• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.455-464
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• 2009

Based on the observation that Korean speakers of English have difficulties in producing English fricatives, a perception experiment was designed to investigate whether Korean speakers also have difficulties perceiving English labial consonants including fricatives. Forty Korean college students were asked to perform a multiple-choice identification test. The consonant perception test consisted of nonce words which contained English labial consonants [p, b, f, v] in 4 different prosodic locations: initial onset position, intervocalic position before stress, intervocalic position after stress, and final coda position. The general perception pattern was that the mean accuracy rates were higher in strong position like CV and VCVV than in weak position like VC and VVCV. The difficulties in perceiving the English targets resulted mainly from bidirectional manner confusion between stop and fricative across all prosodic locations. The other types of misidentification were due to place confusion as well as voicing confusion. Place confusion was generated mostly by the target [f] in all prosodic position due to acoustic properties. Voicing confusion was heavily influenced by prosodic position. The misperception of the participants was accounted for by phonetic properties and/or the participants' native language properties.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.272-280
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• 2015

This paper proposes color databases that can be used for various purposes for people with a color vision deficiency (CVD). The purpose of this paper is to group colors within the sRGB gamut into the CIE $L^*a^*b^*$ color space using the Brettel algorithm to simulate the representative colors of each group into colors visible to people with a CVD, and to establish a confusion line database by comparing colors that might cause confusion for people with different types of color vision deficiency. The validity of the established confusion lines were verified by using an Ishihara chart. The different colors that confuse those with a CVD in an Ishihara chart are located in the same confusion line database for both protanopia and deutanopia. Instead of the 3D RGB color space, we have grouped confusion colors to the CIE $L^*a^*b^*$ space coordinates in a more distinctive and intuitive manner, and can establish a database of colors that can be perceived by people with a CVD more accurately. Editor - Highlight - Do these changes reflect the intended meaning? If not, please rephrase as intended.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.47-54
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• 2013

The aim of this study was to analyze consonant articulation errors produced by 90 speakers with cerebral palsy (CP). Phonetic transcriptions were made for 37 single-word utterances containing 70 phonemes: 48 initial consonants and 22 final consonants. Errors of substitution, omission, and distortion were analyzed using a confusion matrix paradigm showing the visualization of error patterns. Results showed that substitution errors in initial and final consonants were most frequent, followed by omission and distortion. Consonant omission occurred more frequently on final consonants. In both initial and final consonants, the within-place errors were more prominent than the within-manner errors. The current results suggest that consonant confusion matrices for dysarthric speech may provide useful information for evaluating speech intelligibility and developing automatic speech recognition system of adults with CP associated dysarthria.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.37-44
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• 2023

This study investigates perceptual confusions of English fricatives among 121 Korean elementary school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with shorter periods of learning English. The objective is to examine how they perceive English fricative consonants and to provide educational guidelines. Two sets of English fricative identification tasks-voiceless fricatives and voiced fricatives-were administered to participants in a High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) setting. Their phonemic awareness of the fricatives was visualized in perceptual confusion maps via multidimensional scaling analysis. The findings are explored in terms of the impacts of Korean EFL learners' L1 linguistic aspects and a comparison with L1 learners. Learners' phonemic awareness patterns are then compared with their relative importance in speech intelligibility based on a functional load hierarchy. The results indicated that Korean elementary EFL learners recognized English fricatives in a manner largely akin to L1 learners, suggesting their ongoing acquisition progress. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that the young EFL learners possess sufficient phonemic awareness for most high functional load segments but encounter some difficulties with one high and one low functional pair. The findings of this study offer suggestions for diagnosing language learners' phonemic awareness abilities, thereby aiding in the development of practical guidelines for language instructional design and helping educators make informed decisions regarding teaching priority in L2 classes.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.7-27
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• 2003

Esophageal Speech uses the esophageal air during phonation. Fluent esophageal speakers frequently intake air in oral communication, but unskilled esophageal speakers are difficult with swallowing lots of air. The purpose of this study was to investigate the difference of acoustic characteristics of vowel and consonants production according to the speech proficiency level in esophageal speech. 13 normal male speakers and 13 male esophageal speakers (5 unskilled esophageal speakers, 8 skilled esophageal speakers) with age ranging from 50 to 70 years old. The stimuli were sustained /a/ vowel and 36 meaningless two syllable words. Used vowel is /a/ and consonants were 18 : /k, n, t, m, p, s, c, $C^{h},\;k^{h},\;t^{h},\;p^{h}$, h, I, k', t', p', s', c'/. Fundermental frequency (Fx), Jitter, shimmer, HNR, MPT were measured with by electroglottography using Lx speech studio (Laryngograph Ltd, London, UK). 36 meaningless words produced by esophageal speakers were presented to 3 speech-language pathologists who phonetically transcribed their responses. Fx, Jitter, HNR parameters is significant different between skilled esophageal speakers and unskilled esophageal speakers (P<.05). Considering manner of articulation, ANOVA showed that differences in two esophageal speech groups on speech proficiency were significant; Glide had the highest number of confusion with the other phoneme class, affricates are the most intelligible in the unskilled esophageal speech group, whereas in the skilled esophageal speech group fricatives resulted highest number of confusions, nasals are the most intelligible. In the place of articulation, glottal /h/ is the highest confusion consonant in both groups. Bilabials are the most intelligible in the skilled esophageal speech, velars are the most intelligible in the unskilled esophageal speech. In the structure of syllable, 'CV+V' is more confusion in the skilled esophageal group, unskilled esophageal speech group has similar confusion in both structures. In unskilled esophageal speech, significantly different Fx, Jitter, HNR acoustic parameters of vowel and the highest confusions of Liquid, Nasals consonants could be attributed to unstable, improper contact of neoglottis as vibratory source and insufficiency in the phonatory air supply, and higher motoric demand of remaining articulation due to morphological characteristics of vocal tract after laryngectomy.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.11 no.sup
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• pp.123-138
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• 2012

Healthcare and wellness industries have become more promising as the interests on healthy living increase. Not only the medical care oriented services for the patients done by medical centers but also the psychological and emotional healthgiving services for the people who are normal have been being stressed. The psychological and emotional healthgiving services should be executed in an agile and timely manner to maximize its effects. This paper aims to propose an emotion healing service spaces which are able to provide the normal people with psychological care services. To achieve the goals, we invented the tripot approach : the ubiquitous computing technology for context-aware and intelligent estimation of psychological index, LED technology to implement emotional atmosphere and wellness healthcare technology. The proposed architecture has been implemented in an actual site.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.79-83
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• 2020

In the 21st-century postmodernism era, which represents diversity and relativity, one of the most essential elements in the field of education is to strengthen individual human values. Accordingly, we must focus on developing capacity in order to adapt to change. It is clear that the medical field maximizes the need for new judgments to solve life-related problems constantly, and this problem-solving capacity is an essential skill for a physician. Problem-solving capacity can be achieved simultaneously with creativity to apply them in an appropriate manner based on standardized expertise and well-trained skills. Creativity is also a key element that medical education is currently pursuing. Many studies on creativity have resulted in confusion and misunderstandings on the concept of creativity due to similar terms and varied definitions, such as creation, innovation, etc. In this study, we attempt to identify the importance of creativity in medical education by comparing and organizing concepts related to creative capacity.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.11-20
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• 2000

Today, technologies and automation have been accelerated up in the industrial workplace. Nevertheless, many systems still require humans to handle materials manually. The Low Back Pain (LBP) is one of modern human being's most common and complex ailments. Many risk factors with the onset of LBP have been identified, however, lifting out of Manual Material Handling(MMH) was the most important factor to the LBP. The Virtual Reality(VR) is used in a variety of ways and often in a confusion and misleading manner. In order to solve the prevention of the LBP, a lifting box was translated in the Virtual Environment(VE). As simulating under the VE, optimal lifting works could be constructed. The purpose of this study is to reduce the chronical low back pain for the manual material handlers.

• Electronics and Telecommunications Trends
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.114-124
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• 2019

The Internet was designed for machines, not humans, and hence, nobody owns a digital identity. Instead, a digital identity is rented from a website and an application. This lack of unique and secure digital identities has resulted in confusion in the online/cyber world. Digital identities pose one of the oldest and most difficult problems with regard to the Internet. There is still no way to use digital credentials to prove, own, and control an online identity, namely a self-sovereign identity, in the same manner we do in the offline world, particularly without a trusted third party. This article discusses the current open standards for digital identities, proposes solutions pertaining to digital identities in the future, and introduces the concept of a blockchain-based self-sovereign digital identity without the need of trusted third parties.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.111-128
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• 2004

In English, a focused word with new information receives a pitch accent. This paper examines how English native speakers and Korean speakers produce and perceive focus in English yes-no questions. The production experiments show that native speakers realize an appropriate intonation of yes-no questions, in which a focused word has a low pitch accent followed by a high phrasal accent and a high boundary tone. However, Korean speakers usually give a high tone to a focused word. In a like manner, the perception experiments show that English native speakers judge a word with a low tone to be focused, while Korean speakers have difficulty in comprehending a focused word realized as a low tone. And it is found that Korean speakers tend to perceive low tones on sentence initial and final focused words better than those on sentence medial focused words, and they often perceive a word with a relatively high fundamental frequency or a sharp rise of fundamental frequency as a focused word. This paper shows that Korean speakers have trouble to produce and perceive an appropriate tonal pattern of a focused yes-no question, and that can cause confusion in a conversation with native speakers.