• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.129-138
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• 2012

Reading fluency is an important variable in reading comprehension. However, a limited number of studies on reading fluency are available in Korea. The purpose of this study is to review the articles about reading fluency during last 10 years and to present a direction for future research. Forty research papers from the Journal of Learning Disabilities and Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools were selected from 2002 to 2012. These papers were analyzed in terms of their subjects and research methods. About 64% of the articles focused on typically developing children and children with dyslexia. About 67% of the research consisted of descriptive studies. Based on these results, suggestions were made for future research on reading fluency.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.27-37
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• 2015

This study was mainly aimed at investigating on the effects of background noises (i.e., white noise, multi-speaker conversational babble) on stuttering rate and other speech-related measures (i.e., articulation rate, speech effort). Nine Korean-speaking adults who stutter participated in the study. Each of the participants was asked to read a series of passages under each of four experimental conditions (i.e., typical solo reading (TR), choral reading (CR), reading under white noise presented (WR), reading with multi-speaker conversational babble presented (BR). Stuttering rate was computed based on a percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) and articulation rate was also assessed as another speech-related measure under each of the experimental conditions. To examine the amount of physical effort needed to read, the speech effort was measured by using the 9-point Speech Effort Self Rating Scale originally employed by Ingham et al. (2006). Study results showed that there were no significant differences among each of the passage reading conditions in terms of stuttering rate, articulation rate, and speech effort. In conclusion, it can be argued that the two different types of background noises (i.e., white noise and multi-speaker conversational babble) are not different in the extent to which each of them enhances fluency of adults who stutter. Self ratings of speech effort may be also useful in measuring speech-related variables associated with vocal changes induced under each of the fluency enhancing conditions.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.7-14
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• 2005

This study investigated the reading ability of Korean second-graders and the relationship between reading and phonological awareness and RAN (Rapid Automatized Naming) ability. A language-based reading assessment battery was used. Children at the end of the Korean second-grade were still at the developmental stage of decoding skill and seemed to be at Chall's stage 1. Findings indicated significant correlations between reading ability and phonological awareness and between reading ability and RAN ability. Therefore, the importance of phonological processing could be extended to syllable-based alphabetic languages.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to know the acoustic characteristics of voice under stressful and relaxed conditions. Ten undergraduate male students participated in this study and produced 아, 에, 이 vowels in English reading, difficult Korean reading under stressful conditions, and easy Korean reading under relaxed conditions. After that, F0, jitter, shimmer, NHR, F1, F2, and F3 values were measured and analyzed. The results of this study demonstrate that speech parameters related to stress are jitter, shimmer, and NHR in that these values are lower under relaxed situations (easy Korean reading) than that of stressful situations (English and difficult Korean reading). This study will be a foundation to verify that the analysis of acoustic characteristics can serve as a quantitative tool for measuring stress levels.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.951-961
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• 2012

E-books produced in the country provide limited audio service for reading disables. The reason is that those books cannot translate the mathematical expressions and symbols in the context. In this paper, the 'Math Expression Reader' was implemented that can translate the expressions and symbols in the document into Korean speech for those who have reading disabilities. The math to speech generated by this program has been tested to both the public and reading disables and the results of this test has been compared whether they can exactly understand the speech and evaluated the reading rules.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.57-62
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• 2014

The present study was performed to investigate and discuss the aerodynamic characteristics of whispered and normal speech during reading paragraph tasks. 39 normal females(18-23 yrs.) read 'Autumn' paragraph with whispered and normal phonation. Their readings were recorded and analyzed by 'Running Speech' in Phonatory Aerodynamic System(PAS) instrument. As results, during whispered speech, the total duration was longer and the numbers of inspiration were more frequently shown than normal speech. The Peak expiratory and inspiratory rate were higher in normal speech, but the expiratory and inspiratory volume were higher in whispered speech. By correlation analysis, both whispered and normal speech showed significantly high correlation between total duration and expiratory/inspiratory airflow duration; numbers of inspiration and inspiratory airflow duration; expiratory and inspiratory volume. These results show that whispered speech needs more respiratory effort but shows poorer aerodynamic efficacy during phonation than normal speech.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.191-194
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• 2002

Lip-reading technology that is studied them is used to compensate speech recognition degradation in noise environment in bi-modal's form. The most important thing is that search for correct lips area in this lip-reading. But, it is hard to forecast stable performance in dynamic environment. Used RASTA filter that show good performance to remove noise in the speech to compensate. This filter shows that improve performance of using time domain of digital filter. To this experiment observes performance of speech recognition only using image information, service chooses possible 22 words and did recognition experiment in car. We used hidden Markov model by speech recognition algorithm to compare this words' recognition performance.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.205-208
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• 2002

Bimodal speech recognition based on lip reading has been studied as a representative method of speech recognition under noisy environments. There are three integration methods of speech and lip modalities as like direct identification, separate identification and dominant recording. In this paper we evaluate the robustness of lip reading methods under the assumption that lip parameters are estimated with errors. We show that the dominant recording approach is more robust than other methods with lip reading experiments. Also, a measure of lip parameter degradation is proposed. This measure can be used in the determination of weighting values of video information.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.121-126
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• 2012

This study deals with how stuttering changes in its frequency in a situation where adult participants who stutter are exposed to one type of background noise, that is, multi-talker babble noise. Eight American English-speaking adults who stutter participated in this study. Each of the subjects read aloud sentences under each of three speaking conditions (i.e., typical solo reading (TSR), typical choral reading (TCR), and multi-talker babble noise reading (BNR)). Speech fluency was computed based on a percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) and speaking rate was also assessed to examine if there was significant change in rates as a measure of vocal change under each of the speaking conditions. The study found that participants read more fluently both during BNR and during TCR than during TSR. The study also found that participants did not show significant changes in speaking rate across the three speaking conditions. Some discussion was provided in relation to the effect of multi-talker babble noise on the frequency of stuttering and its further speculation.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.3
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• pp.26-37
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• 1998

The Connected Speech Test (CST) was developed to test hearing aid performance using realistic stimuli (Connected speech) presented in a background of noise with a visible speaker. The CST has not been investigated as a measure of speech reading ability using the visual portion of the CST only. Thirty subjects were administered the 48 test lists of the CST using visual presentation mode only. Statistically significant differences were found between the 48 test lists and between the 12 passages of the CST (48 passages divided into 12 groups of 4 lists which were averaged.). No significant differences were found between male and female subjects; however, in all but one case, females scored better than males. No significant differences were found between students in communication disorders and students in other departments. Intra- and inter-subject variability across test lists and passages was high. Suggestions for further research include changing the scoring of the CST to be more contextually based and changing the speaker for the CST.