deviates from English norms in the correlation between the two dimensions. At baseline, listeners rely relatively more on spectral quality than vowel duration to signal vowel category, but duration nonetheless contributes. Upon encountering an “artificial accent” in which the spectral-duration correlation is perturbed relative to English language norms, listeners rapidly down-weight reliance on duration. Listeners exhibit this type of short-term statistical learning even in the context of nonwords, confirming that lexical information is not necessary to this form of adaptive plasticity in speech perception. Moreover, learning generalizes to both novel lexical contexts and acoustically-distinct altered voices. These findings are discussed in the context of a mechanistic proposal for how supervised learning may contribute to this type of adaptive plasticity in speech perception. PMID:26280268

Lip Movement Exaggerations During Infant-Directed Speech

PubMed Central

Green, Jordan R.; Nip, Ignatius S. B.; Wilson, Erin M.; Mefferd, Antje S.; Yunusova, Yana

2011-01-01

Purpose Although a growing body of literature has indentified the positive effects of visual speech on speech and language learning, oral movements of infant-directed speech (IDS) have rarely been studied. This investigation used 3-dimensional motion capture technology to describe how mothers modify their lip movements when talking to their infants. Method Lip movements were recorded from 25 mothers as they spoke to their infants and other adults. Lip shapes were analyzed for differences across speaking conditions. The maximum fundamental frequency, duration, acoustic intensity, and first and second formant frequency of each vowel also were measured. Results Lip movements were significantly larger during IDS than during adult-directed speech, although the exaggerations were vowel specific. All of the vowels produced during IDS were characterized by an elevated vocal pitch and a slowed speaking rate when compared with vowels produced during adult-directed speech. Conclusion The pattern of lip-shape exaggerations did not provide support for the hypothesis that mothers produce exemplar visual models of vowels during IDS. Future work is required to determine whether the observed increases in vertical lip aperture engender visual and acoustic enhancements that facilitate the early learning of speech. PMID:20699342

Formant frequencies in Middle Eastern singers.

PubMed

Hamdan, Abdul-latif; Tabri, Dollen; Deeb, Reem; Rifai, Hani; Rameh, Charbel; Fuleihan, Nabil

2008-01-01

This work was conducted to describe the formant frequencies in a group of Middle Eastern singers and to look for the presence of the singer's formant described in operatic singers. A total of 13 Middle Eastern singers were enrolled in this study. There were 5 men and 8 women. Descriptive analysis was performed to report the various formants (F1, F2, F3, and F4) in both speaking and singing. The Wilcoxon test was used to compare the means of the formants under both conditions. For both sexes combined, for the /a/ vowel, F1 singing was significantly lower than F1 speaking (P = .05) and F3 singing was significantly higher than F3 speaking (P = .046). For the /u/ vowel, only F2 singing was significantly higher than F2 speaking (P = .012). For the /i/ vowel, both F2 and F3 singing were significantly lower than F2 and F3 speaking, respectively (P = .006 and .012, respectively). There was no clustering of the formants in any of the Middle Eastern sung vowels. Formant frequencies for the vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ differ between Middle Eastern singing vs speaking. There is absence of the singer's formant.

Does letter position coding depend on consonant/vowel status? Evidence with the masked priming technique.

PubMed

Perea, Manuel; Acha, Joana

2009-02-01

Recently, a number of input coding schemes (e.g., SOLAR model, SERIOL model, open-bigram model, overlap model) have been proposed that capture the transposed-letter priming effect (i.e., faster response times for jugde-JUDGE than for jupte-JUDGE). In their current version, these coding schemes do not assume any processing differences between vowels and consonants. However, in a lexical decision task, Perea and Lupker (2004, JML; Lupker, Perea, & Davis, 2008, L&CP) reported that transposed-letter priming effects occurred for consonant transpositions but not for vowel transpositions. This finding poses a challenge for these recently proposed coding schemes. Here, we report four masked priming experiments that examine whether this consonant/vowel dissociation in transposed-letter priming is task-specific. In Experiment 1, we used a lexical decision task and found a transposed-letter priming effect only for consonant transpositions. In Experiments 2-4, we employed a same-different task - a task which taps early perceptual processes - and found a robust transposed-letter priming effect that did not interact with consonant/vowel status. We examine the implications of these findings for the front-end of the models of visual word recognition.

Evaluating acoustic speaker normalization algorithms: evidence from longitudinal child data.

PubMed

Kohn, Mary Elizabeth; Farrington, Charlie

2012-03-01

Speaker vowel formant normalization, a technique that controls for variation introduced by physical differences between speakers, is necessary in variationist studies to compare speakers of different ages, genders, and physiological makeup in order to understand non-physiological variation patterns within populations. Many algorithms have been established to reduce variation introduced into vocalic data from physiological sources. The lack of real-time studies tracking the effectiveness of these normalization algorithms from childhood through adolescence inhibits exploration of child participation in vowel shifts. This analysis compares normalization techniques applied to data collected from ten African American children across five time points. Linear regressions compare the reduction in variation attributable to age and gender for each speaker for the vowels BEET, BAT, BOT, BUT, and BOAR. A normalization technique is successful if it maintains variation attributable to a reference sociolinguistic variable, while reducing variation attributable to age. Results indicate that normalization techniques which rely on both a measure of central tendency and range of the vowel space perform best at reducing variation attributable to age, although some variation attributable to age persists after normalization for some sections of the vowel space. © 2012 Acoustical Society of America

Principals' Leadership Orientation in Relationship to the Classification of Their Schools in New Jersey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

dela Cruz, Samuel

2016-01-01

The relationship of principals' leadership orientations to the classification of their schools in New Jersey were examined in this study. While their role has expanded over the years, school principals continue to be essential in school reform and sustainability efforts. However, they are often overshadowed by the role of teachers. This…

Inferring imagined speech using EEG signals: a new approach using Riemannian manifold features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nguyen, Chuong H.; Karavas, George K.; Artemiadis, Panagiotis

2018-02-01

Objective. In this paper, we investigate the suitability of imagined speech for brain-computer interface (BCI) applications. Approach. A novel method based on covariance matrix descriptors, which lie in Riemannian manifold, and the relevance vector machines classifier is proposed. The method is applied on electroencephalographic (EEG) signals and tested in multiple subjects. Main results. The method is shown to outperform other approaches in the field with respect to accuracy and robustness. The algorithm is validated on various categories of speech, such as imagined pronunciation of vowels, short words and long words. The classification accuracy of our methodology is in all cases significantly above chance level, reaching a maximum of 70% for cases where we classify three words and 95% for cases of two words. Significance. The results reveal certain aspects that may affect the success of speech imagery classification from EEG signals, such as sound, meaning and word complexity. This can potentially extend the capability of utilizing speech imagery in future BCI applications. The dataset of speech imagery collected from total 15 subjects is also published.

Etude des sequences de type consonne constrictive plus voyelle en francais, a l'aide de la radiocinematographie et de l'oscillographie (A Study of the Constrictive Consonant Plus Vowel Sequences in French, Using X-Ray Filming and Oscillography). Publication B-148.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rochette, Claude; Simard, Claude

A study of the phonetic combination of a constrictive consonant (specifically, [f], [v], and [r]) and a vowel in French using x-ray and oscillograph technology focused on the speed and process of articulation between the consonant and the vowel. The study considered aperture size, nasality, labiality, and accent. Articulation of a total of 407…

ASIST SIG/CR Classification Workshop 2000: Classification for User Support and Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soergel, Dagobert

2001-01-01

Reports on papers presented at the 62nd Annual Meeting of ASIST (American Society for Information Science and Technology) for the Special Interest Group in Classification Research (SIG/CR). Topics include types of knowledge; developing user-oriented classifications, including domain analysis; classification in the user interface; and automatic…

Instructional Method Classifications Lack User Language and Orientation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neumann, Susanne; Koper, Rob

2010-01-01

Following publications emphasizing the need of a taxonomy for instructional methods, this article presents a literature review on classifications for learning and teaching in order to identify possible classifications for instructional methods. Data was collected for 37 classifications capturing the origins, theoretical underpinnings, purposes and…

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.

The Interaction of Language-Specific and Universal Factors During the Acquisition of Morphophonemic Alternations With Exceptions.

PubMed

Baer-Henney, Dinah; Kügler, Frank; van de Vijver, Ruben

2015-09-01

Using the artificial language paradigm, we studied the acquisition of morphophonemic alternations with exceptions by 160 German adult learners. We tested the acquisition of two types of alternations in two regularity conditions while additionally varying length of training. In the first alternation, a vowel harmony, backness of the stem vowel determines backness of the suffix. This process is grounded in substance (phonetic motivation), and this universal phonetic factor bolsters learning a generalization. In the second alternation, tenseness of the stem vowel determines backness of the suffix vowel. This process is not based in substance, but it reflects a phonotactic property of German and our participants benefit from this language-specific factor. We found that learners use both cues, while substantive bias surfaces mainly in the most unstable situation. We show that language-specific and universal factors interact in learning. Copyright © 2014 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

On the Role of Cognitive Abilities in Second Language Vowel Learning.

PubMed

Ghaffarvand Mokari, Payam; Werner, Stefan

2018-03-01

This study investigated the role of different cognitive abilities-inhibitory control, attention control, phonological short-term memory (PSTM), and acoustic short-term memory (AM)-in second language (L2) vowel learning. The participants were 40 Azerbaijani learners of Standard Southern British English. Their perception of L2 vowels was tested through a perceptual discrimination task before and after five sessions of high-variability phonetic training. Inhibitory control was significantly correlated with gains from training in the discrimination of L2 vowel pairs. However, there were no significant correlations between attention control, AM, PSTM, and gains from training. These findings suggest the potential role of inhibitory control in L2 phonological learning. We suggest that inhibitory control facilitates the processing of L2 sounds by allowing learners to ignore the interfering information from L1 during training, leading to better L2 segmental learning.

Decoding vowels and consonants in spoken and imagined words using electrocorticographic signals in humans

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pei, Xiaomei; Barbour, Dennis L.; Leuthardt, Eric C.; Schalk, Gerwin

2011-08-01

Several stories in the popular media have speculated that it may be possible to infer from the brain which word a person is speaking or even thinking. While recent studies have demonstrated that brain signals can give detailed information about actual and imagined actions, such as different types of limb movements or spoken words, concrete experimental evidence for the possibility to 'read the mind', i.e. to interpret internally-generated speech, has been scarce. In this study, we found that it is possible to use signals recorded from the surface of the brain (electrocorticography) to discriminate the vowels and consonants embedded in spoken and in imagined words, and we defined the cortical areas that held the most information about discrimination of vowels and consonants. The results shed light on the distinct mechanisms associated with production of vowels and consonants, and could provide the basis for brain-based communication using imagined speech.

Hazard classification assessment for the MC3423 detonator shipping package

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

Jones, R.B.

1981-11-05

An investigation was made to determine whether the MC3423 detonator should be assigned a DOT hazard classification of Detonating Fuze, Class C Explosive, per Federal Register 49 CFR 173.113, when packaged as specified. This study covers two propagation tests which evaluated the effects of two orientations of the MC3423 in its shipping tray. The method of testing was approved by DOE, Albuquerque Operations Office. Test data led to the recommended hazard classification of Detonating Fuze, Class C Explosive for both orientations of the detonator.

On the assimilation-discrimination relationship in American English adults’ French vowel learning1

PubMed Central

Levy, Erika S.

2009-01-01

A quantitative “cross-language assimilation overlap” method for testing predictions of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) was implemented to compare results of a discrimination experiment with the listeners’ previously reported assimilation data. The experiment examined discrimination of Parisian French (PF) front rounded vowels ∕y∕ and ∕œ∕. Three groups of American English listeners differing in their French experience (no experience [NoExp], formal experience [ModExp], and extensive formal-plus-immersion experience [HiExp]) performed discrimination of PF ∕y-u∕, ∕y-o∕, ∕œ-o∕, ∕œ-u∕, ∕y-i∕, ∕y-ɛ∕, ∕œ-ɛ∕, ∕œ-i∕, ∕y-œ∕, ∕u-i∕, and ∕a-ɛ∕. Vowels were in bilabial ∕rabVp∕ and alveolar ∕radVt∕ contexts. More errors were found for PF front vs back rounded vowel pairs (16%) than for PF front unrounded vs rounded pairs (2%). Overall, ModExp listeners did not perform more accurately (11% errors) than NoExp listeners (13% errors). Extensive immersion experience, however, was associated with fewer errors (3%) than formal experience alone, although discrimination of PF ∕y-u∕ remained relatively poor (12% errors) for HiExp listeners. More errors occurred on pairs involving front vs back rounded vowels in alveolar context (20% errors) than in bilabial (11% errors). Significant correlations were revealed between listeners’ assimilation overlap scores and their discrimination errors, suggesting that the PAM may be extended to second-language (L2) vowel learning. PMID:19894844

Object-oriented crop mapping and monitoring using multi-temporal polarimetric RADARSAT-2 data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiao, Xianfeng; Kovacs, John M.; Shang, Jiali; McNairn, Heather; Walters, Dan; Ma, Baoluo; Geng, Xiaoyuan

2014-10-01

The aim of this paper is to assess the accuracy of an object-oriented classification of polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) data to map and monitor crops using 19 RADARSAT-2 fine beam polarimetric (FQ) images of an agricultural area in North-eastern Ontario, Canada. Polarimetric images and field data were acquired during the 2011 and 2012 growing seasons. The classification and field data collection focused on the main crop types grown in the region, which include: wheat, oat, soybean, canola and forage. The polarimetric parameters were extracted with PolSAR analysis using both the Cloude-Pottier and Freeman-Durden decompositions. The object-oriented classification, with a single date of PolSAR data, was able to classify all five crop types with an accuracy of 95% and Kappa of 0.93; a 6% improvement in comparison with linear-polarization only classification. However, the time of acquisition is crucial. The larger biomass crops of canola and soybean were most accurately mapped, whereas the identification of oat and wheat were more variable. The multi-temporal data using the Cloude-Pottier decomposition parameters provided the best classification accuracy compared to the linear polarizations and the Freeman-Durden decomposition parameters. In general, the object-oriented classifications were able to accurately map crop types by reducing the noise inherent in the SAR data. Furthermore, using the crop classification maps we were able to monitor crop growth stage based on a trend analysis of the radar response. Based on field data from canola crops, there was a strong relationship between the phenological growth stage based on the BBCH scale, and the HV backscatter and entropy.

Evaluating the Generality and Limits of Blind Return-Oriented Programming Attacks

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-12-01

consider a recently proposed information disclosure vulnerability called blind return-oriented programming (BROP). Under certain conditions, this...implementation disclosure attacks 15. NUMBER OF PAGES 75 16. PRICE CODE 17. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF REPORT Unclassified 18. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF...Science iii THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK iv ABSTRACT We consider a recently proposed information disclosure vulnerability called blind return

The Duration of Auditory Sensory Memory for Vowel Processing: Neurophysiological and Behavioral Measures.

PubMed

Yu, Yan H; Shafer, Valerie L; Sussman, Elyse S

2018-01-01

Speech perception behavioral research suggests that rates of sensory memory decay are dependent on stimulus properties at more than one level (e.g., acoustic level, phonemic level). The neurophysiology of sensory memory decay rate has rarely been examined in the context of speech processing. In a lexical tone study, we showed that long-term memory representation of lexical tone slows the decay rate of sensory memory for these tones. Here, we tested the hypothesis that long-term memory representation of vowels slows the rate of auditory sensory memory decay in a similar way to that of lexical tone. Event-related potential (ERP) responses were recorded to Mandarin non-words contrasting the vowels /i/ vs. /u/ and /y/ vs. /u/ from first-language (L1) Mandarin and L1 American English participants under short and long interstimulus interval (ISI) conditions (short ISI: an average of 575 ms, long ISI: an average of 2675 ms). Results revealed poorer discrimination of the vowel contrasts for English listeners than Mandarin listeners, but with different patterns for behavioral perception and neural discrimination. As predicted, English listeners showed the poorest discrimination and identification for the vowel contrast /y/ vs. /u/, and poorer performance in the long ISI condition. In contrast to Yu et al. (2017), however, we found no effect of ISI reflected in the neural responses, specifically the mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a and late negativity ERP amplitudes. We did see a language group effect, with Mandarin listeners generally showing larger MMN and English listeners showing larger P3a. The behavioral results revealed that native language experience plays a role in echoic sensory memory trace maintenance, but the failure to find an effect of ISI on the ERP results suggests that vowel and lexical tone memory traces decay at different rates. Highlights : We examined the interaction between auditory sensory memory decay and language experience. We compared MMN, P3a, LN and behavioral responses in short vs. long interstimulus intervals. We found that different from lexical tone contrast, MMN, P3a, and LN changes to vowel contrasts are not influenced by lengthening the ISI to 2.6 s. We also found that the English listeners discriminated the non-native vowel contrast with lower accuracy under the long ISI condition.

[Object-oriented segmentation and classification of forest gap based on QuickBird remote sensing image.

PubMed

Mao, Xue Gang; Du, Zi Han; Liu, Jia Qian; Chen, Shu Xin; Hou, Ji Yu

2018-01-01

Traditional field investigation and artificial interpretation could not satisfy the need of forest gaps extraction at regional scale. High spatial resolution remote sensing image provides the possibility for regional forest gaps extraction. In this study, we used object-oriented classification method to segment and classify forest gaps based on QuickBird high resolution optical remote sensing image in Jiangle National Forestry Farm of Fujian Province. In the process of object-oriented classification, 10 scales (10-100, with a step length of 10) were adopted to segment QuickBird remote sensing image; and the intersection area of reference object (RA or ) and intersection area of segmented object (RA os ) were adopted to evaluate the segmentation result at each scale. For segmentation result at each scale, 16 spectral characteristics and support vector machine classifier (SVM) were further used to classify forest gaps, non-forest gaps and others. The results showed that the optimal segmentation scale was 40 when RA or was equal to RA os . The accuracy difference between the maximum and minimum at different segmentation scales was 22%. At optimal scale, the overall classification accuracy was 88% (Kappa=0.82) based on SVM classifier. Combining high resolution remote sensing image data with object-oriented classification method could replace the traditional field investigation and artificial interpretation method to identify and classify forest gaps at regional scale.

A Cross-Language Study of Acoustic Predictors of Speech Intelligibility in Individuals With Parkinson's Disease

PubMed Central

Choi, Yaelin

2017-01-01

Purpose The present study aimed to compare acoustic models of speech intelligibility in individuals with the same disease (Parkinson's disease [PD]) and presumably similar underlying neuropathologies but with different native languages (American English [AE] and Korean). Method A total of 48 speakers from the 4 speaker groups (AE speakers with PD, Korean speakers with PD, healthy English speakers, and healthy Korean speakers) were asked to read a paragraph in their native languages. Four acoustic variables were analyzed: acoustic vowel space, voice onset time contrast scores, normalized pairwise variability index, and articulation rate. Speech intelligibility scores were obtained from scaled estimates of sentences extracted from the paragraph. Results The findings indicated that the multiple regression models of speech intelligibility were different in Korean and AE, even with the same set of predictor variables and with speakers matched on speech intelligibility across languages. Analysis of the descriptive data for the acoustic variables showed the expected compression of the vowel space in speakers with PD in both languages, lower normalized pairwise variability index scores in Korean compared with AE, and no differences within or across language in articulation rate. Conclusions The results indicate that the basis of an intelligibility deficit in dysarthria is likely to depend on the native language of the speaker and listener. Additional research is required to explore other potential predictor variables, as well as additional language comparisons to pursue cross-linguistic considerations in classification and diagnosis of dysarthria types. PMID:28821018

Extraction and Analysis of Mega Cities’ Impervious Surface on Pixel-based and Object-oriented Support Vector Machine Classification Technology: A case of Bombay

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, S. S.; Sun, Z. C.; Sun, L.; Wu, M. F.

2017-02-01

The object of this paper is to study the impervious surface extraction method using remote sensing imagery and monitor the spatiotemporal changing patterns of mega cities. Megacity Bombay was selected as the interesting area. Firstly, the pixel-based and object-oriented support vector machine (SVM) classification methods were used to acquire the land use/land cover (LULC) products of Bombay in 2010. Consequently, the overall accuracy (OA) and overall Kappa (OK) of the pixel-based method were 94.97% and 0.96 with a running time of 78 minutes, the OA and OK of the object-oriented method were 93.72% and 0.94 with a running time of only 17s. Additionally, OA and OK of the object-oriented method after a post-classification were improved up to 95.8% and 0.94. Then, the dynamic impervious surfaces of Bombay in the period 1973-2015 were extracted and the urbanization pattern of Bombay was analysed. Results told that both the two SVM classification methods could accomplish the impervious surface extraction, but the object-oriented method should be a better choice. Urbanization of Bombay experienced a fast extending during the past 42 years, implying a dramatically urban sprawl of mega cities in the developing countries along the One Belt and One Road (OBOR).

Auditory cortical change detection in adults with Asperger syndrome.

PubMed

Lepistö, Tuulia; Nieminen-von Wendt, Taina; von Wendt, Lennart; Näätänen, Risto; Kujala, Teija

2007-03-06

The present study investigated whether auditory deficits reported in children with Asperger syndrome (AS) are also present in adulthood. To this end, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from adults with AS for duration, pitch, and phonetic changes in vowels, and for acoustically matched non-speech stimuli. These subjects had enhanced mismatch negativity (MMN) amplitudes particularly for pitch and duration deviants, indicating enhanced sound-discrimination abilities. Furthermore, as reflected by the P3a, their involuntary orienting was enhanced for changes in non-speech sounds, but tended to be deficient for changes in speech sounds. The results are consistent with those reported earlier in children with AS, except for the duration-MMN, which was diminished in children and enhanced in adults.

Cross-Linguistic Influence in the Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Evidence of Cognate Effects in the Phonetic Production and Processing of a Vowel Contrast.

PubMed

Amengual, Mark

2016-01-01

The present study examines cognate effects in the phonetic production and processing of the Catalan back mid-vowel contrast (/o/-/ɔ/) by 24 early and highly proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Majorca (Spain). Participants completed a picture-naming task and a forced-choice lexical decision task in which they were presented with either words (e.g., /bɔsk/ "forest") or non-words based on real words, but with the alternate mid-vowel pair in stressed position ((*)/bosk/). The same cognate and non-cognate lexical items were included in the production and lexical decision experiments. The results indicate that even though these early bilinguals maintained the back mid-vowel contrast in their productions, they had great difficulties identifying non-words and real words based on the identity of the Catalan mid-vowel. The analyses revealed language dominance and cognate effects: Spanish-dominants exhibited higher error rates than Catalan-dominants, and production and lexical decision accuracy were also affected by cognate status. The present study contributes to the discussion of the organization of early bilinguals' dominant and non-dominant sound systems, and proposes that exemplar theoretic approaches can be extended to include bilingual lexical connections that account for the interactions between the phonetic and lexical levels of early bilingual individuals.

Interactions of speaking condition and auditory feedback on vowel production in postlingually deaf adults with cochlear implants.

PubMed

Ménard, Lucie; Polak, Marek; Denny, Margaret; Burton, Ellen; Lane, Harlan; Matthies, Melanie L; Marrone, Nicole; Perkell, Joseph S; Tiede, Mark; Vick, Jennell

2007-06-01

This study investigates the effects of speaking condition and auditory feedback on vowel production by postlingually deafened adults. Thirteen cochlear implant users produced repetitions of nine American English vowels prior to implantation, and at one month and one year after implantation. There were three speaking conditions (clear, normal, and fast), and two feedback conditions after implantation (implant processor turned on and off). Ten normal-hearing controls were also recorded once. Vowel contrasts in the formant space (expressed in mels) were larger in the clear than in the fast condition, both for controls and for implant users at all three time samples. Implant users also produced differences in duration between clear and fast conditions that were in the range of those obtained from the controls. In agreement with prior work, the implant users had contrast values lower than did the controls. The implant users' contrasts were larger with hearing on than off and improved from one month to one year postimplant. Because the controls and implant users responded similarly to a change in speaking condition, it is inferred that auditory feedback, although demonstrably important for maintaining normative values of vowel contrasts, is not needed to maintain the distinctiveness of those contrasts in different speaking conditions.

Emotions in freely varying and mono-pitched vowels, acoustic and EGG analyses.

PubMed

Waaramaa, Teija; Palo, Pertti; Kankare, Elina

2015-12-01

Vocal emotions are expressed either by speech or singing. The difference is that in singing the pitch is predetermined while in speech it may vary freely. It was of interest to study whether there were voice quality differences between freely varying and mono-pitched vowels expressed by professional actors. Given their profession, actors have to be able to express emotions both by speech and singing. Electroglottogram and acoustic analyses of emotional utterances embedded in expressions of freely varying vowels [a:], [i:], [u:] (96 samples) and mono-pitched protracted vowels (96 samples) were studied. Contact quotient (CQEGG) was calculated using 35%, 55%, and 80% threshold levels. Three different threshold levels were used in order to evaluate their effects on emotions. Genders were studied separately. The results suggested significant gender differences for CQEGG 80% threshold level. SPL, CQEGG, and F4 were used to convey emotions, but to a lesser degree, when F0 was predetermined. Moreover, females showed fewer significant variations than males. Both genders used more hypofunctional phonation type in mono-pitched utterances than in the expressions with freely varying pitch. The present material warrants further study of the interplay between CQEGG threshold levels and formant frequencies, and listening tests to investigate the perceptual value of the mono-pitched vowels in the communication of emotions.

Effects of syllable-initial voicing and speaking rate on the temporal characteristics of monosyllabic words.

PubMed

Allen, J S; Miller, J L

1999-10-01

Two speech production experiments tested the validity of the traditional method of creating voice-onset-time (VOT) continua for perceptual studies in which the systematic increase in VOT across the continuum is accompanied by a concomitant decrease in the duration of the following vowel. In experiment 1, segmental durations were measured for matched monosyllabic words beginning with either a voiced stop (e.g., big, duck, gap) or a voiceless stop (e.g., pig, tuck, cap). Results from four talkers showed that the change from voiced to voiceless stop produced not only an increase in VOT, but also a decrease in vowel duration. However, the decrease in vowel duration was consistently less than the increase in VOT. In experiment 2, results from four new talkers replicated these findings at two rates of speech, as well as highlighted the contrasting temporal effects on vowel duration of an increase in VOT due to a change in syllable-initial voicing versus a change in speaking rate. It was concluded that the traditional method of creating VOT continua for perceptual experiments, although not perfect, approximates natural speech by capturing the basic trade-off between VOT and vowel duration in syllable-initial voiced versus voiceless stop consonants.

Audiovisual speech perception in infancy: The influence of vowel identity and infants' productive abilities on sensitivity to (mis)matches between auditory and visual speech cues.

PubMed

Altvater-Mackensen, Nicole; Mani, Nivedita; Grossmann, Tobias

2016-02-01

Recent studies suggest that infants' audiovisual speech perception is influenced by articulatory experience (Mugitani et al., 2008; Yeung & Werker, 2013). The current study extends these findings by testing if infants' emerging ability to produce native sounds in babbling impacts their audiovisual speech perception. We tested 44 6-month-olds on their ability to detect mismatches between concurrently presented auditory and visual vowels and related their performance to their productive abilities and later vocabulary size. Results show that infants' ability to detect mismatches between auditory and visually presented vowels differs depending on the vowels involved. Furthermore, infants' sensitivity to mismatches is modulated by their current articulatory knowledge and correlates with their vocabulary size at 12 months of age. This suggests that-aside from infants' ability to match nonnative audiovisual cues (Pons et al., 2009)-their ability to match native auditory and visual cues continues to develop during the first year of life. Our findings point to a potential role of salient vowel cues and productive abilities in the development of audiovisual speech perception, and further indicate a relation between infants' early sensitivity to audiovisual speech cues and their later language development. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved.

Sound Symbolism in the Languages of Australia

PubMed Central

Haynie, Hannah; Bowern, Claire; LaPalombara, Hannah

2014-01-01

The notion that linguistic forms and meanings are related only by convention and not by any direct relationship between sounds and semantic concepts is a foundational principle of modern linguistics. Though the principle generally holds across the lexicon, systematic exceptions have been identified. These “sound symbolic” forms have been identified in lexical items and linguistic processes in many individual languages. This paper examines sound symbolism in the languages of Australia. We conduct a statistical investigation of the evidence for several common patterns of sound symbolism, using data from a sample of 120 languages. The patterns examined here include the association of meanings denoting “smallness” or “nearness” with front vowels or palatal consonants, and the association of meanings denoting “largeness” or “distance” with back vowels or velar consonants. Our results provide evidence for the expected associations of vowels and consonants with meanings of “smallness” and “proximity” in Australian languages. However, the patterns uncovered in this region are more complicated than predicted. Several sound-meaning relationships are only significant for segments in prominent positions in the word, and the prevailing mapping between vowel quality and magnitude meaning cannot be characterized by a simple link between gradients of magnitude and vowel F2, contrary to the claims of previous studies. PMID:24752356

Comparison of singer's formant, speaker's ring, and LTA spectrum among classical singers and untrained normal speakers.

PubMed

Oliveira Barrichelo, V M; Heuer, R J; Dean, C M; Sataloff, R T

2001-09-01

Many studies have described and analyzed the singer's formant. A similar phenomenon produced by trained speakers led some authors to examine the speaker's ring. If we consider these phenomena as resonance effects associated with vocal tract adjustments and training, can we hypothesize that trained singers can carry over their singing formant ability into speech, also obtaining a speaker's ring? Can we find similar differences for energy distribution in continuous speech? Forty classically trained singers and forty untrained normal speakers performed an all-voiced reading task and produced a sample of a sustained spoken vowel /a/. The singers were also requested to perform a sustained sung vowel /a/ at a comfortable pitch. The reading was analyzed by the long-term average spectrum (LTAS) method. The sustained vowels were analyzed through power spectrum analysis. The data suggest that singers show more energy concentration in the singer's formant/speaker's ring region in both sung and spoken vowels. The singers' spoken vowel energy in the speaker's ring area was found to be significantly larger than that of the untrained speakers. The LTAS showed similar findings suggesting that those differences also occur in continuous speech. This finding supports the value of further research on the effect of singing training on the resonance of the speaking voice.

Vowel selection and its effects on perturbation and nonlinear dynamic measures.

PubMed

Maccallum, Julia K; Zhang, Yu; Jiang, Jack J

2011-01-01

Acoustic analysis of voice is typically conducted on recordings of sustained vowel phonation. This study applied perturbation and nonlinear dynamic analyses to the vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ in order to determine vowel selection effects on analysis. Forty subjects (20 males and 20 females) with normal voices participated in recording. Traditional parameters of fundamental frequency, signal-to-noise ratio, percent jitter, and percent shimmer were calculated for the signals using CSpeech. Nonlinear dynamic parameters of correlation dimension and second-order entropy were also calculated. Perturbation analysis results were largely incongruous in this study and in previous research. Fundamental frequency results corroborated previous work, indicating higher fundamental frequency for /i/ and /u/ and lower fundamental frequency for /a/. Signal-to-noise ratio results showed that /i/ and /u/ have greater harmonic levels than /a/. Results of nonlinear dynamic analysis suggested that more complex activity may be evident in /a/ than in /i/ or /u/. Percent jitter and percent shimmer may not be useful for description of acoustic differences between vowels. Fundamental frequency, signal-to-noise ratio, and nonlinear dynamic parameters may be applied to characterize /a/ as having lower frequency, higher noise, and greater nonlinear components than /i/ and /u/. Copyright © 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Effects of stimulus duration and vowel quality in cross-linguistic categorical perception of pitch directions

PubMed Central

Zhu, Yiqing; Wayland, Ratree

2017-01-01

We investigated categorical perception of rising and falling pitch contours by tonal and non-tonal listeners. Specifically, we determined minimum durations needed to perceive both contours and compared to those of production, how stimuli duration affects their perception, whether there is an intrinsic F0 effect, and how first language background, duration, directions of pitch and vowel quality interact with each other. Continua of fundamental frequency on different vowels with 9 duration values were created for identification and discrimination tasks. Less time is generally needed to effectively perceive a pitch direction than to produce it. Overall, tonal listeners’ perception is more categorical than non-tonal listeners. Stimuli duration plays a critical role for both groups, but tonal listeners showed a stronger duration effect, and may benefit more from the extra time in longer stimuli for context-coding, consistent with the multistore model of categorical perception. Within a certain range of semitones, tonal listeners also required shorter stimulus duration to perceive pitch direction changes than non-tonal listeners. Finally, vowel quality plays a limited role and only interacts with duration in perceiving falling pitch directions. These findings further our understanding on models of categorical perception, the relationship between speech perception and production, and the interaction between the perception of tones and vowel quality. PMID:28671991

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.

Perceptual effects of dialectal and prosodic variation in vowels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fox, Robert Allen; Jacewicz, Ewa; Hatcher, Kristin; Salmons, Joseph

2005-09-01

As was reported earlier [Fox et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 114, 2396 (2003)], certain vowels in the Ohio and Wisconsin dialects of American English are shifting in different directions. In addition, we have found that the spectral characteristics of these vowels (e.g., duration and formant frequencies) changed systematically under varying degrees of prosodic prominence, with somewhat different changes occurring within each dialect. The question addressed in the current study is whether naive listeners from these two dialects are sensitive to both the dialect variations and to the prosodically induced spectral differences. Listeners from Ohio and Wisconsin listened to the stimulus tokens [beIt] and [bɛt] produced in each of three prosodic contexts (representing three different levels of prominence). These words were produced by speakers from Ohio or from Wisconsin (none of the listeners were also speakers). Listeners identified the stimulus tokens in terms of vowel quality and indicated whether it was a good, fair, or poor exemplar of that phonetic category. Results showed that both phonetic quality decisions and goodness ratings were systematically and significantly affected by speaker dialect, listener dialect, and prosodic context. Implications of source and nature of ongoing vowel changes in these two dialects will be discussed. [Work partially supported by NIDCD R03 DC005560-01.

Vowel production, speech-motor control, and phonological encoding in people who are lesbian, bisexual, or gay, and people who are not

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Munson, Benjamin; Deboe, Nancy

2003-10-01

A recent study (Pierrehumbert, Bent, Munson, and Bailey, submitted) found differences in vowel production between people who are lesbian, bisexual, or gay (LBG) and people who are not. The specific differences (more fronted /u/ and /a/ in the non-LB women; an overall more-contracted vowel space in the non-gay men) were not amenable to an interpretation based on simple group differences in vocal-tract geometry. Rather, they suggested that differences were either due to group differences in some other skill, such as motor control or phonological encoding, or learned. This paper expands on this research by examining vowel production, speech-motor control (measured by diadochokinetic rates), and phonological encoding (measured by error rates in a tongue-twister task) in people who are LBG and people who are not. Analyses focus on whether the findings of Pierrehumbert et al. (submitted) are replicable, and whether group differences in vowel production are related to group differences in speech-motor control or phonological encoding. To date, 20 LB women, 20 non-LB women, 7 gay men, and 7 non-gay men have participated. Preliminary analyses suggest that there are no group differences in speech motor control or phonological encoding, suggesting that the earlier findings of Pierrehumbert et al. reflected learned behaviors.

An Object-Oriented Classification Method on High Resolution Satellite Data

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-11-01

25th ACRS 2004 Chiang Mai , Thailand 347 Data Processing B-4.6 AN OBJECT-ORIENTED CLASSIFICATION METHOD ON...unlimited 13. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES Proceedings of the 25th Asian Conference on Remote Sensing, Held in Chiang Mai , Thailand on 22-26 November 2004...panchromatic (left) and multispectral (right) 25th ACRS 2004 Chiang Mai , Thailand 349 Data Processing B-4.6 First of all, the

Remembering Left–Right Orientation of Pictures

PubMed Central

Bartlett, James C.; Gernsbacher, Morton Ann; Till, Robert E.

2015-01-01

In a study of recognition memory for pictures, we observed an asymmetry in classifying test items as “same” versus “different” in left–right orientation: Identical copies of previously viewed items were classified more accurately than left–right reversals of those items. Response bias could not explain this asymmetry, and, moreover, correct “same” and “different” classifications were independently manipulable: Whereas repetition of input pictures (one vs. two presentations) affected primarily correct “same” classifications, retention interval (3 hr vs. 1 week) affected primarily correct “different” classifications. In addition, repetition but not retention interval affected judgments that previously seen pictures (both identical and reversed) were “old”. These and additional findings supported a dual-process hypothesis that links “same” classifications to high familiarity, and “different” classifications to conscious sampling of images of previously viewed pictures. PMID:2949051

Automated acoustic analysis of task dependency in adductor spasmodic dysphonia versus muscle tension dysphonia.

PubMed

Roy, Nelson; Mazin, Alqhazo; Awan, Shaheen N

2014-03-01

Distinguishing muscle tension dysphonia (MTD) from adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD) can be difficult. Unlike MTD, ADSD is described as "task-dependent," implying that dysphonia severity varies depending upon the demands of the vocal task, with connected speech thought to be more symptomatic than sustained vowels. This study used an acoustic index of dysphonia severity (i.e., the Cepstral Spectral Index of Dysphonia [CSID]) to: 1) assess the value of "task dependency" to distinguish ADSD from MTD, and to 2) examine associations between the CSID and listener ratings. Case-Control Study. CSID estimates of dysphonia severity for connected speech and sustained vowels of patients with ADSD (n = 36) and MTD (n = 45) were compared. The diagnostic precision of task dependency (as evidenced by differences in CSID-estimated dysphonia severity between connected speech and sustained vowels) was examined. In ADSD, CSID-estimated severity for connected speech (M = 39. 2, SD = 22.0) was significantly worse than for sustained vowels (M = 29.3, SD = 21.9), [P = .020]. Whereas in MTD, no significant difference in CSID-estimated severity was observed between connected speech (M = 55.1, SD = 23.8) and sustained vowels (M = 50.0, SD = 27.4), [P = .177]. CSID evidence of task dependency correctly identified 66.7% of ADSD cases (sensitivity) and 64.4% of MTD cases (specificity). CSID and listener ratings were significantly correlated. Task dependency in ADSD, as revealed by differences in acoustically-derived estimates of dysphonia severity between connected speech and sustained vowel production, is a potentially valuable diagnostic marker. © 2013 The American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society, Inc.

Assessing Vowel Centralization in Dysarthria: A Comparison of Methods

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fletcher, Annalise R.; McAuliffe, Megan J.; Lansford, Kaitlin L.; Liss, Julie M.

2017-01-01

Purpose: The strength of the relationship between vowel centralization measures and perceptual ratings of dysarthria severity has varied considerably across reports. This article evaluates methods of acoustic-perceptual analysis to determine whether procedural changes can strengthen the association between these measures. Method: Sixty-one…

Verbal Modification via Visual Display

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Richmond, Edmun B.; Wallace-Childers, La Donna

1977-01-01

The inability of foreign language students to produce acceptable approximations of new vowel sounds initiated a study to devise a real-time visual display system whereby the students could match vowel production to a visual pedagogical model. The system used amateur radio equipment and a standard oscilloscope. (CHK)

The Adolescent Dyslexic: Strategies for Spelling.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stirling, Eileen

1989-01-01

The spelling difficulties of the adolescent dyslexic student are described, and techniques are presented to provide the student with the tools needed to cope with spelling requirements, including the study of vowel sounds, doubling the consonant following a short vowel, root words, and laws of probabilities. (JDD)

Theoretical Aspects of Speech Production.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stevens, Kenneth N.

1992-01-01

This paper on speech production in children and youth with hearing impairments summarizes theoretical aspects, including the speech production process, sound sources in the vocal tract, vowel production, and consonant production. Examples of spectra for several classes of vowel and consonant sounds in simple syllables are given. (DB)

Fundamental frequency and perturbation measures of sustained vowels in Malaysian Malay children between 7 and 12 years old.

PubMed

Ting, Hua-Nong; Chia, See-Yan; Manap, Hany Hazfiza; Ho, Ai-Hui; Tiu, Kian-Yean; Abdul Hamid, Badrulzaman

2012-07-01

The study is going to investigate the fundamental frequency (F(0)) and perturbation measures of sustained vowels in 360 native Malaysian Malay children aged between 7 and 12 years using acoustical analysis. Praat software (Boersma and Weenink, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) was used to analyze the F(0) and perturbation measures of the sustained vowels. Statistical analyses were conducted to determine the significant differences in F(0) and perturbation measures across the vowels, sex, and age groups. The mean F(0) of Malaysian Malay male and female children were reported at 240±34.88 and 254.48±23.35Hz, respectively. The jitter (Jitt), relative average perturbation (RAP), five-point period perturbation quotient (PPQ5), shimmer (Shim), and 11-point amplitude perturbation quotient (APQ11) of Malaysian male children were reported at 0.43±0.26%, 0.25±0.16%, 0.26±0.15%, 2.48±1.61%, and 1.75±1.04%, respectively. As for female children, the Jitt, RAP, PPQ5, Shim, and APQ11 were reported at 0.42±0.22%, 0.25±0.14%, 0.25±0.13%, 2.47±1.53%, and 1.75±1.10%, respectively. No significant differences in F(0) were reported across the Malay vowels for both males and females. Malay females had significantly higher F(0) than that in Malay males at the age of 8, 10, and 12 years. Malaysian Malay children underwent the nonsystematic decrement in F(0) across the age groups. Significant differences in F(0) were found across the age groups. Significant differences in perturbation measures were observed across the vowels in certain age groups of Malay males and females. Generally, no significant differences in perturbation measures between the sex were observed in all the age groups and vowels. No significant differences in all the perturbation measures across the age groups were reported in both Malaysian Malay male and female children. Copyright © 2012 The Voice Foundation. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Auditory perception and attention as reflected by the brain event-related potentials in children with Asperger syndrome.

PubMed

Lepistö, T; Silokallio, S; Nieminen-von Wendt, T; Alku, P; Näätänen, R; Kujala, T

2006-10-01

Language development is delayed and deviant in individuals with autism, but proceeds quite normally in those with Asperger syndrome (AS). We investigated auditory-discrimination and orienting in children with AS using an event-related potential (ERP) paradigm that was previously applied to children with autism. ERPs were measured to pitch, duration, and phonetic changes in vowels and to corresponding changes in non-speech sounds. Active sound discrimination was evaluated with a sound-identification task. The mismatch negativity (MMN), indexing sound-discrimination accuracy, showed right-hemisphere dominance in the AS group, but not in the controls. Furthermore, the children with AS had diminished MMN-amplitudes and decreased hit rates for duration changes. In contrast, their MMN to speech pitch changes was parietally enhanced. The P3a, reflecting involuntary orienting to changes, was diminished in the children with AS for speech pitch and phoneme changes, but not for the corresponding non-speech changes. The children with AS differ from controls with respect to their sound-discrimination and orienting abilities. The results of the children with AS are relatively similar to those earlier obtained from children with autism using the same paradigm, although these clinical groups differ markedly in their language development.

Parkinson's disease and the effect of lexical factors on vowel articulation.

PubMed

Watson, Peter J; Munson, Benjamin

2008-11-01

Lexical factors (i.e., word frequency and phonological neighborhood density) influence speech perception and production. It is unknown if these factors are affected by Parkinson's disease (PD). Ten men with PD and ten healthy men read CVC words (varying orthogonally for word frequency and density) aloud while audio recorded. Acoustic analysis was performed on duration and Bark-scaled F1-F2 values of the vowels contained in the words. Vowel space was larger for low-frequency words from dense neighborhoods than from sparse ones for both groups. However, the participants with PD did not show an effect of density on dispersion for high-frequency words.

Addressing Phonological Questions with Ultrasound

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davidson, Lisa

2005-01-01

Ultrasound can be used to address unresolved questions in phonological theory. To date, some studies have shown that results from ultrasound imaging can shed light on how differences in phonological elements are implemented. Phenomena that have been investigated include transitional schwa, vowel coalescence, and transparent vowels. A study of…

The comprehensive health care orientation process indicators explain hospital organisation's attractiveness: a Bayesian analysis of newly hired nurse and physician survey data.

PubMed

Peltokoski, Jaana; Vehviläinen-Julkunen, Katri; Pitkäaho, Taina; Mikkonen, Santtu; Miettinen, Merja

2015-10-01

To examine the relationship of a comprehensive health care orientation process with a hospital's attractiveness. Little is known about indicators of the employee orientation process that most likely explain a hospital organisation's attractiveness. Empirical data collected from registered nurses (n = 145) and physicians (n = 37) working in two specialised hospital districts. A Naive Bayes Classification was applied to examine the comprehensive orientation process indicators that predict hospital's attractiveness. The model was composed of five orientation process indicators: the contribution of the orientation process to nurses' and physicians' intention to stay; the defined responsibilities of the orientation process; interaction between newcomer and colleagues; responsibilities that are adapted for tasks; and newcomers' baseline knowledge assessment that should be done before the orientation phase. The Naive Bayes Classification was used to explore employee orientation process and related indicators. The model constructed provides insight that can be used in designing and implementing the orientation process to promote the hospital organisation's attractiveness. Managers should focus on developing fluently organised orientation practices based on the indicators that predict the hospital's attractiveness. For the purpose of personalised orientation, employees' baseline knowledge and competence level should be assessed before the orientation phase. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Vowel perception by noise masked normal-hearing young adults

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Richie, Carolyn; Kewley-Port, Diane; Coughlin, Maureen

2005-08-01

This study examined vowel perception by young normal-hearing (YNH) adults, in various listening conditions designed to simulate mild-to-moderate sloping sensorineural hearing loss. YNH listeners were individually age- and gender-matched to young hearing-impaired (YHI) listeners tested in a previous study [Richie et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 114, 2923-2933 (2003)]. YNH listeners were tested in three conditions designed to create equal audibility with the YHI listeners; a low signal level with and without a simulated hearing loss, and a high signal level with a simulated hearing loss. Listeners discriminated changes in synthetic vowel tokens /smcapi e ɛ invv æ/ when F1 or F2 varied in frequency. Comparison of YNH with YHI results failed to reveal significant differences between groups in terms of performance on vowel discrimination, in conditions of similar audibility by using both noise masking to elevate the hearing thresholds of the YNH and applying frequency-specific gain to the YHI listeners. Further, analysis of learning curves suggests that while the YHI listeners completed an average of 46% more test blocks than YNH listeners, the YHI achieved a level of discrimination similar to that of the YNH within the same number of blocks. Apparently, when age and gender are closely matched between young hearing-impaired and normal-hearing adults, performance on vowel tasks may be explained by audibility alone.

Nonlinear frequency compression: Influence of start frequency and input bandwidth on consonant and vowel recognitiona)

PubMed Central

Alexander, Joshua M.

2016-01-01

By varying parameters that control nonlinear frequency compression (NFC), this study examined how different ways of compressing inaudible mid- and/or high-frequency information at lower frequencies influences perception of consonants and vowels. Twenty-eight listeners with mild to moderately severe hearing loss identified consonants and vowels from nonsense syllables in noise following amplification via a hearing aid simulator. Low-pass filtering and the selection of NFC parameters fixed the output bandwidth at a frequency representing a moderately severe (3.3 kHz, group MS) or a mild-to-moderate (5.0 kHz, group MM) high-frequency loss. For each group (n = 14), effects of six combinations of NFC start frequency (SF) and input bandwidth [by varying the compression ratio (CR)] were examined. For both groups, the 1.6 kHz SF significantly reduced vowel and consonant recognition, especially as CR increased; whereas, recognition was generally unaffected if SF increased at the expense of a higher CR. Vowel recognition detriments for group MS were moderately correlated with the size of the second formant frequency shift following NFC. For both groups, significant improvement (33%–50%) with NFC was confined to final /s/ and /z/ and to some VCV tokens, perhaps because of listeners' limited exposure to each setting. No set of parameters simultaneously maximized recognition across all tokens. PMID:26936574

Cross-Linguistic Influence in the Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Evidence of Cognate Effects in the Phonetic Production and Processing of a Vowel Contrast

PubMed Central

Amengual, Mark

2016-01-01

The present study examines cognate effects in the phonetic production and processing of the Catalan back mid-vowel contrast (/o/-/ɔ/) by 24 early and highly proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Majorca (Spain). Participants completed a picture-naming task and a forced-choice lexical decision task in which they were presented with either words (e.g., /bɔsk/ “forest”) or non-words based on real words, but with the alternate mid-vowel pair in stressed position (*/bosk/). The same cognate and non-cognate lexical items were included in the production and lexical decision experiments. The results indicate that even though these early bilinguals maintained the back mid-vowel contrast in their productions, they had great difficulties identifying non-words and real words based on the identity of the Catalan mid-vowel. The analyses revealed language dominance and cognate effects: Spanish-dominants exhibited higher error rates than Catalan-dominants, and production and lexical decision accuracy were also affected by cognate status. The present study contributes to the discussion of the organization of early bilinguals' dominant and non-dominant sound systems, and proposes that exemplar theoretic approaches can be extended to include bilingual lexical connections that account for the interactions between the phonetic and lexical levels of early bilingual individuals. PMID:27199849

Effect of cognitive load on articulation rate and formant frequencies during simulator flights.

PubMed

Huttunen, Kerttu H; Keränen, Heikki I; Pääkkönen, Rauno J; Päivikki Eskelinen-Rönkä, R; Leino, Tuomo K

2011-03-01

It was explored how three types of intensive cognitive load typical of military aviation (load on situation awareness, information processing, or decision-making) affect speech. The utterances of 13 male military pilots were recorded during simulated combat flights. Articulation rate was calculated from the speech samples, and the first formant (F1) and second formant (F2) were tracked from first-syllable short vowels in pre-defined phoneme environments. Articulation rate was found to correlate negatively (albeit with low coefficients) with loads on situation awareness and decision-making but not with changes in F1 or F2. Changes were seen in the spectrum of the vowels: mean F1 of front vowels usually increased and their mean F2 decreased as a function of cognitive load, and both F1 and F2 of back vowels increased. The strongest associations were seen between the three types of cognitive load and F1 and F2 changes in back vowels. Because fluent and clear radio speech communication is vital to safety in aviation and temporal and spectral changes may affect speech intelligibility, careful use of standard aviation phraseology and training in the production of clear speech during a high level of cognitive load are important measures that diminish the probability of possible misunderstandings. © 2011 Acoustical Society of America

Language experience and consonantal context effects on perceptual assimilation of French vowels by American-English learners of French1

PubMed Central

Levy, Erika S.

2009-01-01

Recent research has called for an examination of perceptual assimilation patterns in second-language speech learning. This study examined the effects of language learning and consonantal context on perceptual assimilation of Parisian French (PF) front rounded vowels ∕y∕ and ∕œ∕ by American English (AE) learners of French. AE listeners differing in their French language experience (no experience, formal instruction, formal-plus-immersion experience) performed an assimilation task involving PF ∕y, œ, u, o, i, ε, a∕ in bilabial ∕rabVp∕ and alveolar ∕radVt∕ contexts, presented in phrases. PF front rounded vowels were assimilated overwhelmingly to back AE vowels. For PF ∕œ∕, assimilation patterns differed as a function of language experience and consonantal context. However, PF ∕y∕ revealed no experience effect in alveolar context. In bilabial context, listeners with extensive experience assimilated PF ∕y∕ to ∕ju∕ less often than listeners with no or only formal experience, a pattern predicting the poorest ∕u-y∕ discrimination for the most experienced group. An “internal consistency” analysis indicated that responses were most consistent with extensive language experience and in bilabial context. Acoustical analysis revealed that acoustical similarities among PF vowels alone cannot explain context-specific assimilation patterns. Instead it is suggested that native-language allophonic variation influences context-specific perceptual patterns in second-language learning. PMID:19206888

The role of linguistic experience on the perception of phonation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Esposito, Christina

2005-09-01

This study investigates the role linguistic experience has on the perception of phonation and the acoustic properties that correlate with this perception. Listeners from three languages (Gujarati, which contrasts breathy versus modal vowels, Italian, which has no breathiness, and English, which has allophonic breathiness) participated in two tasks. In the Visual Sort task, breathy and modal vowels from a variety of languages (e.g., Chong, Mon, etc.) were presented as icons on a computer screen. Subjects sorted the icons (the stimuli) into two groups based on perceived similarity of the talker's voices. In the multidimensional scaling task, listeners heard pairs of Mazatec vowels, and moved an on-screen slider to indicate the perceived similarity of the vowels in each pair. Results will show that judgments were more uniform across subjects who had breathy categories present in their native language(s), and varied across subjects who lack a breathy category. The perceived similarity among the stimuli will correlate with a measurable acoustic property (H1-H2, H1-H2, H1-A3, H1-A1 or H1-A2, the average of H1-H2 compared to A1, and A2-A3). It is hypothesized that H1-H2 will be the most salient acoustic property for Gujarati listeners because this correlates with their production of breathy vowels.

Mommy is only happy! Dutch mothers' realisation of speech sounds in infant-directed speech expresses emotion, not didactic intent.

PubMed

Benders, Titia

2013-12-01

Exaggeration of the vowel space in infant-directed speech (IDS) is well documented for English, but not consistently replicated in other languages or for other speech-sound contrasts. A second attested, but less discussed, pattern of change in IDS is an overall rise of the formant frequencies, which may reflect an affective speaking style. The present study investigates longitudinally how Dutch mothers change their corner vowels, voiceless fricatives, and pitch when speaking to their infant at 11 and 15 months of age. In comparison to adult-directed speech (ADS), Dutch IDS has a smaller vowel space, higher second and third formant frequencies in the vowels, and a higher spectral frequency in the fricatives. The formants of the vowels and spectral frequency of the fricatives are raised more strongly for infants at 11 than at 15 months, while the pitch is more extreme in IDS to 15-month olds. These results show that enhanced positive affect is the main factor influencing Dutch mothers' realisation of speech sounds in IDS, especially to younger infants. This study provides evidence that mothers' expression of emotion in IDS can influence the realisation of speech sounds, and that the loss or gain of speech clarity may be secondary effects of affect. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Adaptation to novel accents by toddlers

PubMed Central

White, Katherine S.; Aslin, Richard N.

2010-01-01

Word recognition is a balancing act: listeners must be sensitive to phonetic detail to avoid confusing similar words, yet, at the same time, be flexible enough to adapt to phonetically variable pronunciations, such as those produced by speakers of different dialects or by non-native speakers. Recent work has demonstrated that young toddlers are sensitive to phonetic detail during word recognition; pronunciations that deviate from the typical phonological form lead to a disruption of processing. However, it is not known whether young word learners show the flexibility that is characteristic of adult word recognition. The present study explores whether toddlers can adapt to artificial accents in which there is a vowel category shift with respect to the native language. 18–20-month-olds heard mispronunciations of familiar words (e.g., vowels were shifted from [a] to [æ]: “dog” pronounced as “dag”). In test, toddlers were tolerant of mispronunciations if they had recently been exposed to the same vowel shift, but not if they had been exposed to standard pronunciations or other vowel shifts. The effects extended beyond particular items heard in exposure to words sharing the same vowels. These results indicate that, like adults, toddlers show flexibility in their interpretation of phonological detail. Moreover, they suggest that effects of top-down knowledge on the reinterpretation of phonological detail generalize across the phono-lexical system. PMID:21479106

Formant-frequency discrimination of synthesized vowels in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) and humans.

PubMed

Henry, Kenneth S; Amburgey, Kassidy N; Abrams, Kristina S; Idrobo, Fabio; Carney, Laurel H

2017-10-01

Vowels are complex sounds with four to five spectral peaks known as formants. The frequencies of the two lowest formants, F1and F2, are sufficient for vowel discrimination. Behavioral studies show that many birds and mammals can discriminate vowels. However, few studies have quantified thresholds for formant-frequency discrimination. The present study examined formant-frequency discrimination in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) and humans using stimuli with one or two formants and a constant fundamental frequency of 200 Hz. Stimuli had spectral envelopes similar to natural speech and were presented with random level variation. Thresholds were estimated for frequency discrimination of F1, F2, and simultaneous F1 and F2 changes. The same two-down, one-up tracking procedure and single-interval, two-alternative task were used for both species. Formant-frequency discrimination thresholds were as sensitive in budgerigars as in humans and followed the same patterns across all conditions. Thresholds expressed as percent frequency difference were higher for F1 than for F2, and were unchanged between stimuli with one or two formants. Thresholds for simultaneous F1 and F2 changes indicated that discrimination was based on combined information from both formant regions. Results were consistent with previous human studies and show that budgerigars provide an exceptionally sensitive animal model of vowel feature discrimination.

Estimating feedforward vs. feedback control of speech production through kinematic analyses of unperturbed articulatory movements.

PubMed

Kim, Kwang S; Max, Ludo

2014-01-01

To estimate the contributions of feedforward vs. feedback control systems in speech articulation, we analyzed the correspondence between initial and final kinematics in unperturbed tongue and jaw movements for consonant-vowel (CV) and vowel-consonant (VC) syllables. If movement extents and endpoints are highly predictable from early kinematic information, then the movements were most likely completed without substantial online corrections (feedforward control); if the correspondence between early kinematics and final amplitude or position is low, online adjustments may have altered the planned trajectory (feedback control) (Messier and Kalaska, 1999). Five adult speakers produced CV and VC syllables with high, mid, or low vowels while movements of the tongue and jaw were tracked electromagnetically. The correspondence between the kinematic parameters peak acceleration or peak velocity and movement extent as well as between the articulators' spatial coordinates at those kinematic landmarks and movement endpoint was examined both for movements across different target distances (i.e., across vowel height) and within target distances (i.e., within vowel height). Taken together, results suggest that jaw and tongue movements for these CV and VC syllables are mostly under feedforward control but with feedback-based contributions. One type of feedback-driven compensatory adjustment appears to regulate movement duration based on variation in peak acceleration. Results from a statistical model based on multiple regression are presented to illustrate how the relative strength of these feedback contributions can be estimated.

Reliability of McConnell's classification of patellar orientation in symptomatic and asymptomatic subjects.

PubMed

Watson, C J; Propps, M; Galt, W; Redding, A; Dobbs, D

1999-07-01

Test-retest reliability study with blinded testers. To determine the intratester reliability of the McConnell classification system and to determine whether the intertester reliability of this system would be improved by one-on-one training of the testers, increasing the variability and numbers of subjects, blinding the testers to the absence or presence of patellofemoral pain syndrome, and adhering to the McConnell classification system as it is taught in the "McConnell Patellofemoral Treatment Plan" continuing education course. The McConnell classification system is currently used by physical therapy clinicians to quantify static patellar orientation. The measurements generated from this system purportedly guide the therapist in the application of patellofemoral tape and in assessment of the efficacy of treatment interventions on changing patellar orientation. Fifty-six subjects (age range, 21-65 years) provided a total of 101 knees for assessment. Seventy-six knees did not produce symptoms. A researcher who did not participate in the measuring process determined that 17 subjects had patellofemoral pain syndrome in 25 knees. Two testers concurrently measured static patellar orientation (anterior/posterior and medial/lateral tilt, medial/lateral glide, and patellar rotation) on subjects, using the McConnell classification system. Repeat measures were performed 3-7 days later. A kappa (kappa) statistic was used to assess the degree of agreement within each tester and between testers. The kappa coefficients for intratester reliability varied from -0.06 to 0.35. Intertester reliability ranged from -0.03 to 0.19. The McConnell classification system, in its current form, does not appear to be very reliable. Intratester reliability ranged from poor to fair, and intertester reliability was poor to slight. This system should not be used as a measurement tool or as a basis for treatment decisions.

New Employee Orientation, Division of Personnel and Labor Relations,

Science.gov Websites

Employee Training Exit Survey HR Forms New Employee Orientation For Admin Staff Classification Form Packets State Officer Compensation Commission Administration / Personnel and Labor Relations / New Employee Orientation New Employee Orientation Last Updated: October 2013 Welcome to the State of Alaska As a new

Notes on the Changing Nature of Popular French.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curnow, Maureen Cheney

This paper provides examples of a variety of phonological, orthographical, and morphological changes in current popular French are noted. They include: dropping of silent vowels in spelling, particularly in advertising and product names; changes in the pronunciation of vowels due to manipulation for product names; combinations of otherwise…

A Comprehensive Three-Dimensional Cortical Map of Vowel Space

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scharinger, Mathias; Idsardi, William J.; Poe, Samantha

2011-01-01

Mammalian cortex is known to contain various kinds of spatial encoding schemes for sensory information including retinotopic, somatosensory, and tonotopic maps. Tonotopic maps are especially interesting for human speech sound processing because they encode linguistically salient acoustic properties. In this study, we mapped the entire vowel space…

Auditory Spectral Integration in the Perception of Static Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fox, Robert Allen; Jacewicz, Ewa; Chang, Chiung-Yun

2011-01-01

Purpose: To evaluate potential contributions of broadband spectral integration in the perception of static vowels. Specifically, can the auditory system infer formant frequency information from changes in the intensity weighting across harmonics when the formant itself is missing? Does this type of integration produce the same results in the lower…

Concept of Tone in Mandarin Revisited: A Perceptual Study on Tonal Coarticulation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shen, Xiaonan Susan; Lin, Maocan

1991-01-01

Examination of the perceptibility of carryover coarticulatory perturbations occurring at syllabic vowels in Mandarin Chinese suggests that, in connected speech, a portion of fundamental frequency at intertonemic onset is perturbed, including initial voiced consonants and vowels, and that the perturbations result from preservative as well as…

Representation of Sound Categories in Auditory Cortical Maps

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guenther, Frank H.; Nieto-Castanon, Alfonso; Ghosh, Satrajit S.; Tourville, Jason A.

2004-01-01

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the representation of sound categories in human auditory cortex. Experiment 1 investigated the representation of prototypical (good) and nonprototypical (bad) examples of a vowel sound. Listening to prototypical examples of a vowel resulted in less auditory cortical activation…

Nasal Harmony in Aguaruna.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moon, Gui-Sun

A discussion of the nasal harmony of Aguaruna, a language of the Jivaroan family in South America, approaches the subject from the viewpoint of generative phonology. This theory of phonology proposes an underlying nasal consonant, later deleted, that accounts for vowel nasalization. Complex rules that suppose a complex system of vowel and…

Lexical Competition in Non-Native Spoken-Word Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weber, Andrea; Cutler, Anne

2004-01-01

Four eye-tracking experiments examined lexical competition in non-native spoken-word recognition. Dutch listeners hearing English fixated longer on distractor pictures with names containing vowels that Dutch listeners are likely to confuse with vowels in a target picture name ("pencil," given target "panda") than on less confusable distractors…

Dynamic Articulation of Vowels.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morgan, Willie B.

1979-01-01

A series of exercises and a theory of vowel descriptions can help minimize speakers' problems of excessive tension, awareness of tongue height, and tongue retraction. Eight exercises to provide Forward Facial Stretch neutralize tensions in the face and vocal resonator and their effect on the voice. Three experiments in which sounds are repeated…

Hemispheric Differences in the Effects of Context on Vowel Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sjerps, Matthias J.; Mitterer, Holger; McQueen, James M.

2012-01-01

Listeners perceive speech sounds relative to context. Contextual influences might differ over hemispheres if different types of auditory processing are lateralized. Hemispheric differences in contextual influences on vowel perception were investigated by presenting speech targets and both speech and non-speech contexts to listeners' right or left…

Acoustic Correlates of Emphatic Stress in Central Catalan

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nadeu, Marianna; Hualde, Jose Ignacio

2012-01-01

A common feature of public speech in Catalan is the placement of prominence on lexically unstressed syllables ("emphatic stress"). This paper presents an acoustic study of radio speech data. Instances of emphatic stress were perceptually identified. Within-word comparison between vowels with emphatic stress and vowels with primary lexical stress…

Comparing Identification of Standardized and Regionally Valid Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, Richard; Souza, Pamela

2012-01-01

Purpose: In perception studies, it is common to use vowel stimuli from standardized recordings or synthetic stimuli created using values from well-known published research. Although the use of standardized stimuli is convenient, unconsidered dialect and regional accent differences may introduce confounding effects. The goal of this study was to…

The Prosodic Evolution of West Slavic in the Context of the Neo-Acute Stress

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Feldstein, Ronald F.

1975-01-01

Because of neo-acute stress--or transferred acute stress--long vowel prosody in West Slavic had a special evolution. Two kinds of long vowel evolution are examined. The nature of transitionality across Slavic territory from tonal opposition to distinctive stress placement is pointed out. (SC)

Comparison of Nasal Acceleration and Nasalance across Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thorp, Elias B.; Virnik, Boris T.; Stepp, Cara E.

2013-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the performance of normalized nasal acceleration (NNA) relative to nasalance as estimates of nasalized versus nonnasalized vowel and sentence productions. Method: Participants were 18 healthy speakers of American English. NNA was measured using a custom sensor, and nasalance was measured using…

Formant Amplitude of Children with Down's Syndrome.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pentz, Arthur L., Jr.

1987-01-01

The sustained vowel sounds of 14 noninstitutionalized 7- to 10-year-old children with Down's syndrome were analyzed acoustically for vowel formant amplitude levels. The subjects with Down's syndrome had formant amplitude intensity levels significantly lower than those of a similar group of speakers without Down's syndrome. (Author/DB)

Status Report on Speech Research, July-December 1990.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Studdert-Kennedy, Michael, Ed.

One of a series of semiannual reports, this publication contains 13 articles which report the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications. Articles and their authors are as follows: "The Role of Contrast in Limiting Vowel-to-Vowel Coarticulation in Different…

Measures of voiced frication for automatic classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jackson, Philip J. B.; Jesus, Luis M. T.; Shadle, Christine H.; Pincas, Jonathan

2004-05-01

As an approach to understanding the characteristics of the acoustic sources in voiced fricatives, it seems apt to draw on knowledge of vowels and voiceless fricatives, which have been relatively well studied. However, the presence of both phonation and frication in these mixed-source sounds offers the possibility of mutual interaction effects, with variations across place of articulation. This paper examines the acoustic and articulatory consequences of these interactions and explores automatic techniques for finding parametric and statistical descriptions of these phenomena. A reliable and consistent set of such acoustic cues could be used for phonetic classification or speech recognition. Following work on devoicing of European Portuguese voiced fricatives [Jesus and Shadle, in Mamede et al. (eds.) (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2003), pp. 1-8]. and the modulating effect of voicing on frication [Jackson and Shadle, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108, 1421-1434 (2000)], the present study focuses on three types of information: (i) sequences and durations of acoustic events in VC transitions, (ii) temporal, spectral and modulation measures from the periodic and aperiodic components of the acoustic signal, and (iii) voicing activity derived from simultaneous EGG data. Analysis of interactions observed in British/American English and European Portuguese speech corpora will be compared, and the principal findings discussed.

A real-time articulatory visual feedback approach with target presentation for second language pronunciation learning.

PubMed

Suemitsu, Atsuo; Dang, Jianwu; Ito, Takayuki; Tiede, Mark

2015-10-01

Articulatory information can support learning or remediating pronunciation of a second language (L2). This paper describes an electromagnetic articulometer-based visual-feedback approach using an articulatory target presented in real-time to facilitate L2 pronunciation learning. This approach trains learners to adjust articulatory positions to match targets for a L2 vowel estimated from productions of vowels that overlap in both L1 and L2. Training of Japanese learners for the American English vowel /æ/ that included visual training improved its pronunciation regardless of whether audio training was also included. Articulatory visual feedback is shown to be an effective method for facilitating L2 pronunciation learning.

Effects of Talker Variability on Vowel Recognition in Cochlear Implants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Yi-ping; Fu, Qian-Jie

2006-01-01

Purpose: To investigate the effects of talker variability on vowel recognition by cochlear implant (CI) users and by normal-hearing (NH) participants listening to 4-channel acoustic CI simulations. Method: CI users were tested with their clinically assigned speech processors. For NH participants, 3 CI processors were simulated, using different…

Finding Words in a Language that Allows Words without Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

El Aissati, Abder; McQueen, James M.; Cutler, Anne

2012-01-01

Across many languages from unrelated families, spoken-word recognition is subject to a constraint whereby potential word candidates must contain a vowel. This constraint minimizes competition from embedded words (e.g., in English, disfavoring "win" in "twin" because "t" cannot be a word). However, the constraint would be counter-productive in…

Representations of Spectral Differences between Vowels in Tonotopic Regions of Auditory Cortex

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fisher, Julia

2017-01-01

This work examines the link between low-level cortical acoustic processing and higher-level cortical phonemic processing. Specifically, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, it looks at 1) whether or not the vowels [alpha] and [i] are distinguishable in regions of interest defined by the first two resonant frequencies (formants) of those…

Articulatory Movements during Vowels in Speakers with Dysarthria and Healthy Controls

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yunusova, Yana; Weismer, Gary; Westbury, John R.; Lindstrom, Mary J.

2008-01-01

Purpose: This study compared movement characteristics of markers attached to the jaw, lower lip, tongue blade, and dorsum during production of selected English vowels by normal speakers and speakers with dysarthria due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Parkinson disease (PD). The study asked the following questions: (a) Are movement…

Vowel Harmony in Palestinian Arabic: A Metrical Perspective.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abu-Salim, I. M.

1987-01-01

The autosegmental rule of vowel harmony (VH) in Palestinian Arabic is shown to be constrained simultaneously by metrical and segmental boundaries. The indicative prefix bi- is no longer an exception to VH if a structure is assumed that disallows the prefix from sharing a foot with the stem, consequently blocking VH. (Author/LMO)

Auditory, Visual, and Auditory-Visual Perception of Vowels by Hearing-Impaired Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hack, Zarita Caplan; Erber, Norman P.

1982-01-01

Vowels were presented through auditory, visual, and auditory-visual modalities to 18 hearing impaired children (12 to 15 years old) having good, intermediate, and poor auditory word recognition skills. All the groups had difficulty with acoustic information and visual information alone. The first two groups had only moderate difficulty identifying…

Insertion in Persian

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kambuziya, Aliyeh Kord-e Zafaranlu; Dehghan, Masoud

2011-01-01

This paper investigates epenthesis process in Persian to catch some results in relating to vowel and consonant insertion in Persian lexicon. This survey has a close relationship to the description of epenthetic consonants and the conditions in which these consonants are used. Since no word in Persian may begin with a vowel, so that hiatus can't be…

Ordinary Interactions Challenge Proposals That Maternal Verbal Responses Shape Infant Vocal Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fagan, Mary K.; Doveikis, Kate N.

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study tested proposals that maternal verbal responses shape infant vocal development, proposals based in part on evidence that infants modified their vocalizations to match mothers' experimentally manipulated vowel or consonant-vowel responses to most (i.e., 70%-80%) infant vocalizations. We tested the proposal in ordinary rather…

Neural Correlates in the Processing of Phoneme-Level Complexity in Vowel Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Park, Haeil; Iverson, Gregory K.; Park, Hae-Jeong

2011-01-01

We investigated how articulatory complexity at the phoneme level is manifested neurobiologically in an overt production task. fMRI images were acquired from young Korean-speaking adults as they pronounced bisyllabic pseudowords in which we manipulated phonological complexity defined in terms of vowel duration and instability (viz., COMPLEX:…

Spatial Frequency Requirements and Gaze Strategy in Visual-Only and Audiovisual Speech Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilson, Amanda H.; Alsius, Agnès; Parè, Martin; Munhall, Kevin G.

2016-01-01

Purpose: The aim of this article is to examine the effects of visual image degradation on performance and gaze behavior in audiovisual and visual-only speech perception tasks. Method: We presented vowel-consonant-vowel utterances visually filtered at a range of frequencies in visual-only, audiovisual congruent, and audiovisual incongruent…

Lingual Electromyography Related to Tongue Movements in Swedish Vowel Production.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hirose, Hajime; And Others

1979-01-01

In order to investigate the articulatory dynamics of the tongue in the production of Swedish vowels, electromyographic (EMG) and X-ray microbeam studies were performed on a native Swedish subject. The EMG signals were used to obtain average indication of the muscle activity of the tongue as a function of time. (NCR)

Vowel Harmony: A Variable Rule in Brazilian Portuguese.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bisol, Leda

1989-01-01

Examines vowel harmony in the "Gaucho dialect" of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Informants from four areas of the state were studied: the capital city (Porto Alegre), the border region with Uruguay, and two areas of the interior populated by descendants of nineteenth-century immigrants from Europe, mainly Germans and…

Markedness in the Perception of L2 English Consonant Clusters

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

AlMahmoud, Mahmoud S.

2011-01-01

The central goal of this dissertation is to explore the relative perceptibility of vowel epenthesis in English onset clusters by second language learners whose native language is averse to onset clusters. The dissertation examines how audible vowel epenthesis in different onset clusters is, whether this perceptibility varies from one cluster to…

Toward an Interactive Analogy Model of Reading Development: Decoding Vowel Graphemes in Beginning Reading.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goswami, Usha

1993-01-01

Three experiments on vowel decoding involving primary school children partially tested an interactive model of reading acquisition. The model suggests that children begin learning to read by establishing orthographic recognition units for words that have phonological underpinning that is initially at the onset-rime level but that becomes…

Vowel and Consonant Lessening: A Study of Articulating Reductions and Their Relations to Genders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lin, Grace Hui Chin; Chien, Paul Shih Chieh

2011-01-01

Using English as a global communicating tool makes Taiwanese people have to speak in English in diverse international situations. However, consonants and vowels in English are not all effortless for them to articulate. This phonological reduction study explores concepts about phonological (articulating system) approximation. From Taiwanese folks'…

How Native Do They Sound? An Acoustic Analysis of the Spanish Vowels of Elementary Spanish Immersion Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Menke, Mandy R.

2015-01-01

Language immersion students' lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic competencies are well documented, yet their phonological skill has remained relatively unexplored. This study investigates the Spanish vowel productions of a cross-sectional sample of 35 one-way Spanish immersion students. Learner productions were analyzed acoustically and compared to…

Adult Second Language Learning of Spanish Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cobb, Katherine; Simonet, Miquel

2015-01-01

The present study reports on the findings of a cross-sectional acoustic study of the production of Spanish vowels by three different groups of speakers: 1) native Spanish speakers; 2) native English intermediate learners of Spanish; and 3) native English advanced learners of Spanish. In particular, we examined the production of the five Spanish…

Sound Change and Mobility in Los Angeles

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Lawrence

1975-01-01

Deals with the shift of the low-back vowel as in 'caught' to a low-central vowel as in 'cot' thereby merging such pairs as caught/cot, dawn/Don, and stalk/stock. The causes and the sociolinguistic implications of this shift are discussed. The majority of the informants were from West Los Angeles. (TL)

Effects of Computer System and Vowel Loading on Measures of Nasalance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Awan, Shaheen N.; Omlor, Kristin; Watts, Christopher R.

2011-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine similarities and differences in nasalance scores observed with different computerized nasalance systems in the context of vowel-loaded sentences. Methodology: Subjects were 46 Caucasian adults with no perceived hyper-or hyponasality. Nasalance scores were obtained using the Nasometer 6200 (Kay…

Speech Research Status Report, January-June 1994.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fowler, Carol A., Ed.

This publication (one of a series) contains 14 articles which report the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instruments for its investigation, and practical applications. Articles include: "The Universality of Intrinsic FO of Vowels: (D. H. Whalen and Andrea G. Levitt); "Intrinsic F0 of Vowels in the Babbling of 6-,…

Sociophonetic Variations in Korean Constituent Final "-Ko" and "-To"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yi, So Young L.

2015-01-01

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine (i) linguistic and extralinguistic factors that influence vowel raising of /o/ in constituent-final "-ko" and "-to" in Seoul Korean and (ii) listeners' perceptions of this vowel raising and social meanings of the raised variant. The analyses are based on production data collected…

Exploration of Acoustic Features for Automatic Vowel Discrimination in Spontaneous Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tyson, Na'im R.

2012-01-01

In an attempt to understand what acoustic/auditory feature sets motivated transcribers towards certain labeling decisions, I built machine learning models that were capable of discriminating between canonical and non-canonical vowels excised from the Buckeye Corpus. Specifically, I wanted to model when the dictionary form and the transcribed-form…

Vowelling and semantic priming effects in Arabic.

PubMed

Mountaj, Nadia; El Yagoubi, Radouane; Himmi, Majid; Lakhdar Ghazal, Faouzi; Besson, Mireille; Boudelaa, Sami

2015-01-01

In the present experiment we used a semantic judgment task with Arabic words to determine whether semantic priming effects are found in the Arabic language. Moreover, we took advantage of the specificity of the Arabic orthographic system, which is characterized by a shallow (i.e., vowelled words) and a deep orthography (i.e., unvowelled words), to examine the relationship between orthographic and semantic processing. Results showed faster Reaction Times (RTs) for semantically related than unrelated words with no difference between vowelled and unvowelled words. By contrast, Event Related Potentials (ERPs) revealed larger N1 and N2 components to vowelled words than unvowelled words suggesting that visual-orthographic complexity taxes the early word processing stages. Moreover, semantically unrelated Arabic words elicited larger N400 components than related words thereby demonstrating N400 effects in Arabic. Finally, the Arabic N400 effect was not influenced by orthographic depth. The implications of these results for understanding the processing of orthographic, semantic, and morphological structures in Modern Standard Arabic are discussed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Stop and Fricative Devoicing in European Portuguese, Italian and German.

PubMed

Pape, Daniel; Jesus, Luis M T

2015-06-01

This paper describes a cross-linguistic production study of devoicing for European Portuguese (EP), Italian, and German. We recorded all stops and fricatives in four vowel contexts and two word positions. We computed the devoicing of the time-varying patterns throughout the stop and fricative duration. Our results show that regarding devoicing behaviour, EP is more similar to German than Italian. While Italian shows almost no devoicing of all phonologically voiced consonants, both EP and German show strong and consistent devoicing through the entire consonant. Differences in consonant position showed no effect for EP and Italian, but were significantly different for German. The height of the vowel context had an effect for German and EP. For EP, we showed that a more posterior place of articulation and low vowel context lead to significantly more devoicing. However, in contrast to German, we could not find an influence of consonant position on devoicing. The high devoicing for all phonologically voiced stops and fricatives and the vowel context influence are a surprising new result. With respect to voicing maintenance, EP is more like German than other Romance languages.

Formant discrimination in noise for isolated vowels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Chang; Kewley-Port, Diane

2004-11-01

Formant discrimination for isolated vowels presented in noise was investigated for normal-hearing listeners. Discrimination thresholds for F1 and F2, for the seven American English vowels /eye, smcapi, eh, æ, invv, aye, you/, were measured under two types of noise, long-term speech-shaped noise (LTSS) and multitalker babble, and also under quiet listening conditions. Signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) varied from -4 to +4 dB in steps of 2 dB. All three factors, formant frequency, signal-to-noise ratio, and noise type, had significant effects on vowel formant discrimination. Significant interactions among the three factors showed that threshold-frequency functions depended on SNR and noise type. The thresholds at the lowest levels of SNR were highly elevated by a factor of about 3 compared to those in quiet. The masking functions (threshold vs SNR) were well described by a negative exponential over F1 and F2 for both LTSS and babble noise. Speech-shaped noise was a slightly more effective masker than multitalker babble, presumably reflecting small benefits (1.5 dB) due to the temporal variation of the babble. .

Formants and musical harmonics matching in Brazilian lied

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Raposo de Medeiros, Beatriz

2004-05-01

This paper reports a comparison of the formant patterns of speech and singing. Measurements of the first three formants were made on the stable portion of the vowels. The main finding of the study is an acoustic effect that can be described as the matching of the vowel formants to the harmonics of the sung note (A flat, 420 Hz). For example, for the vowel [a], F1 generally matched with the second harmonic (840 Hz) and F2 with the third harmonic. This finding is complementary to that of Sundberg (1977) according to which the higher the fundamental frequency of the musical note, e.g., 700 Hz, the more the mandible is lowered causing the elevation of the first formant of the sung vowel. As Sundberg himself named this phenomenon, there is a matching between the first formant and the phonation frequency, causing an increase in the sound energy. The present study establishes that the matching affects not only F1 but also F2 and F3. This finding will be discussed in connection with other manoeuvres (e.g., tongue movements) used by singers.

Unspoken vowel recognition using facial electromyogram.

PubMed

Arjunan, Sridhar P; Kumar, Dinesh K; Yau, Wai C; Weghorn, Hans

2006-01-01

The paper aims to identify speech using the facial muscle activity without the audio signals. The paper presents an effective technique that measures the relative muscle activity of the articulatory muscles. Five English vowels were used as recognition variables. This paper reports using moving root mean square (RMS) of surface electromyogram (SEMG) of four facial muscles to segment the signal and identify the start and end of the utterance. The RMS of the signal between the start and end markers was integrated and normalised. This represented the relative muscle activity of the four muscles. These were classified using back propagation neural network to identify the speech. The technique was successfully used to classify 5 vowels into three classes and was not sensitive to the variation in speed and the style of speaking of the different subjects. The results also show that this technique was suitable for classifying the 5 vowels into 5 classes when trained for each of the subjects. It is suggested that such a technology may be used for the user to give simple unvoiced commands when trained for the specific user.

Deficits of congenital amusia beyond pitch: Evidence from impaired categorical perception of vowels in Cantonese-speaking congenital amusics

PubMed Central

Shao, Jing; Huang, Xunan

2017-01-01

Congenital amusia is a lifelong disorder of fine-grained pitch processing in music and speech. However, it remains unclear whether amusia is a pitch-specific deficit, or whether it affects frequency/spectral processing more broadly, such as the perception of formant frequency in vowels, apart from pitch. In this study, in order to illuminate the scope of the deficits, we compared the performance of 15 Cantonese-speaking amusics and 15 matched controls on the categorical perception of sound continua in four stimulus contexts: lexical tone, pure tone, vowel, and voice onset time (VOT). Whereas lexical tone, pure tone and vowel continua rely on frequency/spectral processing, the VOT continuum depends on duration/temporal processing. We found that the amusic participants performed similarly to controls in all stimulus contexts in the identification, in terms of the across-category boundary location and boundary width. However, the amusic participants performed systematically worse than controls in discriminating stimuli in those three contexts that depended on frequency/spectral processing (lexical tone, pure tone and vowel), whereas they performed normally when discriminating duration differences (VOT). These findings suggest that the deficit of amusia is probably not pitch specific, but affects frequency/spectral processing more broadly. Furthermore, there appeared to be differences in the impairment of frequency/spectral discrimination in speech and nonspeech contexts. The amusic participants exhibited less benefit in between-category discriminations than controls in speech contexts (lexical tone and vowel), suggesting reduced categorical perception; on the other hand, they performed inferiorly compared to controls across the board regardless of between- and within-category discriminations in nonspeech contexts (pure tone), suggesting impaired general auditory processing. These differences imply that the frequency/spectral-processing deficit might be manifested differentially in speech and nonspeech contexts in amusics—it is manifested as a deficit of higher-level phonological processing in speech sounds, and as a deficit of lower-level auditory processing in nonspeech sounds. PMID:28829808

A Hierarchical Object-oriented Urban Land Cover Classification Using WorldView-2 Imagery and Airborne LiDAR data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, M. F.; Sun, Z. C.; Yang, B.; Yu, S. S.

2016-11-01

In order to reduce the “salt and pepper” in pixel-based urban land cover classification and expand the application of fusion of multi-source data in the field of urban remote sensing, WorldView-2 imagery and airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data were used to improve the classification of urban land cover. An approach of object- oriented hierarchical classification was proposed in our study. The processing of proposed method consisted of two hierarchies. (1) In the first hierarchy, LiDAR Normalized Digital Surface Model (nDSM) image was segmented to objects. The NDVI, Costal Blue and nDSM thresholds were set for extracting building objects. (2) In the second hierarchy, after removing building objects, WorldView-2 fused imagery was obtained by Haze-ratio-based (HR) fusion, and was segmented. A SVM classifier was applied to generate road/parking lot, vegetation and bare soil objects. (3) Trees and grasslands were split based on an nDSM threshold (2.4 meter). The results showed that compared with pixel-based and non-hierarchical object-oriented approach, proposed method provided a better performance of urban land cover classification, the overall accuracy (OA) and overall kappa (OK) improved up to 92.75% and 0.90. Furthermore, proposed method reduced “salt and pepper” in pixel-based classification, improved the extraction accuracy of buildings based on LiDAR nDSM image segmentation, and reduced the confusion between trees and grasslands through setting nDSM threshold.

Rheological Characterization and Cluster Classification of Iranian Commercial Foods, Drinks and Desserts to Recommend for Esophageal Dysphagia Diets

PubMed Central

ZARGARAAN, Azizollaah; OMARAEE, Yasaman; RASTMANESH, Reza; TAHERI, Negin; FADAVI, Ghasem; FADAEI, Morteza; MOHAMMADIFAR, Mohammad Amin

2013-01-01

Abstract Background In the absence of dysphagia-oriented food products, rheological characterization of available food items is of importance for safe swallowing and adequate nutrient intake of dysphagic patients. In this way, introducing alternative items (with similar ease of swallow) is helpful to improve quality of life and nutritional intake of esophageal cancer dysphagia patients. The present study aimed at rheological characterization and cluster classification of potentially suitable foodstuffs marketed in Iran for their possible use in dysphagia diets. Methods In this descriptive study, rheological data were obtained during January and February 2012 in Rheology Lab of National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute Tehran, Iran. Steady state and oscillatory shear parameters of 39 commercial samples were obtained using a Physica MCR 301 rheometer (Anton-Paar, GmbH, Graz, Austria). Matlab Fuzzy Logic Toolbox (R2012 a) was utilized for cluster classification of the samples. Results Using an extended list of rheological parameters and fuzzy logic methods, 39 commercial samples (drinks, main courses and desserts) were divided to 5 clusters and degree of membership to each cluster was stated by a number between 0 and 0.99. Conclusion Considering apparent viscosity of foodstuffs as a single criterion for classification of dysphagia-oriented food products is shortcoming of current guidelines in dysphagia diets. Authors proposed to some revisions in classification of dysphagia-oriented food products and including more rheological parameters (especially, viscoelastic parameters) in the classification. PMID:26060647

Rheological Characterization and Cluster Classification of Iranian Commercial Foods, Drinks and Desserts to Recommend for Esophageal Dysphagia Diets.

PubMed

Zargaraan, Azizollaah; Omaraee, Yasaman; Rastmanesh, Reza; Taheri, Negin; Fadavi, Ghasem; Fadaei, Morteza; Mohammadifar, Mohammad Amin

2013-12-01

In the absence of dysphagia-oriented food products, rheological characterization of available food items is of importance for safe swallowing and adequate nutrient intake of dysphagic patients. In this way, introducing alternative items (with similar ease of swallow) is helpful to improve quality of life and nutritional intake of esophageal cancer dysphagia patients. The present study aimed at rheological characterization and cluster classification of potentially suitable foodstuffs marketed in Iran for their possible use in dysphagia diets. In this descriptive study, rheological data were obtained during January and February 2012 in Rheology Lab of National Nutrition and Food Technology Research Institute Tehran, Iran. Steady state and oscillatory shear parameters of 39 commercial samples were obtained using a Physica MCR 301 rheometer (Anton-Paar, GmbH, Graz, Austria). Matlab Fuzzy Logic Toolbox (R2012 a) was utilized for cluster classification of the samples. Using an extended list of rheological parameters and fuzzy logic methods, 39 commercial samples (drinks, main courses and desserts) were divided to 5 clusters and degree of membership to each cluster was stated by a number between 0 and 0.99. Considering apparent viscosity of foodstuffs as a single criterion for classification of dysphagia-oriented food products is shortcoming of current guidelines in dysphagia diets. Authors proposed to some revisions in classification of dysphagia-oriented food products and including more rheological parameters (especially, viscoelastic parameters) in the classification.

An Analysis of the Most Frequently Occurring Words in Spoken American English.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Plant, Geoff

1999-01-01

A study analyzed frequency of occurrence of consonants, vowels, and diphthongs, syllabic structure of the words, and segmental structure of the 311 monosyllabic words of 500 words that occur most frequently in English. Three mannerisms of articulation accounted for nearly 75 percent of all consonant occurrences: stops, semi-vowels, and nasals.…

Vowel Diphthongs. Fun with Phonics! Book 10. Grades 1-2.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Daniel, Claire

This book provides hands-on activities for grades 1-2 that make phonics instruction easy and fun for teachers and children in the classroom. The book offers methods for practice, reinforcement, and assessment of phonics skills. A poem is used to introduce the phonics element of this book, vowel diphthongs. The poem is duplicated so children can…

Mismatch Responses to Lexical Tone, Initial Consonant, and Vowel in Mandarin-Speaking Preschoolers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Chia-Ying; Yen, Huei-ling; Yeh, Pei-wen; Lin, Wan-Hsuan; Cheng, Ying-Ying; Tzeng, Yu-Lin; Wu, Hsin-Chi

2012-01-01

The present study investigates how age, phonological saliency, and deviance size affect the presence of mismatch negativity (MMN) and positive mismatch response (P-MMR). This work measured the auditory mismatch responses to Mandarin lexical tones, initial consonants, and vowels in 4- to 6-year-old preschoolers using the multiple-deviant oddball…

Level 2 Foundation Units. Key Stage 3: National Strategy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Department for Education and Skills, London (England).

These foundation units are aimed at pupils working within Level 2 entry to Year 7. They are designed to remind pupils what they know and take them forward. The units also will teach phonics knowledge from consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words to long vowel phonemes. The writing units focus on developing the following skills: understanding what a…

The Relative Position Priming Effect Depends on Whether Letters Are Vowels or Consonants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dunabeitia, Jon Andoni; Carreiras, Manuel

2011-01-01

The relative position priming effect is a type of subset priming in which target word recognition is facilitated as a consequence of priming the word with some of its letters, maintaining their relative position (e.g., "csn" as a prime for "casino"). Five experiments were conducted to test whether vowel-only and consonant-only…

The Impact of Contrastive Stress on Vowel Acoustics and Intelligibility in Dysarthria

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Connaghan, Kathryn P.; Patel, Rupal

2017-01-01

Purpose: To compare vowel acoustics and intelligibility in words produced with and without contrastive stress by speakers with spastic (mixed-spastic) dysarthria secondary to cerebral palsy (DYS[subscript CP]) and healthy controls (HCs). Method: Fifteen participants (9 men, 6 women; age M = 42 years) with DYS[subscript CP] and 15 HCs (9 men, 6…

The Breadth of Coarticulatory Units in Children and Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goffman, Lisa; Smith, Anne; Heisler, Lori; Ho, Michael

2008-01-01

Purpose: To assess, in children and adults, the breadth of coarticulatory movements associated with a single rounded vowel. Method: Upper and lower lip movements were recorded from 8 young adults and 8 children (aged 4-5 years). A single rounded versus unrounded vowel was embedded in the medial position of pairs of 7-word/7-syllable sentences.…

Consonants and Vowels: Different Roles in Early Language Acquisition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hochmann, Jean-Remy; Benavides-Varela, Silvia; Nespor, Marina; Mehler, Jacques

2011-01-01

Language acquisition involves both acquiring a set of words (i.e. the lexicon) and learning the rules that combine them to form sentences (i.e. syntax). Here, we show that consonants are mainly involved in word processing, whereas vowels are favored for extracting and generalizing structural relations. We demonstrate that such a division of labor…

Perturbation and Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis of Acoustic Phonatory Signal in Parkinsonian Patients Receiving Deep Brain Stimulation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Victoria S.; Zhou, Xiao Ping; Rahn, Douglas A., III; Wang, Emily Q.; Jiang, Jack J.

2008-01-01

Nineteen PD patients who received deep brain stimulation (DBS), 10 non-surgical (control) PD patients, and 11 non-pathologic age- and gender-matched subjects performed sustained vowel phonations. The following acoustic measures were obtained on the sustained vowel phonations: correlation dimension (D[subscript 2]), percent jitter, percent shimmer,…

Vowel Identification by Listeners with Hearing Impairment in Response to Variation in Formant Frequencies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Molis, Michelle R.; Leek, Marjorie R.

2011-01-01

Purpose: This study examined the influence of presentation level and mild-to-moderate hearing loss on the identification of a set of vowel tokens systematically varying in the frequency locations of their second and third formants. Method: Five listeners with normal hearing (NH listeners) and five listeners with hearing impairment (HI listeners)…

The Effect of Experience on the Acquisition of a Non-Native Vowel Contrast

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Simon, Ellen; D'Hulster, Tijs

2012-01-01

This study examines the effect of second language experience on the acquisition of the English vowel contrast /epsilon/-/ae/ by native speakers of Dutch. It reports on the results of production and perception tasks performed by three groups of native Dutch learners of English in Belgium, differing in experience with English, as measured through…

Perceptual Confusions of American-English Vowels and Consonants by Native Arabic Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shafiro, Valeriy; Levy, Erika S.; Khamis-Dakwar, Reem; Kharkhurin, Anatoliy

2013-01-01

This study investigated the perception of American-English (AE) vowels and consonants by young adults who were either (a) early Arabic-English bilinguals whose native language was Arabic or (b) native speakers of the English dialects spoken in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where both groups were studying. In a closed-set format, participants…

Examining Acoustic and Kinematic Measures of Articulatory Working Space: Effects of Speech Intensity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Whitfield, Jason A.; Dromey, Christopher; Palmer, Panika

2018-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of speech intensity on acoustic and kinematic vowel space measures and conduct a preliminary examination of the relationship between kinematic and acoustic vowel space metrics calculated from continuously sampled lingual marker and formant traces. Method: Young adult speakers produced 3…

Teaching Children to Fluently Decode Nonsense Words in Lists: Generalized Effects to Oral Reading Fluency of Connected Text

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Werder, Candace Susan

2012-01-01

The present study examined the generalized effects of training children to fluently blend nonsense words containing target vowel teams on their reading of untrained real words in lists and passages. Eight second-grade students participated. Nonsense words containing each of 3 target vowel teams ("aw," "oi," and "au")…

Fluency Training in Phoneme Blending: A Preliminary Study of Generalized Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Martens, Brian K.; Werder, Candace S.; Hier, Bridget O.; Koenig, Elizabeth A.

2013-01-01

We examined the generalized effects of training children to fluently blend phonemes of words containing target vowel teams on their reading of trained and untrained words in lists and passages. Three second-grade students participated. A subset of words containing each of 3 target vowel teams ("aw," "oi," and "au") was trained in lists, and…

Learning about Spelling Sequences: The Role of Onsets and Rimes in Analogies in Reading.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goswami, Usha

1991-01-01

In one experiment, children learned more about consonant blends at the onset than at the end of words. In a second experiment, children learned more about rhyming vowel-consonant blend sequences at the end of words than those at the beginning of words, where the vowel extended the onset. (BC)

Audiovisual Vowel Monitoring and the Word Superiority Effect in Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fort, Mathilde; Spinelli, Elsa; Savariaux, Christophe; Kandel, Sonia

2012-01-01

The goal of this study was to explore whether viewing the speaker's articulatory gestures contributes to lexical access in children (ages 5-10) and in adults. We conducted a vowel monitoring task with words and pseudo-words in audio-only (AO) and audiovisual (AV) contexts with white noise masking the acoustic signal. The results indicated that…

The Effects of Background Noise on Dichotic Listening to Consonant-Vowel Syllables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sequeira, Sarah Dos Santos; Specht, Karsten; Hamalainen, Heikki; Hugdahl, Kenneth

2008-01-01

Lateralization of verbal processing is frequently studied with the dichotic listening technique, yielding a so called right ear advantage (REA) to consonant-vowel (CV) syllables. However, little is known about how background noise affects the REA. To address this issue, we presented CV-syllables either in silence or with traffic background noise…

Word Boundaries in L2 Speech: Evidence from Polish Learners of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schwartz, Geoffrey

2016-01-01

Acoustic and perceptual studies investgate B2-level Polish learners' acquisition of second language (L2) English word-boundaries involving word-initial vowels. In production, participants were less likely to produce glottalization of phrase-medial initial vowels in L2 English than in first language (L1) Polish. Perception studies employing word…

Use of Spectral/Cepstral Analyses for Differentiating Normal from Hypofunctional Voices in Sustained Vowel and Continuous Speech Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Watts, Christopher R.; Awan, Shaheen N.

2011-01-01

Purpose: In this study, the authors evaluated the diagnostic value of spectral/cepstral measures to differentiate dysphonic from nondysphonic voices using sustained vowels and continuous speech samples. Methodology: Thirty-two age- and gender-matched individuals (16 participants with dysphonia and 16 controls) were recorded reading a standard…

Visual Speech Contributes to Phonetic Learning in 6-Month-Old Infants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Teinonen, Tuomas; Aslin, Richard N.; Alku, Paavo; Csibra, Gergely

2008-01-01

Previous research has shown that infants match vowel sounds to facial displays of vowel articulation [Kuhl, P. K., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1982). The bimodal perception of speech in infancy. "Science, 218", 1138-1141; Patterson, M. L., & Werker, J. F. (1999). Matching phonetic information in lips and voice is robust in 4.5-month-old infants. "Infant…

Sura Yusuf in Full IPA (Segmental-Suprasegmental) Transcription with English Translation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yurtbasi, Metin

2016-01-01

The greatest difficulty in reading Arabic script for nonnatives is the absence of short vowels. The correlation of 28 consonants with sounds poses no great difficulty. In Arabic, there are six vowel phonemes which are voiced only by three letters with help of some relevant diacritical marks (?arakat). As the bulk of Arabic publications is written…

Short Vowels versus Word Familiarity in the Reading Comprehension of Arab Readers: A Revisited Issue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Seraye, Abdullah M.

2016-01-01

Arab readers, both beginning and advanced, are encouraged to read and accustomed to unvowelized and undiacriticized texts. Previous literature claimed that the presence of short vowels in the text would facilitate the reading comprehension of both beginning and advanced Arab readers. However, with a claimed strict controlling procedure, different…

Articulation Rate and Vowel Space Characteristics of Young Males with Fragile X Syndrome: Preliminary Acoustic Findings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zajac, David J.; Roberts, Joanne E.; Hennon, Elizabeth A.; Harris, Adrianne A.; Barnes, Elizabeth F.; Misenheimer, Jan

2006-01-01

Purpose: Increased speaking rate is a commonly reported perceptual characteristic among males with fragile X syndrome (FXS). The objective of this preliminary study was to determine articulation rate--one component of perceived speaking rate--and vowel space characteristics of young males with FXS. Method: Young males with FXS (n = 38), …

An Evaluation of Articulatory Working Space Area in Vowel Production of Adults with Down Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bunton, Kate; Leddy, Mark

2011-01-01

Many adolescents and adults with Down syndrome have reduced speech intelligibility. Reasons for this reduction may relate to differences in anatomy and physiology, both of which are important for creating an intelligible speech signal. The purpose of this study was to document acoustic vowel space and articulatory working space for two adult…

Effect of Age on F[subscript 0] Difference Limen and Concurrent Vowel Identification

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vongpaisal, Tara; Pichora-Fuller, Margaret Kathleen

2007-01-01

Purpose: To investigate the effect of age on voice fundamental frequency (F[subscript 0]) difference limen (DL) and identification of concurrently presented vowels. Method: Fifteen younger and 15 older adults with normal audiometric thresholds in the speech range participated in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, F[subscript 0] DLs were measured for…

The Effects of Inventory on Vowel Perception in French and Spanish: An MEG Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hacquard, Valentine; Walter, Mary Ann; Marantz, Alec

2007-01-01

Production studies have shown that speakers of languages with larger phoneme inventories expand their acoustic space relative to languages with smaller inventories [Bradlow, A. (1995). A comparative acoustic study of English and Spanish vowels. "Journal of the Acoustical Society of America," 97(3), 1916-1924; Jongman, A., Fourakis, M., & Sereno,…

About Turn: How Object Orientation Affects Categorisation and Mental Rotation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Milivojevic, Branka; Hamm, Jeff P.; Corballis, Michael C.

2011-01-01

High-density ERPs evoked by rotated alphanumeric characters were examined to determine how neural processing is affected by stimulus orientation during letter/digit classifications and during mirror/normal discriminations. The former task typically produces response times that are unaffected by stimulus orientation while the latter is thought to…

A fingerprint classification algorithm based on combination of local and global information

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Chongjin; Fu, Xiang; Bian, Junjie; Feng, Jufu

2011-12-01

Fingerprint recognition is one of the most important technologies in biometric identification and has been wildly applied in commercial and forensic areas. Fingerprint classification, as the fundamental procedure in fingerprint recognition, can sharply decrease the quantity for fingerprint matching and improve the efficiency of fingerprint recognition. Most fingerprint classification algorithms are based on the number and position of singular points. Because the singular points detecting method only considers the local information commonly, the classification algorithms are sensitive to noise. In this paper, we propose a novel fingerprint classification algorithm combining the local and global information of fingerprint. Firstly we use local information to detect singular points and measure their quality considering orientation structure and image texture in adjacent areas. Furthermore the global orientation model is adopted to measure the reliability of singular points group. Finally the local quality and global reliability is weighted to classify fingerprint. Experiments demonstrate the accuracy and effectivity of our algorithm especially for the poor quality fingerprint images.

Woodland Mapping at Single-Tree Levels Using Object-Oriented Classification of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (uav) Images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chenari, A.; Erfanifard, Y.; Dehghani, M.; Pourghasemi, H. R.

2017-09-01

Remotely sensed datasets offer a reliable means to precisely estimate biophysical characteristics of individual species sparsely distributed in open woodlands. Moreover, object-oriented classification has exhibited significant advantages over different classification methods for delineation of tree crowns and recognition of species in various types of ecosystems. However, it still is unclear if this widely-used classification method can have its advantages on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) digital images for mapping vegetation cover at single-tree levels. In this study, UAV orthoimagery was classified using object-oriented classification method for mapping a part of wild pistachio nature reserve in Zagros open woodlands, Fars Province, Iran. This research focused on recognizing two main species of the study area (i.e., wild pistachio and wild almond) and estimating their mean crown area. The orthoimage of study area was consisted of 1,076 images with spatial resolution of 3.47 cm which was georeferenced using 12 ground control points (RMSE=8 cm) gathered by real-time kinematic (RTK) method. The results showed that the UAV orthoimagery classified by object-oriented method efficiently estimated mean crown area of wild pistachios (52.09±24.67 m2) and wild almonds (3.97±1.69 m2) with no significant difference with their observed values (α=0.05). In addition, the results showed that wild pistachios (accuracy of 0.90 and precision of 0.92) and wild almonds (accuracy of 0.90 and precision of 0.89) were well recognized by image segmentation. In general, we concluded that UAV orthoimagery can efficiently produce precise biophysical data of vegetation stands at single-tree levels, which therefore is suitable for assessment and monitoring open woodlands.

Extraction of texture features with a multiresolution neural network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lepage, Richard; Laurendeau, Denis; Gagnon, Roger A.

1992-09-01

Texture is an important surface characteristic. Many industrial materials such as wood, textile, or paper are best characterized by their texture. Detection of defaults occurring on such materials or classification for quality control anD matching can be carried out through careful texture analysis. A system for the classification of pieces of wood used in the furniture industry is proposed. This paper is concerned with a neural network implementation of the features extraction and classification components of the proposed system. Texture appears differently depending at which spatial scale it is observed. A complete description of a texture thus implies an analysis at several spatial scales. We propose a compact pyramidal representation of the input image for multiresolution analysis. The feature extraction system is implemented on a multilayer artificial neural network. Each level of the pyramid, which is a representation of the input image at a given spatial resolution scale, is mapped into a layer of the neural network. A full resolution texture image is input at the base of the pyramid and a representation of the texture image at multiple resolutions is generated by the feedforward pyramid structure of the neural network. The receptive field of each neuron at a given pyramid level is preprogrammed as a discrete Gaussian low-pass filter. Meaningful characteristics of the textured image must be extracted if a good resolving power of the classifier must be achieved. Local dominant orientation is the principal feature which is extracted from the textured image. Local edge orientation is computed with a Sobel mask at four orientation angles (multiple of (pi) /4). The resulting intrinsic image, that is, the local dominant orientation image, is fed to the texture classification neural network. The classification network is a three-layer feedforward back-propagation neural network.

Spatial scale and distribution of neurovascular signals underlying decoding of orientation and eye of origin from fMRI data

PubMed Central

Harrison, Charlotte; Jackson, Jade; Oh, Seung-Mock; Zeringyte, Vaida

2016-01-01

Multivariate pattern analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data is widely used, yet the spatial scales and origin of neurovascular signals underlying such analyses remain unclear. We compared decoding performance for stimulus orientation and eye of origin from fMRI measurements in human visual cortex with predictions based on the columnar organization of each feature and estimated the spatial scales of patterns driving decoding. Both orientation and eye of origin could be decoded significantly above chance in early visual areas (V1–V3). Contrary to predictions based on a columnar origin of response biases, decoding performance for eye of origin in V2 and V3 was not significantly lower than that in V1, nor did decoding performance for orientation and eye of origin differ significantly. Instead, response biases for both features showed large-scale organization, evident as a radial bias for orientation, and a nasotemporal bias for eye preference. To determine whether these patterns could drive classification, we quantified the effect on classification performance of binning voxels according to visual field position. Consistent with large-scale biases driving classification, binning by polar angle yielded significantly better decoding performance for orientation than random binning in V1–V3. Similarly, binning by hemifield significantly improved decoding performance for eye of origin. Patterns of orientation and eye preference bias in V2 and V3 showed a substantial degree of spatial correlation with the corresponding patterns in V1, suggesting that response biases in these areas originate in V1. Together, these findings indicate that multivariate classification results need not reflect the underlying columnar organization of neuronal response selectivities in early visual areas. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Large-scale response biases can account for decoding of orientation and eye of origin in human early visual areas V1–V3. For eye of origin this pattern is a nasotemporal bias; for orientation it is a radial bias. Differences in decoding performance across areas and stimulus features are not well predicted by differences in columnar-scale organization of each feature. Large-scale biases in extrastriate areas are spatially correlated with those in V1, suggesting biases originate in primary visual cortex. PMID:27903637

Model-based inverse estimation for active contraction stresses of tongue muscles using 3D surface shape in speech production.

PubMed

Koike, Narihiko; Ii, Satoshi; Yoshinaga, Tsukasa; Nozaki, Kazunori; Wada, Shigeo

2017-11-07

This paper presents a novel inverse estimation approach for the active contraction stresses of tongue muscles during speech. The proposed method is based on variational data assimilation using a mechanical tongue model and 3D tongue surface shapes for speech production. The mechanical tongue model considers nonlinear hyperelasticity, finite deformation, actual geometry from computed tomography (CT) images, and anisotropic active contraction by muscle fibers, the orientations of which are ideally determined using anatomical drawings. The tongue deformation is obtained by solving a stationary force-equilibrium equation using a finite element method. An inverse problem is established to find the combination of muscle contraction stresses that minimizes the Euclidean distance of the tongue surfaces between the mechanical analysis and CT results of speech production, where a signed-distance function represents the tongue surface. Our approach is validated through an ideal numerical example and extended to the real-world case of two Japanese vowels, /ʉ/ and /ɯ/. The results capture the target shape completely and provide an excellent estimation of the active contraction stresses in the ideal case, and exhibit similar tendencies as in previous observations and simulations for the actual vowel cases. The present approach can reveal the relative relationship among the muscle contraction stresses in similar utterances with different tongue shapes, and enables the investigation of the coordination of tongue muscles during speech using only the deformed tongue shape obtained from medical images. This will enhance our understanding of speech motor control. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Investigating the effect of STN-DBS stimulation and different frequency settings on the acoustic-articulatory features of vowels.

PubMed

Yilmaz, Atilla; Sarac, Elif Tuğba; Aydinli, Fatma Esen; Yildizgoren, Mustafa Turgut; Okuyucu, Emine Esra; Serarslan, Yurdal

2018-06-25

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most frequent progressive neuro-degenerative disorder. In addition to motor symptoms, nonmotor symptoms and voice and speech disorders can also develop in 90% of PD patients. The aim of our study was to investigate the effects of DBS and different DBS frequencies on speech acoustics of vowels in PD patients. The study included 16 patients who underwent STN-DBS surgery due to PD. The voice recordings for the vowels including [a], [e], [i], and [o] were performed at frequencies including 230, 130, 90, and 60 Hz and off-stimulation. The voice recordings were gathered and evaluated by the Praat software, and the effects on the first (F1), second (F2), and third formant (F3) frequencies were analyzed. A significant difference was found for the F1 value of the vowel [a] at 130 Hz compared to off-stimulation. However, no significant difference was found between the three formant frequencies with regard to the stimulation frequencies and off-stimulation. In addition, though not statistically significant, stimulation at 60 and 230 Hz led to several differences in the formant frequencies of other three vowels. Our results indicated that STN-DBS stimulation at 130 Hz had a significant positive effect on articulation of [a] compared to off-stimulation. Although there is not any statistical significant stimulation at 60 and 230 Hz may also have an effect on the articulation of [e], [i], and [o] but this effect needs to be investigated in future studies with higher numbers of participants.

Thermal welding vs. cold knife tonsillectomy: a comparison of voice and speech.

PubMed

Celebi, Saban; Yelken, Kursat; Celik, Oner; Taskin, Umit; Topak, Murat

2011-01-01

To compare acoustic, aerodynamic and perceptual voice and speech parameters in thermal welding system tonsillectomy and cold knife tonsillectomy patients in order to determine the impact of operation technique on voice and speech. Thirty tonsillectomy patients (22 children, 8 adults) participated in this study. The preferred technique was cold knife tonsillectomy in 15 patients and thermal welding system tonsillectomy in the remaining 15 patients. One week before and 1 month after surgery the following parameters were estimated: average of fundamental frequency, Jitter, Shimmer, harmonic to noise ratio, formant frequency analyses of sustained vowels. Perceptual speech analysis and aerodynamic measurements (maximum phonation time and s/z ratio) were also conducted. There was no significant difference in any of the parameters between cold knife tonsillectomy and thermal welding system tonsillectomy groups (p>0.05). When the groups were contrasted among themselves with regards to preoperative and postoperative rates, fundamental frequency was found to be significantly decreased after tonsillectomy in both of the groups (p<0.001). First formant for the vowel /a/ in the cold knife tonsillectomy group and for the vowel /i/ in the thermal welding system tonsillectomy group, second formant for the vowel /u/ in the thermal welding system tonsillectomy group and third formant for the vowel /u/ in the cold knife tonsillectomy group were found to be significantly decreased (p<0.05). The surgical technique, whether it is cold knife or thermal welding system, does not appear to affect voice and speech in tonsillectomy patients. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Effect of Parkinson Disease Tremor Phenotype on Cepstral Peak Prominence and Transglottal Airflow in Vowels and Speech.

PubMed

Burk, Brittany R; Watts, Christopher R

2018-02-19

The physiological manifestations of Parkinson disease are heterogeneous, as evidenced by disease subtypes. Dysphonia has been well documented as an early and progressively significant impairment associated with the disease. The purpose of this study was to investigate how acoustic and aerodynamic measures of vocal function were affected by Parkinson tremor subtype (phenotype) in an effort to better understand the heterogeneity of voice impairment severity in Parkinson disease. This is a prospective case-control study. Thirty-two speakers with Parkinson disease assigned to tremor and nontremor phenotypes and 10 healthy controls were recruited. Sustained vowels and connected speech were recorded from each speaker. Acoustic measures of cepstral peak prominence (CPP) and aerodynamic measures of transglottal airflow (TAF) were calculated from the recorded acoustic and aerodynamic waveforms. Speakers with a nontremor dominant phenotype exhibited significantly (P < 0.05) lower CPP and higher TAF in vowels compared with the tremor dominant phenotype and control speakers, who were not different from each other. No significant group differences were observed for CPP or TAF in connected speech. When producing vowels, participants with nontremor dominant phenotype exhibited reduced phonation periodicity and elevated TAF compared with tremor dominant and control participants. This finding is consistent with differential limb-motor and cognitive impairments between tremor and nontremor phenotypes reported in the extant literature. Results suggest that sustained vowel production may be sensitive to phonatory control as a function of Parkinson tremor phenotype in mild to moderate stages of the disease. Copyright © 2018 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Acoustic voice analysis of prelingually deaf adults before and after cochlear implantation.

PubMed

Evans, Maegan K; Deliyski, Dimitar D

2007-11-01

It is widely accepted that many severe to profoundly deaf adults have benefited from cochlear implants (CIs). However, limited research has been conducted to investigate changes in voice and speech of prelingually deaf adults who receive CIs, a population well known for presenting with a variety of voice and speech abnormalities. The purpose of this study was to use acoustic analysis to explore changes in voice and speech for three prelingually deaf males pre- and postimplantation over 6 months. The following measurements, some measured in varying contexts, were obtained: fundamental frequency (F0), jitter, shimmer, noise-to-harmonic ratio, voice turbulence index, soft phonation index, amplitude- and F0-variation, F0-range, speech rate, nasalance, and vowel production. Characteristics of vowel production were measured by determining the first formant (F1) and second formant (F2) of vowels in various contexts, magnitude of F2-variation, and rate of F2-variation. Perceptual measurements of pitch, pitch variability, loudness variability, speech rate, and intonation were obtained for comparison. Results are reported using descriptive statistics. The results showed patterns of change for some of the parameters while there was considerable variation across the subjects. All participants demonstrated a decrease in F0 in at least one context and demonstrated a change in nasalance toward the norm as compared to their normal hearing control. The two participants who were oral-language communicators were judged to produce vowels with an average of 97.2% accuracy and the sign-language user demonstrated low percent accuracy for vowel production.

Attentional influences on functional mapping of speech sounds in human auditory cortex.

PubMed

Obleser, Jonas; Elbert, Thomas; Eulitz, Carsten

2004-07-21

The speech signal contains both information about phonological features such as place of articulation and non-phonological features such as speaker identity. These are different aspects of the 'what'-processing stream (speaker vs. speech content), and here we show that they can be further segregated as they may occur in parallel but within different neural substrates. Subjects listened to two different vowels, each spoken by two different speakers. During one block, they were asked to identify a given vowel irrespectively of the speaker (phonological categorization), while during the other block the speaker had to be identified irrespectively of the vowel (speaker categorization). Auditory evoked fields were recorded using 148-channel magnetoencephalography (MEG), and magnetic source imaging was obtained for 17 subjects. During phonological categorization, a vowel-dependent difference of N100m source location perpendicular to the main tonotopic gradient replicated previous findings. In speaker categorization, the relative mapping of vowels remained unchanged but sources were shifted towards more posterior and more superior locations. These results imply that the N100m reflects the extraction of abstract invariants from the speech signal. This part of the processing is accomplished in auditory areas anterior to AI, which are part of the auditory 'what' system. This network seems to include spatially separable modules for identifying the phonological information and for associating it with a particular speaker that are activated in synchrony but within different regions, suggesting that the 'what' processing can be more adequately modeled by a stream of parallel stages. The relative activation of the parallel processing stages can be modulated by attentional or task demands.

Sexual orientation and gender identity: review of concepts, controversies and their relation to psychopathology classification systems

PubMed Central

Moleiro, Carla; Pinto, Nuno

2015-01-01

Numerous controversies and debates have taken place throughout the history of psychopathology (and its main classification systems) with regards to sexual orientation and gender identity. These are still reflected on present reformulations of gender dysphoria in both the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and the International Classification of Diseases, and in more or less subtle micro-aggressions experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans patients in mental health care. The present paper critically reviews this history and current controversies. It reveals that this deeply complex field contributes (i) to the reflection on the very concept of mental illness; (ii) to the focus on subjective distress and person-centered experience of psychopathology; and (iii) to the recognition of stigma and discrimination as significant intervening variables. Finally, it argues that sexual orientation and gender identity have been viewed, in the history of the field of psychopathology, between two poles: gender transgression and gender variance/fluidity. PMID:26483748

Sexual orientation and gender identity: review of concepts, controversies and their relation to psychopathology classification systems.

PubMed

Moleiro, Carla; Pinto, Nuno

2015-01-01

Numerous controversies and debates have taken place throughout the history of psychopathology (and its main classification systems) with regards to sexual orientation and gender identity. These are still reflected on present reformulations of gender dysphoria in both the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and the International Classification of Diseases, and in more or less subtle micro-aggressions experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans patients in mental health care. The present paper critically reviews this history and current controversies. It reveals that this deeply complex field contributes (i) to the reflection on the very concept of mental illness; (ii) to the focus on subjective distress and person-centered experience of psychopathology; and (iii) to the recognition of stigma and discrimination as significant intervening variables. Finally, it argues that sexual orientation and gender identity have been viewed, in the history of the field of psychopathology, between two poles: gender transgression and gender variance/fluidity.

Perception-Production Link in L2 Japanese Vowel Duration: Training with Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Okuno, Tomoko; Hardison, Debra M.

2016-01-01

This study examined factors affecting perception training of vowel duration in L2 Japanese with transfer to production. In a pre-test, training, post-test design, 48 L1 English speakers were assigned to one of three groups: auditory-visual (AV) training using waveform displays, auditory-only (A-only), or no training. Within-group variables were…

Effect of Audio vs. Video on Aural Discrimination of Vowels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCrocklin, Shannon

2012-01-01

Despite the growing use of media in the classroom, the effects of using of audio versus video in pronunciation teaching has been largely ignored. To analyze the impact of the use of audio or video training on aural discrimination of vowels, 61 participants (all students at a large American university) took a pre-test followed by two training…

Perception of Canadian-French Word-Final Vowels in Lexical and Morphosyntactic Minimal Pairs by Canadian English Learners of French

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Law, Franzo II

2011-01-01

This study investigated the perception of Canadian French word-final vowels by English-dominant and French-dominant bilinguals living in Montreal. In a modified identification task, listeners selected the response that rhymed with the target word, embedded in a carrier sentence. Minimal sets of real and nonsense target words were used, contrasting…

Tongue- and Jaw-Specific Contributions to Acoustic Vowel Contrast Changes in the Diphthong /ai/ in Response to Slow, Loud, And Clear Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mefferd, Antje S.

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study sought to determine decoupled tongue and jaw displacement changes and their specific contributions to acoustic vowel contrast changes during slow, loud, and clear speech. Method: Twenty typical talkers repeated "see a kite again" 5 times in 4 speech conditions (typical, slow, loud, clear). Speech kinematics were…

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…

English Pronunciation: A Systematic Approach to Word-Stress and Vowel-Sounds.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carmona, Francisco

A handbook on English word stress and stressed-vowel sounds is based on the idea that these segments are, in most cases, controlled by phonological context and their pronunciation can be understood through a system of rules. It serves as a reference for teachers and as a text for students. Chapters address these topics: word stress and active and…

Vowel Acoustics in Parkinson's Disease and Multiple Sclerosis: Comparison of Clear, Loud, and Slow Speaking Conditions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tjaden, Kris; Lam, Jennifer; Wilding, Greg

2013-01-01

Purpose: The impact of clear speech, increased vocal intensity, and rate reduction on acoustic characteristics of vowels was compared in speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD), speakers with multiple sclerosis (MS), and healthy controls. Method: Speakers read sentences in habitual, clear, loud, and slow conditions. Variations in clarity,…

The Effect of Modern Standard Arabic Orthography on Speech Production by Arab Children with Hearing Loss

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Most, Tova; Levin, Iris; Sarsour, Marwa

2008-01-01

This article examined the effect of Modern Standard Arabic orthography on speech production quality (syllable stress and vowels) by 23 Arabic-speaking children with severe or profound hearing loss aged 8-12 years. Children produced 15 one-syllable minimal pairs of words that differed in vowel length (short vs. long) and 20 two-syllable minimal…

Simultaneous Bilingualism and the Perception of a Language-Specific Vowel Contrast in the First Year of Life

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bosch, Laura; Sebastian-Galles, Nuria

2003-01-01

Behavioral studies have shown that while young infants can discriminate many different phonetic contrasts, a shift from a language-general to a language-specific pattern of discrimination is found during the second semester of life, beginning earlier for vowels than for consonants. This age-related decline in sensitivity to perceive non-native…

Non-Native Japanese Listeners' Perception of Vowel Length Contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tsukada, Kimiko

2012-01-01

This study aimed to compare the perception of short vs. long vowel contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) by four groups of listeners differing in their linguistic backgrounds: native Arabic (NA), native Japanese (NJ), non-native Japanese (NNJ) and Australian English (OZ) speakers. The NNJ and OZ groups shared the first language…

Contrastive Suprasegmental Features on English and Arabic IPA Transcription of Surah Al Ya Sin

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yurtbasi, Metin

2016-01-01

The greatest difficulty in reading Arabic script for nonnatives has long been considered as the absence of short vowels, however there is more to be dealt with. While the correlation of 28 Arabic consonants pose no great difficulty in deciphering the script, the six vowel phonemes voiced only by three letters even with help of some relevant…

The Acoustic Characteristics of Diphthongs in Indian English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maxwell, Olga; Fletcher, Janet

2010-01-01

This paper presents the results of an acoustic analysis of English diphthongs produced by three L1 speakers of Hindi and four L1 speakers of Punjabi. Formant trajectories of rising and falling diphthongs (i.e., vowels where there is a clear rising or falling trajectory through the F1/F2 vowel space) were analysed in a corpus of citation-form…

The Perceptibility of Duration in the Phonetics and Phonology of Contrastive Consonant Length

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hansen, Benjamin Bozzell

2012-01-01

This dissertation investigates the hypothesis that the more vowel-like a consonant is, the more difficult it is for listeners to classify it as geminate or singleton. A perceptual account of this observation holds that more vowel-like consonants lack clear markers to signal the beginning and ending of the consonant, so listeners don't perceive the…

Neurophysiological Indices of the Effect of Cognates on Vowel Perception in Late Spanish-English Bilinguals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tessel, Carol A.

2013-01-01

The field of research in bilingualism and second language (L2) acquisition has yielded overwhelming evidence that acquiring a second language later in life will result in less accurate production and perception of consonants and vowels in the second language. These effects, in part, are a result of interference from the already formed phonetic…

Intelligibility of American English Vowels and Consonants Spoken by International Students in the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jin, Su-Hyun; Liu, Chang

2014-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the intelligibility of English consonants and vowels produced by Chinese-native (CN), and Korean-native (KN) students enrolled in American universities. Method: 16 English-native (EN), 32 CN, and 32 KN speakers participated in this study. The intelligibility of 16 American English consonants and 16…

Enhancement of temporal periodicity cues in cochlear implants: Effects on prosodic perception and vowel identification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Green, Tim; Faulkner, Andrew; Rosen, Stuart; Macherey, Olivier

2005-07-01

Standard continuous interleaved sampling processing, and a modified processing strategy designed to enhance temporal cues to voice pitch, were compared on tests of intonation perception, and vowel perception, both in implant users and in acoustic simulations. In standard processing, 400 Hz low-pass envelopes modulated either pulse trains (implant users) or noise carriers (simulations). In the modified strategy, slow-rate envelope modulations, which convey dynamic spectral variation crucial for speech understanding, were extracted by low-pass filtering (32 Hz). In addition, during voiced speech, higher-rate temporal modulation in each channel was provided by 100% amplitude-modulation by a sawtooth-like wave form whose periodicity followed the fundamental frequency (F0) of the input. Channel levels were determined by the product of the lower- and higher-rate modulation components. Both in acoustic simulations and in implant users, the ability to use intonation information to identify sentences as question or statement was significantly better with modified processing. However, while there was no difference in vowel recognition in the acoustic simulation, implant users performed worse with modified processing both in vowel recognition and in formant frequency discrimination. It appears that, while enhancing pitch perception, modified processing harmed the transmission of spectral information.

Perception of speaker size and sex of vowel sounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smith, David R. R.; Patterson, Roy D.

2005-04-01

Glottal-pulse rate (GPR) and vocal-tract length (VTL) are both related to speaker size and sex-however, it is unclear how they interact to determine our perception of speaker size and sex. Experiments were designed to measure the relative contribution of GPR and VTL to judgements of speaker size and sex. Vowels were scaled to represent people with different GPRs and VTLs, including many well beyond the normal population values. In a single interval, two response rating paradigm, listeners judged the size (using a 7-point scale) and sex/age of the speaker (man, woman, boy, or girl) of these scaled vowels. Results from the size-rating experiments show that VTL has a much greater influence upon judgements of speaker size than GPR. Results from the sex-categorization experiments show that judgements of speaker sex are influenced about equally by GPR and VTL for vowels with normal GPR and VTL values. For abnormal combinations of GPR and VTL, where low GPRs are combined with short VTLs, VTL has more influence than GPR in sex judgements. [Work supported by the UK MRC (G9901257) and the German Volkswagen Foundation (VWF 1/79 783).

A comparison of harmonic production in trained and untrained singers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hildebrand, Jonathan H.; Caso, Hilary J.

2004-05-01

This study was designed to investigate the differences in the tone qualities of trained and untrained singers of both genders by measuring the ratio of energy found in the fundamental frequency to that found in the harmonics of the two groups. Forty trained and untrained male and female subjects (ten in each group) sang the vowels [a e i o u] in the words ``me cake father obey too.'' Each subject sang through the list of words in its entirety one time. They were also asked to produce each word at a constant pitch of their choosing. The intensity (dB) was then measured at the vowel midpoint in the intact vowel, and then again with the fundamental filtered out. These two measurements allowed for a comparison to be made by subtracting the results. This process produced results showing that the fundamental frequency was responsible for the majority of the trained singers', vocal productions, where harmonics were responsible for the majority of the untrained singers', vocal productions. The data also showed that these results were more prominent for the production of the high vowels in both genders, and for women overall.

The time course of learning during a vowel discrimination task by hearing-impaired and masked normal-hearing listeners

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Davis, Carrie; Kewley-Port, Diane; Coughlin, Maureen

2002-05-01

Vowel discrimination was compared between a group of young, well-trained listeners with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing impairment (YHI), and a matched group of normal hearing, noise-masked listeners (YNH). Unexpectedly, discrimination of F1 and F2 in the YHI listeners was equal to or better than that observed in YNH listeners in three conditions of similar audibility [Davis et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109, 2501 (2001)]. However, in the same time interval, the YHI subjects completed an average of 55% more blocks of testing than the YNH group. New analyses were undertaken to examine the time course of learning during the vowel discrimination task, to determine whether performance was affected by number of trials. Learning curves for a set of vowels in the F1 and F2 regions showed no significant differences between the YHI and YNH listeners. Thus while the YHI subjects completed more trials overall, they achieved a level of discrimination similar to that of their normal-hearing peers within the same number of blocks. Implications of discrimination performance in relation to hearing status and listening strategies will be discussed. [Work supported by NIHDCD-02229.

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.

Correlations of decision weights and cognitive function for the masked discrimination of vowels by young and old adults

PubMed Central

Lutfi, Robert A.

2014-01-01

Older adults are often reported in the literature to have greater difficulty than younger adults understanding speech in noise [Helfer and Wilber (1988). J. Acoust. Soc. Am, 859–893]. The poorer performance of older adults has been attributed to a general deterioration of cognitive processing, deterioration of cochlear anatomy, and/or greater difficulty segregating speech from noise. The current work used perturbation analysis [Berg (1990). J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 149–158] to provide a more specific assessment of the effect of cognitive factors on speech perception in noise. Sixteen older (age 56–79 years) and seventeen younger (age 19–30 years) adults discriminated a target vowel masked by randomly selected masker vowels immediately preceding and following the target. Relative decision weights on target and maskers resulting from the analysis revealed large individual differences across participants despite similar performance scores in many cases. On the most difficult vowel discriminations, the older adult decision weights were significantly correlated with inhibitory control (Color Word Interference test) and pure-tone threshold averages (PTA). Young adult decision weights were not correlated with any measures of peripheral (PTA) or central function (inhibition or working memory). PMID:25256580

English vowel learning by speakers of Mandarin

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thomson, Ron I.

2005-04-01

One of the most influential models of second language (L2) speech perception and production [Flege, Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience (York, Baltimore, 1995) pp. 233-277] argues that during initial stages of L2 acquisition, perceptual categories sharing the same or nearly the same acoustic space as first language (L1) categories will be processed as members of that L1 category. Previous research has generally been limited to testing these claims on binary L2 contrasts, rather than larger portions of the perceptual space. This study examines the development of 10 English vowel categories by 20 Mandarin L1 learners of English. Imitation of English vowel stimuli by these learners, at 6 data collection points over the course of one year, were recorded. Using a statistical pattern recognition model, these productions were then assessed against native speaker norms. The degree to which the learners' perception/production shifted toward the target English vowels and the degree to which they matched L1 categories in ways predicted by theoretical models are discussed. The results of this experiment suggest that previous claims about perceptual assimilation of L2 categories to L1 categories may be too strong.

Glove-talk II - a neural-network interface which maps gestures to parallel formant speech synthesizer controls.

PubMed

Fels, S S; Hinton, G E

1997-01-01

Glove-Talk II is a system which translates hand gestures to speech through an adaptive interface. Hand gestures are mapped continuously to ten control parameters of a parallel formant speech synthesizer. The mapping allows the hand to act as an artificial vocal tract that produces speech in real time. This gives an unlimited vocabulary in addition to direct control of fundamental frequency and volume. Currently, the best version of Glove-Talk II uses several input devices, a parallel formant speech synthesizer, and three neural networks. The gesture-to-speech task is divided into vowel and consonant production by using a gating network to weight the outputs of a vowel and a consonant neural network. The gating network and the consonant network are trained with examples from the user. The vowel network implements a fixed user-defined relationship between hand position and vowel sound and does not require any training examples from the user. Volume, fundamental frequency, and stop consonants are produced with a fixed mapping from the input devices. With Glove-Talk II, the subject can speak slowly but with far more natural sounding pitch variations than a text-to-speech synthesizer.

Consequences of broad auditory filters for identification of multichannel-compressed vowels

PubMed Central

Souza, Pamela; Wright, Richard; Bor, Stephanie

2012-01-01

Purpose In view of previous findings (Bor, Souza & Wright, 2008) that some listeners are more susceptible to spectral changes from multichannel compression (MCC) than others, this study addressed the extent to which differences in effects of MCC were related to differences in auditory filter width. Method Listeners were recruited in three groups: listeners with flat sensorineural loss, listeners with sloping sensorineural loss, and a control group of listeners with normal hearing. Individual auditory filter measurements were obtained at 500 and 2000 Hz. The filter widths were related to identification of vowels processed with 16-channel MCC and with a control (linear) condition. Results Listeners with flat loss had broader filters at 500 Hz but not at 2000 Hz, compared to listeners with sloping loss. Vowel identification was poorer for MCC compared to linear amplification. Listeners with flat loss made more errors than listeners with sloping loss, and there was a significant relationship between filter width and the effects of MCC. Conclusions Broadened auditory filters can reduce the ability to process amplitude-compressed vowel spectra. This suggests that individual frequency selectivity is one factor which influences benefit of MCC, when a high number of compression channels are used. PMID:22207696

Speaker recognition with temporal cues in acoustic and electric hearing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vongphoe, Michael; Zeng, Fan-Gang

2005-08-01

Natural spoken language processing includes not only speech recognition but also identification of the speaker's gender, age, emotional, and social status. Our purpose in this study is to evaluate whether temporal cues are sufficient to support both speech and speaker recognition. Ten cochlear-implant and six normal-hearing subjects were presented with vowel tokens spoken by three men, three women, two boys, and two girls. In one condition, the subject was asked to recognize the vowel. In the other condition, the subject was asked to identify the speaker. Extensive training was provided for the speaker recognition task. Normal-hearing subjects achieved nearly perfect performance in both tasks. Cochlear-implant subjects achieved good performance in vowel recognition but poor performance in speaker recognition. The level of the cochlear implant performance was functionally equivalent to normal performance with eight spectral bands for vowel recognition but only to one band for speaker recognition. These results show a disassociation between speech and speaker recognition with primarily temporal cues, highlighting the limitation of current speech processing strategies in cochlear implants. Several methods, including explicit encoding of fundamental frequency and frequency modulation, are proposed to improve speaker recognition for current cochlear implant users.

Production-perception relationships during speech development

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Menard, Lucie; Schwartz, Jean-Luc; Boe, Louis-Jean; Aubin, Jerome

2005-04-01

It has been shown that nonuniform growth of the supraglottal cavities, motor control development, and perceptual refinement shape the vowel systems during speech development. In this talk, we propose to investigate the role of perceptual constraints as a guide to the speakers task from birth to adulthood. Simulations with an articulatory-to-acoustic model, acoustic analyses of natural vowels, and results of perceptual tests provide evidence that the production-perception relationships evolve with age. At the perceptual level, results show that (i) linear combination of spectral peaks are good predictors of vowel targets, and (ii) focalization, defined as an acoustic pattern with close neighboring formants [J.-L. Schwartz, L.-J. Boe, N. Vallee, and C. Abry, J. Phonetics 25, 255-286 (1997)], is part of the speech task. At the production level, we propose that (i) frequently produced vowels in the baby's early sound inventory can in part be explained by perceptual templates, (ii) the achievement of these perceptual templates may require adaptive articulatory strategies for the child, compared with the adults, to cope with morphological differences. Results are discussed in the light of a perception for action control theory. [Work supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

The role of consolidation in learning context-dependent phonotactic patterns in speech and digital sequence production.

PubMed

Anderson, Nathaniel D; Dell, Gary S

2018-04-03

Speakers implicitly learn novel phonotactic patterns by producing strings of syllables. The learning is revealed in their speech errors. First-order patterns, such as "/f/ must be a syllable onset," can be distinguished from contingent, or second-order, patterns, such as "/f/ must be an onset if the vowel is /a/, but a coda if the vowel is /o/." A metaanalysis of 19 experiments clearly demonstrated that first-order patterns affect speech errors to a very great extent in a single experimental session, but second-order vowel-contingent patterns only affect errors on the second day of testing, suggesting the need for a consolidation period. Two experiments tested an analogue to these studies involving sequences of button pushes, with fingers as "consonants" and thumbs as "vowels." The button-push errors revealed two of the key speech-error findings: first-order patterns are learned quickly, but second-order thumb-contingent patterns are only strongly revealed in the errors on the second day of testing. The influence of computational complexity on the implicit learning of phonotactic patterns in speech production may be a general feature of sequence production.