• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.73-79
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• 2014

Alveolar fricative sounds /s/ and /s'/ are learned last for normal children in the speech development process for Koreans. These are especially difficult to articulate for hearing-impaired children often causing articulation errors. The acoustic phonetic evaluation uses testing tools to provide indirect and object information. These objective resources can be compared with standardized resources on speech when interpreting the results of a test. However, most previous studies in Korea did not consider acoustic studies that used the spectrum moment values of hearing-impaired children. Therefore, this study was conducted to compare the characteristics of hearing-impaired children's pronunciation of fricative sounds using spectrum moment values. For this purpose, the study selected a total of 10 hearing-impaired children (5 boys and 5 girls) currently in 3rd or 5th grade and attending one of the elementary schools in Seoul or Gyeonggi-do. For the selection process, their age, type of hearing aid, implantation of hearing aid (CI) before two years of age, hearing capacity (dB) before and after wearing the hearing aid, duration of speech rehabilitation, and time of learning alveolar fricative sounds were all considered. Also, 10 normal children (5 boys and 5 girls) were selected among 3rd or 5th grade students attending one of the elementary schools in Seoul or Gyeonggi-do. The subjects were asked to read the carrier sentence, "I say _______," including a list of 12 meaningless syllables composed of CV and VCV syllables, including alveolar fricative sounds /s/ and /s'/ and vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/. The recorded resources were processed through the Time-frequency Analysis Software Program to measure M1 (mean), M2 (variance), M3 (skewness), and M4 (kurtosis) of the fricative noise. No significant differences were found when comparing spectrum threshold values in the acoustic phonetic characteristics of hearing-impaired children and normal children in alveolar fricative sound pronunciation according to vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/, alveolar fricative sounds /s/ and /s'/, and syllable structure (CV, VCV) other than, for M3 in the comparison of groups according to disability. In the comparison of syllable structures, there were statistically significant differences in M1, M2, M3, and M4 with clinical significance. However, there was no significant difference in results when comparing the alveolar fricative sounds according to the vowels.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.61-67
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• 2000

Recent progress in digital and VLSI technology has offered new possibility fer noticeable advance of hearing aids. Yet, environmental noise remains one of the major problems to hearing aid users. This paper describes results which speech recognition performance and speech discrimination performance was measured for listeners with sensorineural hearing loss, while listeners in speech-band noise. In addition, to ameliorate hearing-aided environments of hearing impaired listeners, environmental noise reduction using speech enhancement techniques are investigated as a front-end of conventional hearing aids. Speech enhancement techniques are implemented in a realtime system equipped with DSP board. The clinical test results suggest that the speech enhancement technique may work in synergy with gain functions fer the greater SNR improvement as the preprocessing algorithm of digital hearing aids.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1997 no.11
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• pp.79-82
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• 1997

In this paper, a body-worn type digital hearing aid (DHA) based on a dedicated DSP chip is developed. A fitting software running on a PC supported by the Win95 OS is also developed. The fitting protocol is based on the NAL-R procedure applied to eight frequency bands, but it is designed to support a curvilinear fitting to cope with the nonlinear perception of hearing-impaired listeners. Preliminary subjective tests regarding the speech intelligibility and perceived quality revealed that the new DHA could be of benefit to hearing aid users.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.180-190
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• 2020

Background and Objectives: Although many studies have evaluated the effect of the digital noise reduction (DNR) algorithm of hearing aids (HAs) on speech recognition, there are few studies on the effect of DNR on music perception. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the effect of DNR on music, in addition to speech perception, using objective and subjective measurements. Subjects and Methods: Sixteen HA users participated in this study (58.00±10.44 years; 3 males and 13 females). The objective assessment of speech and music perception was based on the Korean version of the Clinical Assessment of Music Perception test and word and sentence recognition scores. Meanwhile, for the subjective assessment, the quality rating of speech and music as well as self-reported HA benefits were evaluated. Results: There was no improvement conferred with DNR of HAs on the objective assessment tests of speech and music perception. The pitch discrimination at 262 Hz in the DNR-off condition was better than that in the unaided condition (p=0.024); however, the unaided condition and the DNR-on conditions did not differ. In the Korean music background questionnaire, responses regarding ease of communication were better in the DNR-on condition than in the DNR-off condition (p=0.029). Conclusions: Speech and music perception or sound quality did not improve with the activation of DNR. However, DNR positively influenced the listener's subjective listening comfort. The DNR-off condition in HAs may be beneficial for pitch discrimination at some frequencies.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.180-190
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• 2020

Background and Objectives: Although many studies have evaluated the effect of the digital noise reduction (DNR) algorithm of hearing aids (HAs) on speech recognition, there are few studies on the effect of DNR on music perception. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the effect of DNR on music, in addition to speech perception, using objective and subjective measurements. Subjects and Methods: Sixteen HA users participated in this study (58.00±10.44 years; 3 males and 13 females). The objective assessment of speech and music perception was based on the Korean version of the Clinical Assessment of Music Perception test and word and sentence recognition scores. Meanwhile, for the subjective assessment, the quality rating of speech and music as well as self-reported HA benefits were evaluated. Results: There was no improvement conferred with DNR of HAs on the objective assessment tests of speech and music perception. The pitch discrimination at 262 Hz in the DNR-off condition was better than that in the unaided condition (p=0.024); however, the unaided condition and the DNR-on conditions did not differ. In the Korean music background questionnaire, responses regarding ease of communication were better in the DNR-on condition than in the DNR-off condition (p=0.029). Conclusions: Speech and music perception or sound quality did not improve with the activation of DNR. However, DNR positively influenced the listener's subjective listening comfort. The DNR-off condition in HAs may be beneficial for pitch discrimination at some frequencies.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.117-123
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• 2011

Most individuals with hearing impairment have difficulty in understanding speech in noisy situations. This study was conducted to investigate sentence recognition ability using the Korean Standard-Sentence Lists for Preschoolers (KS-SL-P2) in pre-school age children with cochlear implants and hearing aids. The subjects of this study were 10 pre-school age children with hearing aids, 12 pre-school age children with cochlear implants, and 10 pre-school age children with normal hearing. Three kinds of signal-to-noise (SNR) conditions (+10 dB, +5 dB, 0 dB) were applied. The results for all pre-school age children with cochlear implants and hearing aids presented a significant increase in the score for sentence recognition as SNR increased. The sentence recognition score in speech noise were obtained with the SNR +10 dB. Significant differences existed between groups in terms of their sentence recognition ability, with the cochlear implant group performing better than the hearing aid group. These findings suggest the presence of a sentence recognition test using speech noise is useful for evaluating pre-school age children's listening skill.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1996 no.05
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• pp.240-242
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• 1996

In this paper, we proposed a method of a hearing aid suitable for the sensorineural hearing impaired. Generally as the sensorineural hearing impaired have narrow audible ranges between threshold and discomfortable level, the speech spectrum may easily go beyond their audible range. Therefore speech spectrum must be optimally amplified and compressed into the impaired's audible range. The level and frequency of input speech signal are varied continuously. So we have to make compensation input signal for frequency-gain loss of the impaired, specially in the frequency band which includes much information. The input sigaal is divided into short time block and spectrum within the block is calculated. The frequency-gain characteristic is determined using the calculated spectrum. The number of frequency band and the target gain which will be added input signal are estimated. The input signal within the block is processed by a single digital filter with the calculated frequency-gain characteristics. From the results of monosyllabic speech tests to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, the scores of test were improved.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.459-465
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• 2002

The goat of the present research is to improve the quality of life of both the elderly patients with dementia and their caregivers. For this Purpose, we developed a communication aid system that is consisted of three modules such as speech recognition engine, graphical agent. and database classified by a nursing schedule. The system was evaluated in an actual environment of nursing facility by introducing the system to an older mail patient with dementia. The comparison study was then carried out with and without system, respectively. The occupational therapists then evaluated subject"s reaction to the system by photographing his behaviors. The evaluation results revealed that the proposed system was more responsive in catering to needs of subject than professional caregivers. Moreover we could see that the frequency of causing the utterances of subject increased by introducing the system.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.363-370
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• 2017

In this paper, we proposed a low-complexity speech enhancement algorithm based on a improved minima controlled recursive averaging (IMCRA) and log minimum mean square error (logMMSE). The IMCRA algorithm track the minima value of input power within buffers in local window and identify the speech presence using ratio between input power and its minima value. In this process, many number of operations are required. To reduce the number of operations of IMCRA algorithm, minima value is tracked using time-varying frequency-dependent smoothing based on speech presence probability. The proposed algorithm enhanced speech quality by 2.778%, 3.481%, 2.980% and 2.162% in 0, 5, 10 and 15dB SNR respectively and reduced computational complexity by average 9.570%.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.105-111
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• 2014

Assistive listening devices (ALDs) refer to various types of amplification equipment designed to improve the communication of individuals with hard of hearing to enhance the accessibility to speech signal when individual hearing instruments are not sufficient. There are many types of ALDs to overcome a triangle of speech to noise ratio (SNR) problems, noise, distance, and reverberation. ALDs vary in their internal electronic mechanisms ranging from simple hard-wire microphone-amplifier units to more sophisticated broadcasting systems. They usually use microphones to capture an audio source and broadcast it wirelessly over a frequency modulation (FM), infra-red, induction loop, or other transmission techniques. The seven types of ALDs are introduced including hardwire devices, FM sound system, infra-red sound system, induction loop system, telephone listening devices, television, and alert/alarm system. Further development of digital wireless technology in hearing instruments will make possible direct communication with ALDs without any accessories in the near future. There are two technology solutions for digital wireless hearing instruments improving SNR and convenience. One is near-field magnetic induction combined with Bluetooth radio frequency (RF) transmission or proprietary RF transmission and the other is proprietary RF transmission alone. Recently launched digital wireless hearing aid applying this new technology can communicate from the hearing instrument to personal computer, phones, Wi-Fi, alert systems, and ALDs via iPhone, iPad, and iPod. However, it comes with its own iOS application offering a range of features but there is no option for Android users as of this moment.