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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyse the relationship between automatic vowel articulation index (aVAI) and direct magnitude estimation (DME) among speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD) and healthy controls. We further analysed the potential of aVAI to serve as an objective measure of speech impairment in the clinical setting. Method: Speech samples from native Finnish speakers were utilised. Expert raters utilised DME to scale the intelligibility of speech samples. aVAI scores for PD speakers and healthy control speakers were analysed in relationship to DME speech intelligibility ratings and, among PD speakers, disease stage utilising nonparametric statistical analysis. Result: Mean DME intelligibility ratings were lower among PD speakers compared to healthy controls. Mean aVAI scores were nearly the same between speaker groups. DME intelligibility ratings and aVAI were strongly correlated within the PD speaker group. aVAI and DME intelligibility ratings were moderately correlated with disease stage as measured by the Hoehn and Yahr scale. Conclusion: aVAI was observed to be a promising tool for analysing vowel articulation in PD speakers. Further research is warranted on the application of aVAI as an objective measure of severity of speech impairment in the clinical setting, with varying patient populations and speech samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recognition by adults of the psychoneurological state of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), n = 35, and typically developing (TD) children, n = 47, aged 5–14 years, was studied. A perceptual analysis was carried out, in which adult native Russian speakers (auditors) took part, n = 206. For perceptual analysis, test sequences (audio tests) were created containing words and phrases of children with ASD and TD children, selected from spontaneous speech recordings. The auditors were faced with the problem of determining the psychoneurological state of a child based on auditory perception: typical–atypical development. A spectrographic analysis of the speech material of children with ASD and TD children was carried out. The phrases of children with ASD are characterized by a lower speech rate compared to the phrases of TD children, as well as fewer words, longer duration of stressed and unstressed vowels in words, higher values of the frequency of the fundamental tone in the phrase, word, and stressed and unstressed vowels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consensus Auditory Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (CAPE-V) is a widely used perceptual evaluation scale for voice assessment. It is adapted in many regional languages worldwide. This systematic review will help critically evaluate the methodologies used to adapt and establish CAPE-V as a valid and reliable tool. Authors reviewed literature in search engines (Scopus, Google Scholar, PubMed) to identify studies published in English between 2002–2020. The CAPE-V translated and adapted for linguistic or cultural variations were included for the review. The studies were compiled using the Mendeley Reference Manager and screened for title/abstract before shortlisting the studies. The initial database had 3459 search results and after duplicates removal, 1535 articles were analysed. Thirteen studies were narrowed based on title/abstract screening. A final of ten studies were selected for the review. This review provided a comprehensive understanding of the challenges encountered during cross-cultural adaptation and will help future researchers choose a suitable adaptation method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative perceptual study involving two experimental groups with different native languages (Russian and Czech) shows that phonologically trained non-native speakers of English are good at identifying basic suprasegmental features of the English language, namely prominence (sentence stress) and accent types, which potentially makes it possible to use their prosodic annotations when validating cross-language intonation research. The occasional failure of both experimental groups to identify certain accent types is explained in the study by the annotators’ mother tongue’s prosodic interference: Czech and Russian speakers rely on different acoustic cues when identifying prosodic features in their native languages and transfer this habit to the discrimination of English prosodic characteristics. The study demonstrates that when a prosodic cue is not marked in the speaker’s mother tongue, it will likely be ignored in the foreign language.

Despite many attempts, we do not yet know how to answer the question exhaustively and adequately: What is common Danish stød phonetically? Specifically, is there an underlying physiological constancy behind the considerable acoustic variability? And is there a common denominator to the different acoustic manifestations that might explain their perceptual equivalence? Systematic acoustic, physiological, and perceptual investigations of common Danish stød now span (a little more than) three quarters of a century. This is a review of that research, to determine what may be considered established phonetic facts about common Danish stød and the open questions that remain for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though earlier studies have investigated the relationship between various subjective and instrumental measures of voice, determining a standardized set of voice parameters in evaluating dysphonic voices can help in better diagnostic distinctions and judgment of the treatment outcomes in voice disorders. Thus, the primary objective was to examine the differences in the objective and subjective measures of voice between the participants with dysphonia and participants with a clinically normal voice. The subsequent objective was to identify the group of parameters sensitive to vocal changes in dysphonia using discriminant analysis. Two groups of participants were included in the study. Group 1 comprised of 15 participants with dysphonia. Group 2 included 15 participants with a clinically normal voice. Sustained phonations of vowels were recorded from the participants of both groups and were analyzed perceptually using the GRBAS rating scale. Acoustic, cepstral, spectral, and electroglottographic measures were analyzed from dysphonic voices and normal controls. There were significant differences in both instrumental and perceptual measures between the participants with and without dysphonia. The set of five parameters that were significant predictors that discriminated the dysphonic voice from the clinically normal voice with 100% accuracy was also determined using discriminant analysis. Future investigations on the relation between the specific instrumental and perceptual measures of voice identified in the present study among individuals with various voice disorders can deliver more promising and comprehendible insights into better diagnostic distinctions of voice disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects motor efficiency which is also required for voice production. Voice is part of the identity of a person, any abnormality in voice quality hampers the quality of communication, and quality of life. This study aimed to analyse the voice of individuals with Parkinson's disease objectively through acoustic analysis, and subjectively through perceptual analysis. Quasi-experimental study conducted in a tertiary health care centre. The study comprised two groups: 12 individuals with Parkinson's disease (11 males and 1 female, mean age: 72.41 years), and 12 healthy controls (10 males and 2 females, mean age: 53.83 years). The voice samples of all the participants were recorded and analyzed using the MDVP software of CSL 4500. The voice samples were analyzed for eleven acoustical parameters, and the perceptual analysis was carried out using the GRBAS scale by two experienced Speech Language Pathologists. Mann–Whitney U test was performed to compare the two groups of participants, and Cronbach's alpha test was performed to find the inter-judge reliability between the perceptual ratings of two listeners. Acoustical comparison showed significant variations in seven parameters (jitter, shimmer, PPQ, APQ, Fatr Hz, Fftr, ATRI), and the perceptual analysis between two listeners showed a fair amount of reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers instances of voice quality settings under a sound-symbolic and synesthetic perspective, focusing on the auditory impressions these settings might have on listeners' attributions of meaning effects and associations between vocal and visual features related to emotional expression. Three perceptual experiments are carried out. The first experiment examined the impressionistic effects of eight voice quality settings characterized by differences in pitch. The second experiment examined the impressionistic effects of seven voice quality settings characterized by productions with the presence or absence of turbulent airflow, irregularity, and tenseness. The third experiment investigated associations between facial expressions of basic emotions and voice quality characteristics. Data are considered in terms of acoustic (fundamental frequency values), articulatory (reduced or expanded length of the vocal tract), perceptual impressions of size (big/small), strength (strong/weak), brightness (dark, clear), and distinctiveness (muffled/distinct), and visual features (facial expressions of the basic emotions sadness, happiness, anger, disgust, fear, and neutrality). The results provide corroborating evidence of existing links between sound and meaning and are discussed in relation to the frequency, production, sirenic biological codes, phonetic metaphors, and the vocal and facial gestures involved in emotional expression.

There seems to be confusion in the data presented by some authors (see Onuora, 2012; Emenanjo, 1991; Ngoesi, 2000; Omozuwa, 2021) in explaining elision and assimilation in Igbo; as similar items are presented as assimilation on one hand, and as elision on the other hand. While Onuora (2012); Emenanjo (1991); and Ngoesi (2000) claim that the vowels are first completely assimilated before they are elided, Omozuwa (2021) does not see any assimilation in them; for him, they are all cases of elision. This aroused the researchers' curiosity, leading to the investigation of vowel elision and assimilation in Igbo through oral data and data from these authors. The study uses perceptual, acoustic and theoretical analysis to study the duration of the vowels in order to clarify the contentious issue. The findings reveal that apart from a few instances of diachronic elision, all the vowels analysed as elided in the studies are only assimilated; not elided. They are instances of complete vowel assimilation where the phonetic features of one vowel are completely assimilated by another vowel, making the vowels to be identical. Such identical vowels align with theoretical analysis as instances of assimilation, they are perceptually longer in length than their single counterparts, and they clearly show that their duration, whether they bear same or different tones, is approximately double the duration of a single vowel of same acoustic features. Also, the study does not confirm earlier claims that elision and assimilation in Igbo occur only in fast, casual speech; instead, it shows them to also occur in normal free flow speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landscape planning lacked an evidence-based method for the reflection of planning models on the imaginary level in order to present the image content and the relationships in the image as the basis for interpretation in a verifiable manner. The contribution is based on the thesis that the perceptual analysis according to Rudolf Arnheim can be translated into landscape planning.

Building voice-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems that can efficiently interact with humans through speech has become plausible today due to rapid strides in efficient data-driven AI techniques. Such a human–machine voice interaction in real world would often involve a noisy ambience, where humans tend to speak with additional vocal effort than in a quiet ambience, to mitigate the noise-induced suppression of vocal self-feedback. This noise induced change in the vocal effort is called Lombard speech. In order to build intelligent conversational devices that can operate in a noisy ambience, it is imperative to study the characteristics and processing of Lombard speech. Though the progress of research on Lombard speech started several decades ago, it needs to be explored further in the current scenario which is seeing an explosion of voice-driven applications. The system designed to work with normal speech spoken in a quiet ambience fails to provide the same performance in changing environmental contexts. Different contexts lead to different styles of Lombard speech and hence there arises a need for efficient ways of handling variations in speaking styles in noise. The Lombard speech is also more intelligible than normal speech of a speaker. Applications like public announcement systems with speech output interface should talk with varying degrees of vocal effort to enhance naturalness in a way that humans adapt to speak in noise, in real time. This review article is an attempt to summarize the progress of work on the possible ways of processing Lombard speech to build smart and robust human–machine interactive systems with speech input–output interface, irrespective of operating environmental contexts, for different application needs. This article is a comprehensive review of the studies on Lombard speech, highlighting the key differences observed in acoustic and perceptual analysis of Lombard speech and detailing the Lombard effect compensation methods towards improving the robustness of speech based recognition systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the study was to describe perceptual and acoustic characteristics of emotional spontaneous speech of adolescents aged 14–16 years. 18 adolescents aged 14–16 years (9 boys and 9 girls, three people in each age) were participants. Perceptual analysis of speech of children by adults (70 Russian speakers and 70 speakers of other languages) was conducted to define the emotional state via voice and speech characteristics. Instrumental and linguistic analysis was used to determine acoustic features and linguistic information on which listeners rely while recognizing the adolescents' state. It was shown that listeners had difficulty in recognizing the emotional state of adolescents, but Russian-speaking listeners recognized the emotional state better (26% of phrases recognized with probability 0.75–1.0) than speakers of other languages. Adults recognized comfort better than discomfort, Russian listeners better than foreigners. Russian listeners are likely to rely on acoustic and linguistic information, speakers of other languages – on acoustic features of adolescents' speech. Phrases uttered in comfort are characterized by a wider pitch range vs. phrases uttered in the neutral state. It was revealed that the phrases of girls uttered in comfort have significantly higher average pitch values vs. discomfort. There were no significant differences between boys and girls in acoustic characteristics of emotional speech. Phrase duration and pitch range values can be included in automatic recognition systems of the speaker's emotional state via speech as additional informative features. The paper discusses the specificity of emotion manifestation in adolescents and the possibility of further use of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To explore a novel and efficient way of calculating transcription reliability of connected speech data using the concept of near functional equivalence. Using this approach, differences between two transcribed phonemes that are nearly phonetically equivalent are disregarded if both reflect two plausible and acceptable pronunciations for the word produced. Method: The study used transcriptions of connected speech samples from 63 five-year-olds who participated in a large-scale population study. Each recording was phonetically transcribed by two speech and language therapists. Two independent researchers then examined agreement -between the two sets of transcripts, marking differences in vowels, consonants and diacritics and identifying segments which represented near functional equivalence. Results: Overall percentage agreement between the transcripts was 77%. One quarter of the differences between the two transcripts were identified as showing near functional equivalence. When this category was excluded, the transcripts showed 82% reliability. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the issues to consider when calculating transcription reliability. Other methods are often time-intensive and may highlight differences between transcribed units which are audibly very similar and would be negligible in ordinary conversation. Inclusion of the concept of "near functional equivalence" can result in higher reliability scores for transcription, without loss of rigour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study investigated whether individual coaching can improve role portrayal and emotional expression in opera secco recitatives., Study Design: An experimental comparative study., Methods: Eighteen students (mean age 24 years) from Norway and Sweden majoring in opera singing volunteered as test persons. As singing tasks each test person studied a short opera secco recitative in their Voice Fach during 14 days. All recitatives were picked up from renowned Italian operas from the Classical period. The texts were translated in the singers' mother tongue but performed in Italian, a foreign language to all test persons Thirteen test persons were enrolled in a Test group, and they were coached individually for 1h in interpretation of their singing tasks. During the intervention the test persons combined speaking the translated text in their native dialects with singing the recitative in Italian. The test persons were asked to distinguish various emotions and motivation in the singing task, and rehearsed how to express the singing task equally distinctly in Italian as in their native dialects. The singing task was recorded a capella immediately before and after the intervention. The test persons in the Control group recorded their singing tasks pre and post 1 h self-directed rehearsing on their singing tasks, without any coaching.. The recordings of all test persons were presented in randomized order for ten expert listeners to rate the expression of emotions and role portrayal. The samples were also analysed acoustically., Results: Post coaching samples were rated significantly better in expression of various emotions and motivation compared to pre coaching samples. The Control group singers showed no significant changes in perceptual variables. Pausing increased in both groups after rehearsing., Conclusions: A short individual coaching in performance of an opera recitative seemed to stimulate young opera singers` emotional and motivational expression., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

This study aims to analyze the effect of telephone transmission on the voice quality perception of subjects with dysphonia and seeks to contribute to the use of perceptual voice analysis in forensic context. The main hypothesis is that the auditory perception of voice quality differs according to the acoustic quality of the speech material. Eight male speakers were simultaneously recorded directly by a digital recorder and over a mobile phone. A perceptual experiment containing 21 speech samples was used. The samples were analyzed via an online adaptation of the Vocal Profile Analysis Scheme (VPAS) into Brazilian Portuguese by a group of six voice-specialized professionals. Data analysis included the relative frequency of the 10 most evaluated VPAS settings in both recording conditions, and the relative frequency of the VPAS groups of features. A multidimensional scaling technique was applied to investigate the perceptual distance between stimuli pairs from both recording conditions. This was followed by a nonparametric multiple linear regression analysis that aimed to comprehend the underlying variables that motivated the spatial arrangement of the stimuli. The telephone transmission effect may have an influence on assessing correctly the supralaryngeal, laryngeal, prosodic, and temporal VPAS settings. The perceptual distance between stimuli pairs were mainly motivated by the rating of velopharyngeal system, respiratory support, laryngeal tension, speech rate, and creaky voice. The auditory perception differences between the stimuli pairs with different acoustic qualities could be related to the mobile phone bandwidth and data compression, and to telephone interaction characteristics. A group of laryngeal, supralaryngeal, temporal, and respiratory settings was mainly related to the dissimilarities reported. In terms of the application of VPAS in forensic context, the protocol was considered a relevant scientific tool that enables standardizing and analysis comparison among different groups of forensic specialists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Introduction Perceptual and acoustic analyses are essential tools that help voice therapists comprehensively assess voice quality. While perceptual evaluations are subjective and are influenced by external and culturally driven factors, acoustic analysis is an objective and reliable means of evaluating voice. The goals of this study were (1) to determine which acoustic parameters were predicted by perceptual voice quality and (2) to assess the effect of a short period of training on the reliability of perceptual voice analyses for Persian speakers. Method This was a cross-sectional study. Subjects were 20 patients with various voice disorders. Voice samples were obtained during text reading and /a/ prolongation. Fifteen expert voice clinicians completed perceptual evaluations on voice samples using the Grade, Roughness, Breathiness, Asthenia, and Strain scale. We repeated this process after a short period of perceptual voice evaluation training. Acoustic analysis was completed using the Praat program. We used the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for reliability measurement of the perceptual evaluation results and ordinal regression procedures to analyze all data. Significance level was set at P < 0.05. Results Both intrarater and interrater reliability increased after training, for all five parameters. The ICC for grade increased to 0.95 after training. Grade and roughness significantly predicted fundamental frequency (F0) (P = 0.021 and P = 0.030, respectively) and harmonic-to-noise ratio (HNR) (P = 0.019 and P = 0.016, respectively). Breathiness significantly predicted shimmer (P = 0.013). Conclusion Training had a positive effect and increased the reliability of perceptual voice evaluation. For Persian listeners, changes in F0, increases in HNR, and shimmer were perceptually associated with poor voice quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of a phonetic experiment on melodic features of public service advertising (PSA). The objective of PSA is to raise awareness, influence and change public attitudes and behavior towards a social issue. Being an integral part of modern society, PSA has its linguistic and extra-linguistic peculiarities. The goal of the investigation was to establish basic tones for an English-speaking public service advertising slogan, test their acoustic measures and describe the role they play in pragmatic function realization. The work is based on the material of 75English language public service advertising videos. The PSA slogans were selected, manipulated and tested. The perceptual analysis revealed the most productive (high fall, low fall, low rise) and less productive (fall-rise and rise-fall) nuclear tones of advertising slogans. The acoustic measures included: voice fundamental frequency maximal (F0 max), voice fundamental frequency minimal (F0 min), voice fundamental frequency mean (F0) and pitch range (F0 range). The analysis conducted with the help of Praat and Speech Analyzer computer software applications supported these observations. The comparative analysis of the results of the perceptual and acoustic experiments allowed to identify the basic melodic features involved in the implementation of the pragmatic effect of PSA slogans.

In the given article the results of the perceptual research of American and British radio programmes on maritime topics belonging to the talk show genre are presented. The aim of this work is to identify the differential temporal characteristics that distinguish the analysed radio talk shows. The object of the research is the oral discourse of radio talk shows on maritime topics as a psycholinguistic and linguistic phenomenon. The subject of the research is a set of temporal parameters of the American and British maritime discourse. The work describes the peculiarities of radio discourse as well as characterises the tempo indicators of speech in the studied radio talk shows with the help of quantitative, comparative and statistical methods. The results of the conducted auditory analysis of tempo and pauses in different types of radio talk shows on maritime topics testify to the clear differences in the researched variants of English language. For instance, accelerated tempo and short pauses turned out to be typical of American talk shows, while moderated tempo and average pauses were more common in British programmes of the same kind. So, it has been proven that American and British radio talk shows on maritime topics differ by a certain set of parameters. Thus, the conducted experimental phonetic research enabled us to draw the conclusion that the examined radio talk shows differ in both typologically common and specific speech prosodic features. The gained result was confirmed by the results of statistic data processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/aim: In this study, the immediate and extended outcomes of the stuttering therapy programme were investigated for the first time in Turkey. This paper reports the results of an eight-week extensive stuttering therapy programme for 35 school-aged and adolescents who stutter. Materials and methods: Measurements were made immediately before and after the treatment and again during the follow-up period, 6 months’ post-treatment. The measures included percentage of stuttering and syllables spoken per minute. Results: Turkish school-aged and adolescent children who stutter showed more within-word dysfluencies than between-word dysfluencies. In addition, stuttering characteristics included (in) audible sound prolongations (24%) and sound/syllable repetition (49%). The results indicated that substantial positive changes occurred and were maintained in speech performance with an eight-week stuttering therapy. Conclusion: The present study examined the characteristics of dysfluencies in school-aged and adolescents and then dysfluency characteristics were taken to account before and after stuttering therapy of children and adolescents who stutter at moderate degree in Turkey. Extensive therapy courses were determined for children and adolescents who stutter and their families changed the stuttering behaviour of the participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smoking affects the voice quality and the previous studies presented higher Voice Handicap Index (VHI) scores, and abnormal acoustic data in smokers. However, there is no study revealing any voice parameter indicating incipient damage in voice functionality. The studies documented that the adverse effects of smoking on phonatory function were higher in females than males and further the prevalence of smoking among females tends to increase. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of smoking on the acoustic and auditory-perceptual analysis of the speaking voice in female smokers who scored the VHI-10 scale as grade 0 (absent), and thus to look for a criterion for incipient vocal damage of smoking. The study group composed of 22 female smokers and 22 female nonsmokers between the ages of 18 and 55 years. The acoustic parameters (mean F0, jitter local [%], jitter local abs, jitter rap, jitter ppq, shimmer local [%], shimmer local [dB], shimmer apq3, shimmer apq5, shimmer apq11, and mean HNR) and the GRBAS scale were analyzed in all subjects. No significant difference observed between the smoker and nonsmokers groups in acoustic voice analysis. It was seen that the smokers presented a small but significant increase in the Strain parameter of the GRBAS scale while there was no significant difference in the Grade, Roughness, Breathiness , and Asthenia parameters between the study groups. The results of this study indicate that increase in Strain could be considered as an early data in the smokers without voice complaints. However, our data declared that conventional acoustic perturbation analysis did not reveal incipient Strain in voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Objectives Smoking is one of the most common harmful habits in the world, especially common among young adult male population in Turkey. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of smoking on the young adults' male voice using multidimensional voice assessment methods. Study Design This is a case-control study. Methods The study included 109 young adult men, 51 nonsmokers and 58 smokers between the ages of 20 and 34 years. The voice evaluation protocol consisted of voice handicap index (VHI), maximum phonation time (MPT), and perceptual, acoustic, and videostroboscopic analyses. Results A statistically significant increase for physical, physiological, and total scores of VHI was found in smokers group ( P < 0.05). MPT showed significantly lower values among smokers ( P < 0.05). There were no significant changes in perceptual analysis of voice samples between smoker and nonsmoker groups. There were no significant changes in any of the acoustic parameters between smoker and nonsmoker groups. Results of videostroboscopic analysis showed significant relationships between smoking and increased vocal fold erythema ( P < 0.05). In addition, significantly asymmetry, amplitude, and periodicity abnormality of vocal fold movements were observed in smoker group during phonation ( P < 0.05). Conclusions The results of this study indicate that observable signs of laryngeal irritation and disturbed phonatory physiology occur even in young adults with relatively brief smoking habits. Subjective symptoms of smoking on voice appear to occur earlier than objective findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Change in resonance is the most commonly experienced speech problems in children diagnosed with cleft lip and palate. The degree of nasality during normal speech production is maintained by the changes in velopharyngeal port. These variations in speech signal are reported to be successfully captured using acoustical tools like spectral analysis. Aim: The present study investigated to note voice low tone to high tone ratio (VLHR) values for phonation samples of individuals with cleft palate before and after surgery. Materials and Methods: Thirty children with congenital cleft of palate within 8 to 15 years of age participated in the study. Three trials of sustained vowels (/a/,/i/ and /u/) were recorded at their comfortable pitch and loudness level in a noise free room using a hand held dynamic microphone. Praat software that utilized Hillenbrand algorithm was used to extract the VLHR values for samples recorded before and after recovery from the surgery. Results: Statistical analysis revealed significant decrease in VLHR values after surgery in comparison to before the surgery. Analysis of Variance revealed statistical significant difference at 95% confidence level. Conclusion: It is concluded that VLHR parameter could be used as an index to measure nasality and can be included in the routine tool assessment protocol.

The research is focused on the quality of English pronunciation of Slovak native speakers reflected in the score of perceptual evaluation by English native speakers. The primary objective is to detect the improvement of English phonic competence after the metaphonetic input focused on the contrastive analysis of the Slovak and English segmental systems.

Background: Much research has examined the relationship between perceptual and acoustic measures. However, little is known about the prediction values of perceptual measures on an acoustic parameter., Aims: This study utilized simulated and disordered voice samples to investigate the prediction values of breathiness, roughness, and strain ratings on the selection of some time-based and spectral-based measures of voice quality., Method: This study retrospectively analysed two sets of precollected data. The experimental data had been collected from nine trained speakers manipulating false vocal fold activity, true vocal fold mass, and larynx height. The voice-disordered data had been extracted from a clinical database for 68 patients with muscle tension voice disorders (MTVD). Both data sets had been perceptually rated for breathiness, roughness, and strain. Voice samples (prolonged vowel /ɑ/ and Rainbow Passage readings) had undergone acoustic analysis using Praat for harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) and the program "Analysis of Dysphonia in Speech and Voice" (ADSV) for cepstral peak prominence (CPP), Cepstral/Spectral Index of Dysphonia (CSID), and Low/High spectral ratio (L/H ratio). Perceptual parameters were regressed against these acoustic measures to test their prediction values., Results: Reliability data showed satisfactory intra- and inter-reliability of perceptual ratings for both data sets. Breathiness significantly predicted CPP (both vocal tasks) and CSID (Rainbow Passage) in experimental data and predicted all the acoustic measures in MTVD data. Roughness significantly predicted HNR, CPP, and CSID in experimental data, and CPP (Rainbow Passage) and CSID (both vocal tasks) in MTVD data. Strain (both vocal tasks) significantly predicted L/H ratio in both data sets., Conclusions: Breathiness ratings predicted selection of HNR, CPP and CSID; roughness ratings predicted selection of CPP and CSID, and strain ratings predicted L/H ratio., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: Adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) often show reduced speech intelligibility, which affects their social interaction skills. This study aims to establish the main predictors of this reduced intelligibility in order to ultimately optimise management. Method: Spontaneous speech and picture naming tasks were recorded in 36 adults with mild or moderate ID. Twenty-five naïve listeners rated the intelligibility of the spontaneous speech samples. Performance on the picture-naming task was analysed by means of a phonological error analysis based on expert transcriptions. Results: The transcription analyses showed that the phonemic and syllabic inventories of the speakers were complete. However, multiple errors at the phonemic and syllabic level were found. The frequencies of specific types of errors were related to intelligibility and quality ratings. Conclusions: The development of the phonemic and syllabic repertoire appears to be completed in adults with mild-to-moderate ID. The charted speech difficulties can be interpreted to indicate speech motor control and planning difficulties. These findings may aid the development of diagnostic tests and speech therapies aimed at improving speech intelligibility in this specific group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a high‐performance audio watermarking scheme using spread spectrum modulation. Unlike conventional extractors which use simple correlation, this watermarking scheme exploits the perceptual characteristic of the watermarked audio before correlation. It is noted that although the watermark extractor works blindly neither which the original audio signal nor the embedded watermark signal is available, however, the spectral power structure of embedded watermark can be estimated using perceptual analysis methods. With this information, the watermark performance is improved by introducing an estimation‐equalisation‐correlation based extraction mechanism. The pre‐equaliser at the extractor is carefully designed to obtain optimised extraction performance. Moreover, the perceptual analysis and shaping method are improved to make sure the watermark estimation is accurate. The perceptual characteristic aware extraction‐based watermarking scheme achieves high embedding capacity up to 43 bps/channels, with low perceptual distortion to the host audio. Experiments on real audio signals show that the proposed watermarking scheme achieves high performance and is robust against various types of attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: In this study, we aimed to investigate the acoustic, perceptual and aerodynamic changes of voice after adenotonsillectomy by using objective methods. Methods: Thirty children, who underwent adenotonsillectomy surgery were included. Voice samples were recorded 1 day before and 1 month after the surgery. Ling- WAVES programme was used as voice analysis program. Mean, maximum and minimum fundamental frequency, Jitter, Shimmer, Glottal to Noise Excitation ratio, Irregularity, Noise, Overall Severity, S time, Z time, S/Z ratio, and Maximum Phonation Time parameters were recorded and compared. Results: Shimmer, irregularity, Overall Severity, S/Z Time parameters were significantly lower (p=0.001) and Maximum Phonation Time significantly higher (p=0.001) in the postoperative period than preoperative period. In contrast, no significant differences were observed in the mean fundamental frequency, maximum fundamental frequency, minimum fundamental frequency, jitter, Glottal to Noise Excitation, S time and Z time (p>0.05). Conclusion: The changes in some acoustic, aerodynamic and perceptual parameters were monitored after adenotonsillectomy. Therefore, the families of children who underwent adeotonsillectomy should be warned for any possible changes in voice colors after surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bite blocks are used to stabilize the jaw and to isolate tongue and lip movements from that of the mandible during speech and nonspeech activities. Ten normally speaking young adults produced sentences with an unconstrained jaw and with unilateral placement of 2-mm and 5-mm bite blocks. Six listeners rated sentences spoken without either bite block as the most natural sounding. Spectral characteristics of /s/, /f/ and /t/ (sibilant frication and stop bursts) differed significantly with than without bite blocks, such that mean spectral energy decreased, and variation and skew of spectral energy increased. Spectral kurtosis did not change for the group, but 2 participants exhibited highly kurtotic /s/ spectra without a bite block that normalized with bite blocks. The second formant frequency for the high vowel /i/ was lower with bite blocks; there was no systematic difference in F2 slope for diphthongs. Segmental and suprasegmental timing of speech articulation was not affected significantly by these small bite blocks. This study provides support for using small bite blocks to isolate the tongue from the jaw without large effects on speech, but cautions that speech is likely to sound less natural than when produced with an unconstrained jaw. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Parkinson variant of multiple system atrophy (MSA-P), patterns of early speech impairment and their distinguishing features from Parkinson’s disease (PD) require further exploration. Here, we compared speech data among patients with early-stage MSA-P, PD, and healthy subjects using quantitative acoustic and perceptual analyses. Variables were analyzed for men and women in view of gender-specific features of speech. Acoustic analysis revealed that male patients with MSA-P exhibited more profound speech abnormalities than those with PD, regarding increased voice pitch, prolonged pause time, and reduced speech rate. This might be due to widespread pathology of MSA-P in nigrostriatal or extra-striatal structures related to speech production. Although several perceptual measures were mildly impaired in MSA-P and PD patients, none of these parameters showed a significant difference between patient groups. Detailed speech analysis using acoustic measures may help distinguish between MSA-P and PD early in the disease process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. To evaluate the impact on voice of 2 hours of continuous oral reading. Methods. Fifty normophonic women underwent two sessions of voice loading in which the required intensity level varied: 60-65 dB(A) for the first session, and 70-75 dB(A) for the second session. Ten expert judges evaluated the breathiness of one sentence recorded before and after each loading session. Pairs of stimuli were presented randomly to the judges, who were asked to designate the breathiest sample. Results. A significant decrease in breathiness was observed following both sessions, suggesting an improvement of voice subsequent to loading. When comparing the two intensity levels, no difference was found for breathiness after vocal loading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Investigation sought to determine whether there is any acoustic variable to objectively differentiate gender in children with normal voices. Methods A total of 30 children, 15 boys and 15 girls, with perceptually normal voices were examined. They were between 7 and 10 years old (mean: 8.1, SD: 0.7 years). Subjects were required to perform the following phonatory tasks: (1) to phonate sustained vowels [a:], [i:], [u:], (2) to read a phonetically balanced text, and (3) to sing a song. Acoustic analysis included long-term average spectrum (LTAS), fundamental frequency (F0), speaking fundamental frequency (SFF), equivalent continuous sound level (Leq), linear predictive code (LPC) to obtain formant frequencies, perturbation measures, harmonic to noise ratio (HNR), and Cepstral peak prominence (CPP). Auditory perceptual analysis was performed by four blinded judges to determine gender. Results No significant gender-related differences were found for most acoustic variables. Perceptual assessment showed good intra and inter rater reliability for gender. Cepstrum for [a:], alpha ratio in text, shimmer for [i:], F3 in [a:], and F3 in [i:], were the parameters that composed the multivariate logistic regression model to best differentiate male and female children's voices. Conclusion Since perceptual assessment reliably detected gender, it is likely that other acoustic markers (not evaluated in the present study) are able to make clearer gender differences. For example, gender-specific patterns of intonation may be a more accurate feature for differentiating gender in children's voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perceptual method of classifying dysarthria is considered the "gold standard" for clinically differentiating the types of dysarthria. Darley et al.,[l] pioneered the use of perceptual classification system to identify clusters of salient perceptual characteristics in speech that are associated with lesions in the central and peripheral nervous system. This system is also popularly referred to as the "Mayo Clinic Dysarthria Research"[1] Many researchers who investigate the acoustic and physiologic bases of dysarthrias also use the perceptual classification system. The present study attempts to analyse the perceptual speech characteristics in dysarthria associated with lesions in different cerebellar loci. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]