• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.55-58
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• 2007

This study was investigated the effect of speech tasks on habitual pitch. Seven male and female young adult speakers participated in this study. The experiment consisted of seven different speech tasks: counting, reading, sustained phonation /a/, prolonged /i:/, answering /ne/. Data was analyzed via Visi-pitch IV. The results showed that there was no significant F0 difference among speech tasks.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.189-194
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• 2014

Objective: This study aims to investigate the speech rate, the length of a pause, habitual pitch, and voice intensity of motherese. Subjects and Methods: The research participants comprised 20 mothers (mean age 33 years). Speech data were collected and analyzed using the Real-time Pitch software (KayPENTAX(R)). Results: The average speech rate was 5.33 syllables per second without their infant present and 4.26 syllables per second with their infant present. The average pause length was 1.09 s without their infant present and 1.56 s with their infant present. The average habitual pitch was 199.79 Hz without their infant present and 227.15 Hz with their infant present. The average voice loudness was 61.09 dB without their infant present and 64.49 dB with their infant present. Conclusion: This study presented clinical information for efficiently managing the speech therapy issues of infants and children. This includes proper acoustic and phonological information to recommend to main caregivers.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.187-193
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• 2009

For this study, the external laryngeal lengths of 9 females and 9 males with normal voices were measured together with their ages, heights, and weights, and after they read aloud sentences for 3 minutes, their habitual speaking fundamental frequencies, speaking low pitches, speaking high pitches, and vocal fold closed quotients were measured. The Spearman rank correlation analysis on these data showed a significant negative correlation between the external laryngeal length and the habitual speaking fundamental frequency for both females and males, a significant negative correlation between the external laryngeal length and the speaking high pitch for only males, a significant negative correlation between the external laryngeal length and the speaking low pitch for both females and males, and a significant positive correlation between the external laryngeal length and the vocal fold closed quotient for only males.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.173-184
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• 2001

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of manipulating loudness and pitch in terms of speech intelligibility and voice of a patient with Parkinson's Disease. The subject, who was diagnosed as a patient with Parkinson's disease 11 years ago, demonstrated a severely breath voice with low intensity. The accuracy of articulation in consonants was intelligible only at the single word level, and the overall intelligibility in continuous speech was low. The results showed that the subject's articulation accuracy and speech intelligibility was significantly improved after having loudness and pitch training. Habitual Fo, Jitter, Shimmer, Fo tremor, Amp tremor were decreased after training. In addition, the value of HNR also increased after training. It was shown that the changes of these acoustic parameters were closely related to the decrease of breathiness in Parkinson's voice, and this decrease of breathiness affected speech intelligibility considerably. Based on the experimental results, it was claimed that the vocal training by manipulating the loudness and pitch could be highly effective in improving the voice quality and speech intelligibility in Parkinson's Disease.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.157-164
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• 2004

Human has average pitch-level when speak naturally. That is 'Habitual pitch level'. However, if noise added at speech, the pitch-wave is changed irregularly. We can estimate noise level of speech by using this point. This paper calculates energy level of the input speech, pitch period from of above limited energy level by NAMDF (Normalized Average Magnitude Difference Function) method, after cut each frame by pitch period unit, and propose a method that estimate noise level through closed pitch of input speech.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.95-105
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• 2006

The primary goal of therapeutic intervention in dysarthric speakers is to increase the speech intelligibility. Decision of critical features to increase the intelligibility is very important in speech therapy. The purpose of this study is to know the effects of pitch increasing training (PIT) on speech of a subject with Parkinson's disease (PD). The PIT program is focused on increasing pitch while a vowel is sustained with the same loudness. The loudness level is somewhat higher than that of the habitual loudness. A 67-year-old female with PD participated in the study. Speech therapy was conducted for 4 sessions (200 minutes) for one week. Before and after the treatment, acoustic, perceptual and speech naturalness evaluation was peformed for data analysis. Speech and voice satisfaction index (SVSI) was obtained after the treatment. Results showed Improvements in voice quality and speech naturalness. In addition, the patient's satisfaction ratings (SVSI) indicated a positive relationship between improved speech production and their (the patient and care-givers) satisfaction.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.55-60
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate the acoustic characteristics of crying infants according to the communication intents such as hunger and pain in terms of acoustic differences in the fundamental frequency ($F_0$), jitter, shimmer, noise-to-harmonic ratio(NHR), habitual pitch, and intensity. The subjects were 20 healthy, normal infants, less than seven days old, from the city of Seoul and were born after 38 to 42 weeks(full term) of pregnancy. The sound of crying was recorded for three minutes. The crying due to pain was induced by means of the inborn metabolism error test, whereas the crying due to hunger was verified by means of the rooting reflex by waiting for the designated eating time. The results were as follows: (1) the fundamental frequency, noise-to-harmonic ratio(NHR), and intensity of the infants' crying due to pain was higher than that by hunger, showing a significant difference between the mean values. (2) the infants' crying due to hunger and that by pain did not have a significant difference in the mean jitter and shimmer values but both of them were largely outside of the normal threshold values(jitter by 1.04% and shimmer by 3.81%). This study was significant in the sense that it showed the acoustic characteristics of infants' crying from hunger and pain were very different from each other according to the communication intents in terms of the six acoustic parameters.