• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제1권4호
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• pp.171-176
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• 2009

Intelligibility measurement is one criterion for the assessment of the severity of speech disorders especially of dysarthric persons. Rate control, usually rate reduction, is used with many dysarthric speakers to improve their intelligibility. The purpose of this study is to compare how change intelligibility of speech produced by cerebral palsic speakers according to three speaking conditions. Speech samples were collected from 10 adults with cerebral palsy were asked to speak under three speaking conditions-(1) naturally(control), (2) more slowly(rate control), (3) louder and accurately(clear speech). In a perception test, after listening to the speech samples, a group of three judges were to write down whatever they heard. The result showed that total cerebral palsic subjects were divided into two subgroups according to their intelligibility according to three speaking conditions. Some subjects showed that speech intelligibility increased greatly if asked to speak 'louder and more accurately'. and the others showed no difference of intelligibility according to the speaking conditions. This study suggested that it would be useful clinically to find out the best instruction to improve intelligibility suitable for each speaker with cerebral palsy.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제40권5호
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• pp.643-652
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• 2018

Dysarthria is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that affects the control of articulation and pitch; therefore, it affects the uniqueness of sound produced by the speaker. Hence, dysarthric speaker recognition is a challenging task. In this paper, a feature-extraction method based on deep belief networks is presented for the task of identifying a speaker suffering from dysarthria. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated and compared with well-known Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient features. For classification purposes, the use of a multi-layer perceptron neural network is proposed with two structures. Our evaluations using the universal access speech database produced promising results and outperformed other baseline methods. In addition, speaker identification under both text-dependent and text-independent conditions are explored. The highest accuracy achieved using the proposed system is 97.3%.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제2권2호
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• pp.85-92
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to know the differences in perceptual judgement for speech intelligibility in monosyllables by inexperienced listeners and vowel space area according to different dysarthric severity. Three dysarthric speakers with different severity(mild, moderate and severe) screened by 3 clinicians' screening tests before the experiment were conducted. Corner vowels (i, u, ae, a) in monosyllable level (CVC, 'p_p') and carrier phrases ('종이에_써') were chosen and analyzed for vowel space. Inexperience listeners (n=20) performed the intelligibility test for spoken syllables and carrier phrases by dysarthric speakers. The results show that there is a significant differences in both F1 and F2 values among 4 corner vowels. Vowel space area in the data of mildly impaired speakers was significantly higher than two others. In the scores of speech intelligibility judged by inexperienced listeners, the scores by a moderately impaired speaker were more higher than two other speakers. The discrepancy between perceptual judgement by inexperienced listeners and vowel space area will be discussed in this area.

• 음성과학
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• 제14권2호
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• pp.55-64
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• 2007

Laryngeal DDK involve with the rate, pattern, and regularity (periodicity) in opening and closing of vocal fold. This study was aimed at investigating the characteristics of laryngeal DDK between nonfluent and fluent speakers. One with an ataxic dysarthria (with cerebellar lesion) and the other with stuttering, and 13 normal speakers were evaluated. L-DDK were analyzed with MSP (motor speech profile, CSL 4400). Measures of DDK included: DDKavr, DDKcvp, DDKjit, DDKavp. An ataxic dysarthric speaker and a stutterer showed more reduced rate and aperiodic L-DDK (both adductory and abductory movement) than normal speakers. But the average L-DDK period (ms) in adductory movement in a speaker with stuttering showed more decreased than the other. Results from this study are preliminary. Nonetheless, results of L-DDK produced by nonfluent speakers suggested the possibility to have relation with slow rate of phonatory initiation and connected speech. In the future, perceptual studies are needed in conjuction with acoustic and speech production.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.51-59
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• 2016

The purpose of present study is to examine differences between habitual speech (HS) and clear speech (CS) in individuals with mild dysarthria. Twelve speakers with mild dysarthria and twelve healthy control speakers read sentences in two speaking styles. Formant and intensity related values, triangular area, and center of gravity of /a/, /i/, and /u/ were measured. In addition, formant-ratio variables such as vowel space area(VSA), vowel articulatory index (VAI), formant centralization ratio (FCR) and F2i/F1u ratio (F2 ratio) were calculated. The results of repeated-measures ANOVA showed a significant difference in F2 of vowel /i/ and F2 energy of vowel /a/ between groups. Regarding formant energy, F2 energy of vowel /a/ were observed as meaningful variables between speaking styles. There were significant speaking style-by-group interactions for F2 energy of vowel /a/. These findings indicated that current parameters could discriminate healthy group and mild dysarthria group meaningfully and that speaker with dysarthria had larger clear speech benefit than healthy talkers. We also claim that various acoustic changes of clear speech may contribute to improving vowel intelligibility.

• 한국산학기술학회논문지
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• 제15권5호
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• pp.2930-2936
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• 2014

본 연구는 이완형 마비말장애군 15명과 정상군 15명을 대상으로 표준화된 문단 읽기 과제인 "가을" (김향희, 1996) 검사를 통해 말속도와 쉼 특성을 측정하여 집단 간 비교 분석하였다. 그 결과, 이완형 마비말장애군의 전체 속도 및 조음속도는 정상군보다 유의미하게 느렸으며, 전체 쉼 시간 및 문장 내 쉼 시간 또한 정상군보다 유의미하게 길었고, 전체 쉼빈도 및 문장 내 쉼 빈도 역시 정상군보다 유의미하게 높았다(p<0.05). 그러나 문장 간 쉼 구간과 쉼 빈도는 두 집단 간 유의한 차이가 없었다. 이러한 결과는 이완형 마비말장애인의 말속도 지표를 제공하고, 말속도를 정상 범주로 조절하기 위해서는 조음 속도를 증가시킬 뿐만 아니라, 문장 내 쉼 구간 및 쉼 빈도를 감소시키는 중재가 함께 이루어져야 한다는 것을 시사한다.