• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.57-65
• /
• 2024

Normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) is a condition wherein the cerebrospinal pressure in the brain is within the normal range, but the cerebrospinal fluid increases above the normal level, causing ventriculomegaly. In patients with NPH, the articulatory system exhibits reduced mobility and range, which may affect diadochokinesis (DDK) and speech intelligibility. In this study, we investigated the characteristics of DDK, including accurate-token DDK and all-token DDK including inaccurate tokens, in patients with NPH and healthy elderly adults (HE). We also examined the classification accuracy of DDK between the two groups. Finally, we investigated whether there was a correlation between speech intelligibility and DDKs in the NPH group. The results showed that NPH and HE groups differed significantly in both accurate-token DDK and all-token DDK, and their classification accuracy was relatively high. However, there was no correlation between speech intelligibility and DDK. The findings suggest that the DDK is a useful method for sensitively assessing speech motor performance in patients with NPH.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
• /
• v.9 no.6
• /
• pp.125-132
• /
• 2018

This study was to investigate the speech sound production characteristics and evaluation aspects of preschool children through word test and connected speech test. For this, the authors conducted Assessment of Phonology and Articulation for Children(APAC) to 72 normal children(24 three-, four-, and five-year-olds each) and analyzed difference in percent of correct consonant(PCC) and intelligibility according to age and sex, correlation between PCC and intelligibility, and speech sound error patterns. PCC and intelligibility increased with age but there was no difference according to sex. The correlation was statistically significant in 5-year-old group. Speech sound error patterns were different in the two tests. This study showed that children's speech sound production varied according to language unit. Therefore, both types of tests should be done to grasp their speech sound production ability properly. This suggests that current standard to identify language impairment only by PCC of word level requires review and further studies.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.37-46
• /
• 1991

The pitch estimation algorithms witch have proposed until now are difficult to detect wide range pitches regardless of age or sex. A little deviation are observed with reference to the center pitch in the distribution diagram of pitches, since pitches are characterized by a physical limitation of the coarticulation mechanism. If the center pitches are refered to the accurate pitch extraction procedure, the algorithms will be not only simplified in procedure but also improved in accuracy. In this paper, we proposed an algorithm that the center pitches are accurately detected by using the spectrum leakage phenomenon for the noise speech signals.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Computer Information Conference
• /
• 2015.07a
• /
• pp.230-231
• /
• 2015

본 연구는 영어학습 보조도구로서 3D기법을 활용한 애플리케이션을 개발하는데 그 목적이 있다. 본 연구에서 사용한 애플리케이션은 2D 방식에 기반을 둔 언어학습 보조도구 대신에 휴대가 편리한 스마트폰에 UNITY 3D기법을 적용해서 각 언어음을 발화하는데 조음기관들이 어떻게 서로 상호작용하는지 시각적으로 보여준다. 또한 UNIT을 방향전환하면서 학습자의 음 발성 정확도를 높이는 동시에 학습자 수준에 맞추어 장소에 구애받지 않고 자기 주도적으로 학습의 흥미를 지속적으로 유발시키고자 하는데 그 목적이 있다.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.59-69
• /
• 2024

Among the subgroups of speech sound disorder (SSD), the motor speech disorder (MSD) group is characterized by weak articulatory force. This study quantitatively measured and compared articulatory muscle strength between SSD and typically developing (TD) children. The Iowa Oral Performance Instrument (IOPI) was used to measure lip and tongue strength in 15 children with SSD and 15 TD children. We additionally measured peak lip and tongue pressure and endurance, and analyzed the correlation between each strength measure and the percentage of consonants correct (PCC). The findings were as follows: First, lip strength for the bilabial sounds did not differ between the two groups in the initial position but was significantly weaker in the SSD group in the final position. Tongue strength for alveolar sounds was weaker in the SSD group than in the TD group for the initial and final positions. Second, for lip and tongue strength, the difference in voicing features was significant in the TD group but not in the SSD group. Third, the peak pressure and endurance of the lips and tongue were significantly lower in the SSD group than in the TD group. Fourth, significantly higher static correlations were observed between most strength measures and the PCC. These findings suggest that weakness in articulatory motor execution may be an unrecognized underlying problem of SSD with unknown origin.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.21-28
• /
• 2022

Previous studies have provided important findings on children's speech production development. They have revealed that essentially all aspects of children's speech shift toward adult-like characteristics over time. Nevertheless, few studies have examined the perceptual aspects of children's speech tokens, as perceived by naive adult listeners. To fill the gap between children's production and adults' perception, we conducted cross-sectional perceptual studies of monosyllabic words produced by children aged two to six years. Monosyllabic words in the consonant-vowel-consonant form were extracted from children's speech samples and presented aurally to five listener groups (20 listeners in total). Generally, the agreement rate between children's production of target words and adult listeners' responses increases with age. The perceptual responses to tokens produced by two-year old children induced the largest discrepancies and the responses to words produced by six years olds agreed the most. Further analyses were conducted to identify the sources of disagreement, including the types of segments and syllable structure. This study makes an important contribution to our understanding of the development and perception of children's speech across age groups.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.3
• /
• pp.57-67
• /
• 2019

This study aimed to investigate regional differences in the development of speech production in Korean children. A total of 619 children aged 2 to 7 years from the Jeolla, Seoul/Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, and Gyeongsang areas were included in this study. The subjects were assessed with the UTAP2 word-level test. In PWC, PMLU, and PWP, the performance was significantly lower in Gyeongsang at 2 years 11 months and in Jeolla and Chungcheong at 3 years 5 months than in Seoul/Gyeonggi. The total PCC of Gyeongsang and Chungcheong and UTAP PCC of Chungcheong were significantly lower at 2 years 11 months compared with those of Seoul/Gyeonggi, while Jeolla and Chungcheong showed significantly lower total PCC and UTAP PCC than Seoul/Gyeonggi at 3 years 5 months. However, no regional difference was observed in any indicators after the age of 3 years 6 months. These results suggest that there are regional differences in the ability to produce speech sounds at a very young age, and that the differences can be explained by the differences between Seoul/Gyeonggi and the other provinces rather than by the individual characteristics of specific regions.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.139-149
• /
• 2005

The purpose of this study was to propose a preliminary norm for 'Korean-Test of Articulation for Children(K-TAC)'. The K-TAC was designed to test 19 Korean consonants in various phonetic contexts through 37 words. We collected the data of 220 normally developing children aged 2;6(years;months) to 6;5. We analyzed the mean percentage of consonants correct and the age of acquisition for K-TAC. The results were as follows: first, The mean percentage was over 60% at late 2 years of age, over 80% at th age of 3, and over 90% after the age of 4. There were significant differences among age groups. Second, based on the criterion of correct production by 75% of children, Korean children acquired stops and nasals except for SF velars, glottal fricative, SF liquid and affricates by late 2 or 3 years of age. After that they acquired SF velars at the age of 4 and SI liquid at the age of 5. However, they could not acquire alveolar fricatives by the age of late 6. Third, if the distorted sounds were scored as correct, they acquired SI liquid at 4 years of age and alveolar fricatives at 5 years of age.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.45-53
• /
• 2019

The purpose of this work was to examine the factors affecting the identities of the voiceless plosives, i.e. English [p, t, k] and Korean [p^h, t^h, k^h], from the spontaneous speech corpora. The factors were automatically extracted by a Praat script and the percent correctness of the discriminant analyses was incrementally assessed by increasing the number of factors used in predicting the identities of the plosives. The factors included the spectral moments and tilts of the plosive release bursts, the post-burst aspirations and the vowel onsets, the durations such as the closure durations and the voice onset times (VOTs), the locations within words and utterances and the identities of the following vowels. The results showed that as the number of factors increased up to five, so did the percent correctness of the analyses, resulting in 74.6% for English and 66.4% for Korean. However, the optimal number of factors for the maximum percent correctness was four, i.e. the spectral moments and tilts of the release bursts and the following vowels, the closure durations and the VOTs. This suggests that the identities of the voiceless plosives are mostly determined by their internal and vowel onset cues.

• Smart Media Journal
• /
• v.11 no.11
• /
• pp.17-24
• /
• 2022

With the spread of smart speakers based on voice recognition technology and deep learning technology, not only non-disabled people, but also the blind or physically handicapped can easily control home appliances such as lights and TVs through voice by linking home network services. This has greatly improved the quality of life. However, in the case of speech-impaired people, it is impossible to use the useful services of the smart speaker because they have inaccurate pronunciation due to articulation or speech disorders. In this paper, we propose a personalized voice classification technique for the speech-impaired to use for some of the functions provided by the smart speaker. The goal of this paper is to increase the recognition rate and accuracy of sentences spoken by speech-impaired people even with a small amount of data and a short learning time so that the service provided by the smart speaker can be actually used. In this paper, data augmentation and one cycle learning rate optimization technique were applied while fine-tuning ResNet18 model. Through an experiment, after recording 10 times for each 30 smart speaker commands, and learning within 3 minutes, the speech classification recognition rate was about 95.2%.