Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Terrin N. Tamati, Victoria A. Sevich, Emily M. Clausing, Aaron C. Moberly
Summary: This study investigated the ability of younger and older listeners to utilize lexical knowledge in processing noise-vocoded speech. Results showed that lexical information influenced the perceived clarity of noise-vocoded speech, but the extent of this influence depended on speech quality.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Yukiko Sugiyama
Summary: The perception of lexical pitch accent in Japanese was investigated using noise-excited vocoder speech, and the presence of secondary cues to Japanese pitch accent was found. Subsequent analyses showed no strong or consistent correlation between the listeners' ability to distinguish minimal pairs and duration, intensity, or formant information, suggesting the use of different cues depending on the available information. Comparisons with equivalent studies in English and Mandarin Chinese indicated that the primary cue in Japanese is more salient than in other languages.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Antony S. Trotter, Briony Banks, Patti Adank
Summary: The study found that observing relevant visual speech information from the speaker's mouth region is crucial for listening and adapting to distorted sentences online, while the eyes/upper face region is not. Additionally, the results demonstrated the feasibility of conducting speech perception and adaptation studies online, but not all findings reported in lab studies could be replicated.
JOURNAL OF SPEECH LANGUAGE AND HEARING RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Taiyang Guo, Zhi Zhu, Shunsuke Kidani, Masashi Unoki
Summary: This study explores the impact of modulation spectral features (MSFs) on vocal emotion recognition in noise-vocoded speech (NVS). The results show that in a clean environment, MSFs contribute to vocal emotion recognition. In noisy reverberant environments, except for extremely high noise and reverberation, there are high similarities between MSFs and vocal emotion recognition results. Furthermore, two common MSFs were found to contribute to vocal emotion recognition in all environments.
APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL
(2022)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Shota A. Murai, Hiroshi Riquimaroux
Summary: This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the cerebral activity associated with the degree of subjective comprehension of noise-vocoded speech sounds (NVSS). The results showed that higher comprehension of NVSS sentences was associated with greater activation in the right superior temporal cortex, and that activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area) increased when a listener recognized words in a sentence they did not fully comprehend. Additionally, recognition of words in an NVSS sentence was found to lead to less lateralized responses in the temporal cortex, suggesting that changes in lateralization in the temporal auditory cortex may be associated with variation in comprehension within individuals.
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Venkateswarlu Poluboina, Aparna Pulikala, Arivudai Nambi Pitchai Muthu
Summary: A cochlear implant is the most suitable option for individuals with severe profound hearing loss, as it restores audibility and offers good speech understanding in quiet. However, speech perception in noise with cochlear implants is suboptimal due to current coding strategies that lack sophisticated pre-processing. This study proposes a novel pre-processing method to improve speech intelligibility in noise and evaluates its performance using objective and subjective tests.
Article
Acoustics
Nasir Saleem, Muhammad Irfan Khattak, Aamir Nawaz, Farhana Umer, Manesh Kumar Ochani
Summary: The study introduces a phase compensated perceptually weighted beta-order Bayesian estimator to enhance noisy speech, significantly improving speech quality and intelligibility across different noise levels.
Review
Engineering, Biomedical
Yong Feng, Fei Chen
Summary: This paper reviews nonintrusive SI measurement methods, discusses their performance compared to intrusive methods, and explores their potential in future speech communication applications. It classifies historical and recently introduced methods, provides critical comments and comparisons, and considers a wide range of up-to-date references.
BIOMEDICAL SIGNAL PROCESSING AND CONTROL
(2022)
Article
Acoustics
Mohit Dua, Virender Kadyan, Neha Banthia, Akshit Bansal, Tanya Agarwal
Summary: This paper proposes solutions to improve the performance of an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system for children speech in Punjabi language. The proposed work addresses the challenges of acoustic and linguistic variations, as well as the scarcity of children speech data, through techniques such as formant modification and data augmentation.
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Rung-Yu Tseng, Tao-Wei Wang, Szu-Wei Fu, Chia-Ying Lee, Yu Tsao
Summary: Speech perception is crucial for verbal communication, especially for individuals with hearing loss. This study investigated two potential methods, speech enhancement and audiovisual integration, to improve vocoded speech intelligibility in cochlear implant simulation. The experimental results confirmed the effectiveness of these methods and recommended their integration into CI processors for enhanced speech intelligibility in noisy conditions.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE AND DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEMS
(2021)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Tilde Van Hirtum, Ben Somers, Eline Verschueren, Benjamin Dieudonne, Tom Francart
Summary: Behavioral tests are currently the gold standard in measuring speech intelligibility. However, these tests can be difficult to administer in young children due to factors such as motivation, linguistic knowledge and cognitive skills. It has been shown that measures of neural envelope tracking can be used to pre-dict speech intelligibility and overcome these issues.
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Timothy Beechey
Summary: This article provides a tutorial introduction to ordinal pattern analysis, a statistical method designed to quantify the match between hypotheses of relative change and observed data at the individual level. It can be a useful addition to familiar parametric statistical methods, particularly when analyzing inherently individual characteristics and modeling experimental effects in relative terms.
JOURNAL OF SPEECH LANGUAGE AND HEARING RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Giulia Rocco, Giuliano Bernardi, Randall Ali, Toon van Waterschoot, Edoardo Maria Polo, Riccardo Barbieri, Alessia Paglialonga
Summary: The purpose of this study is to assess the intelligibility of VCV stimuli in five languages and select a subset for testing individuals of unknown language. The intelligibility was estimated using psychometric functions derived from the STOI measure and listening tests. Stimuli were selected based on higher intelligibility, lower variability, and shallower psychometric function. The results showed that the set of VCVs in English fulfilled the criteria for multilingual settings.
APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL
(2023)
Article
Acoustics
Hemant Kumar Kathania, Sudarsana Reddy Kadiri, Paavo Alku, Mikko Kurimo
Summary: This study aims to improve the performance of automatic speech recognition systems on children's speech by modifying the acoustic characteristics. The results show that adjusting the vocal tract resonances of children's speech can significantly enhance the system's performance in recognizing children's speech, and it also performs well in noisy environments.
SPEECH COMMUNICATION
(2022)
Article
Acoustics
Nao Hodoshima
Summary: Public address announcements are widely used but can be unintelligible due to noise and reverberation, especially impacting older adults more than younger adults. In emergencies, mismatch between text information and PA announcements may also decrease intelligibility. Urgent speech is more intelligible than normal speech, and congruent text aids understanding. Older adults benefit more from congruent text in urgent speech, suggesting reliance on prior knowledge in challenging listening environments. These findings highlight the importance of audiovisual congruence in emergency PA announcements for older adults.
SPEECH COMMUNICATION
(2021)
Article
Acoustics
Brian Roberts, Robert J. Summers
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2018)
Article
Acoustics
Brian Roberts, Robert J. Summers
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2019)
Article
Acoustics
Robert J. Summers, Brian Roberts
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2020)
Article
Acoustics
Saima L. Rajasingam, Robert J. Summers, Brian Roberts
Summary: The experiments investigated the effects of abrupt changes in stimulus properties on streaming dynamics, finding that changes in frequency and level can significantly impact the segregation of auditory streams, with results reminiscent of subtractive adaptation in vision.
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2021)
Article
Acoustics
Brian Roberts, Robert J. Summers, Peter J. Bailey
Summary: The study found that interference by using mismatched sine bleats in the contralateral ear systematically and predictably affected category judgments, especially when involving the fastest rate or greatest extent of frequency change. This indicates that informational masking leads to corruption of target processing, despite grouping cues disfavoring this integration.
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2021)
Article
Acoustics
Brian Roberts, Robert J. Summers, Peter J. Bailey
Summary: Lexical bias refers to the tendency to perceive ambiguous speech sounds as specific phonemes, with greater reliance on lexical knowledge as ambiguity increases. High cognitive load can exacerbate this bias, leading to a phenomenon known as the Ganong shift. Research also explores the impact of stimulus naturalness and informational masking on lexical bias and reaction times.
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Daniel H. Baker, Robert J. Summers, Alex S. Baldwin, Tim S. Meese
Summary: Image processing algorithms are used to improve the appearance and storage efficiency of digital images, but the existing perceptual metrics have limitations. This study proposes an objective performance-based perceptual measure of image quality and demonstrates its effectiveness by comparing denoising algorithms.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Tim S. Meese, Daniel H. Baker, Robert J. Summers
Summary: One of the primary tasks of visual perception is to create a three-dimensional representation of our surroundings from our flat retinal images. Image blur gradients, derived from the limited depth of field in optical devices, can help estimate visual scale. Manipulating image blur can provide evidence that human vision uses this cue when judging scale, as shown in our study where participants identified full-scale railway scenes and scale models. The orientation of the blur gradient is crucial, while its rate of change is less important, indicating a coarse visual analysis of this image parameter.
Article
Education & Educational Research
Robert J. Summers, Helen E. Higson, Elisabeth Moores
Summary: Effective use of learning analytics systems has shown to provide various benefits to learners, with early measures of engagement being highly predictive of future behavior and outcomes. Students with higher engagement early on are more likely to achieve higher end-of-year marks, emphasizing the importance of consistent engagement throughout the learning process.
ASSESSMENT & EVALUATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION
(2021)
Article
Acoustics
Brian Roberts, Robert J. Summers
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2020)