• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.182-187
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• 2007

The present study was to investigate the speech intelligibility of esophageal speech, which is the way that the laryngectomized people who lost their voices by total laryngectomy can phonate by using the airstream driven into esophagus, not trachea. Three normal listeners transcribed the CVVand VCV syllables produced by 10 esophageal speakers. As a result, overall intelligibility of esophageal speech was 27%. Affricates showed the highest intelligibility, and fricatives, the lowest. In the aspect of the place of articulation, palatals were the most intelligble, and alveolars, the least. Most of the aspirated consonants showed a low intelligibility. The consonants in VCV syllables were more intelligible than the ones in CVV syllables. The low intelligibility of esophageal speakers is due to insufficient airflow intake into esophagus. Therefore, training to increase airflow intake, as well as correct articulation training, will improve their low intelligibility.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.694-702
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• 2003

The word intelligibility test for dysarthric speakers was designed to examine phonetic contrasts that are likely (1) to be sensitive to intelligibility impairment and (2) to contribute significantly to speech intelligibility. These phonetically contrasting word pairs were tested and proved to be reliable and to be valid, The results showed that in Korean dysarthric patients, the percentage of error in final position contrast was higher than in any other position. Unlike the results of previous studies, the initial-position contrasts were crucial in predicting the overall intelligibility among Korean patients.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2016.06a
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• pp.86-89
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• 2016

본 논문에서는 멀티미디어 콘텐츠의 명료도를 향상시켜 사용자가 주변 환경과 관계없이 안정적인 볼륨에서 오디오 청취를 할 수 있는 다이얼로그 명료도 향상 알고리즘을 제안한다. 최근 모바일 기기들의 발달로 다양한 환경에서 영화, TV 또는 동영상 등의 멀티미디어 콘텐츠를 즐기는 일이 늘어나고 있다. 이러한 경우 시청자는 주변 환경에 따라 영상의 오디오 볼륨을 조절하게 되는데 주변 소음에 비하여 과하게 증폭된 볼륨은 주변에 피해를 끼치거나 고막에 손상을 일으킬 수 있으며 반대로 주변에 비해 너무 작은 오디오 볼륨은 시청을 어렵게 한다는 단점이 있다. 본 논문에서는 수신단에서 멀티미디어 콘텐츠의 오디오 신호로부터 다이얼로그 성분을 검출하여 음성 명료도 향상 알고리즘을 적용시켜 동일한 볼륨에서도 음성의 명료도를 높이는 알고리즘을 제안한다. 본 알고리즘은 다이얼로그를 검출하여 단순히 증폭 시키는 기존 기술들과 달리 전체 에너지는 유지하면서 명료도에 중요한 영향을 미치는 주파수 대역에 에너지를 집중시키는 에너지 재분배 방식을 이용해 동일한 볼륨에서도 더 높은 음성 명료도를 기대할 수 있다. 컴퓨터 시뮬레이션을 통해 본 논문에서 제안한 알고리즘이 명료도에 중요한 영향을 미치는 주파수대역을 적절히 증폭시킴을 확인할 수 있었다.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.70-76
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• 2009

In speech communications in noisy environments, speech intelligibility is seriously degraded due to the masking effect of ambient noise. In this paper, a new method to improve speech intelligibility in noisy environments is proposed. Based on the perception theory that the temporal envelope plays a major role in determining intelligibility, the proposed method uses a novel operation that enhances the fluctuation of band-wise temporal envelope and also contains pitch enhancement for improving speech naturalness. In addition, a new subjective evaluation scheme employing binaural listening is proposed in order to measure more reliable performance. The subjective performance measured with the proposed scheme shows that the proposed method improves both intelligibility and naturalness in various environments, whereas a function parameter can control the performance trade-off between intelligibility and naturalness.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.30 no.8
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• pp.468-473
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• 2011

Speech may not be clearly understandable in the room that is highly reverberant, due to the loss of consonants intelligibility. Therefore, it is very important to obtain a high sound pressure level of direct sound in reverberant room. A properly designed sound reinforcement system can not provide the good speech intelligibility without the absorption treatments of walls. With using the highly directional speaker, we can transmit the sound energy into only the areas where people are sitting. This can be help to improve the speech intelligibility. In this paper, even in reverberant rooms, it will be shown that the good speech intelligibility can be obtained by only the directivity control of speaker without the room treatment. Also, it would be more improved by the properly room tuning using an equalizer.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2007.07a
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• pp.411-412
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• 2007

본 논문에서는 인간 청각 시스템의 특징을 이용한 음성명료도 향상 알고리즘을 제안한다. 기존의 연구들은 음성과 잡음이 같이 섞여 있는 Single-Channel에서의 명료도 향상의 대해 주로 다루었다. 하지만 잡음에 섞이기 전의 깨끗한 음성과 주변 잡음이 분리된 Dual-Channel에서의 명료도 향상에 관한 연구는 거의 다루어지지 않았다. 본 논문에서 음성을 잡음이 섞이기 전에 미리 강화시켜 나중에 잡음에 섞였을 때 명료도가 강화되도록 하는 방법을 제안한다. 인간 청각 시스템의 마스킹 효과를 적절히 이용하여 음성을 강화시키는 방법을 사용하였다. 실험 결과 이 방법은 단순히 볼륨만을 높이는 방법에 비해 명료도가 더 향상되는 것으로 나타났다.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.53 no.11
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• pp.82-88
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose an intelligibility enhancement algorithm for multimedia contents using spectral shaping. The dialogue signals is essential to understand the plot of audio-visual media contents such as movie and TV. However, the non-dialogue components as like sound effects and background music often degrade the dialogue clarity. To overcome this problem, this paper tries to improves the dialogue clarity of audio soundtracks which contain important cues for the visual scenes. In the proposed method, the dialogue components are first detected by soft masker based on speech presence probability (SPP) which is widely used in speech enhancement field. Then, extracted dialogue signals are applied to the spectral shaping method. It reallocate the spectral-temporal energy of speech to enhanced the intelligibility. The total energy is maintained as unchanged via a loudness normalization process to prevent saturation. The algorithm was evaluated using the modeled and real movie soundtracks and it was shown that the proposed algorithm enhances the dialogue clarity while preserving the total audio power.

• 재활복지
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.67-82
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate relation and effect of PCC(Percentage of Correct Consonant) and nasalance score on the speech intelligibility and acceptability in adults with dysarthria by reading task of standardized passage. Ten adults with dysarthria and sixteen normal adults were participated in this study. PCC and nasalance score were measured through reading task of standardized passage. And, speech intelligibility and acceptability were examined using visual analogue criteria. The result of the study was as follows. First, the nasalance score of adults with dysarthria group is significantly higher than normal adults group in reading sample by standardized passage. Second, the PCC, speech intelligibility and acceptability shows significant correlation. However, the nasalance score doesn't show significant corelation with speech intelligibility and acceptability. These results suggest that PCC is closely related to speech intelligibility and speech acceptability, but nasalance score is not related to speech intelligibility and speech acceptability.

• The Journal of Korean society of community based occupational therapy
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.13-23
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• 2016

Objective : The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of aloud reading on handwriting legibility in low-level elementary school children. Methods : The subject of the present study consisted of 45 elementary school 2nd graders who were normally developed checked by the Developmental Test of Visual Perception. Experimental period was conducted total six times that Pre-evaluation once, four times intervention, and Post-evaluation once from November 2 to November 25, 2015. When Pre-evaluation and Post-evaluation was measured the handwriting legibility and speed using Handwriting Skill Test. When intervention divided and implemented to experimental group who handwriting with aloud reading, control group1 who only handwriting, and control group2 who nothing. Pre-evaluation and Post-evaluation identified change the handwriting legibility using Handwriting Skill Test. Result : After intervention, handwriting legibility improve female than male. At word card1, control group1 improve significantly handwriting legibility within group and control group2 come out significant difference but handwriting legibility decrease. At word card2, experimental group and control group1 improve significantly handwriting legibility within group. Experimental group and control group1, control group1 and control group2 come out significant difference between group. Conclusion : The present study demonstrates that handwriting training improve handwriting legibility to elementary school 2nd graders.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.69-76
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• 1994

In this study we developed monosyllable lists for articulation test for Korean. We sampled 103, 581 colloquial monosyllables, applied them to five selection rules that based on Korean linguistic characterisitcs, and finally constructed five different lists with fifity monosyllables. The validity test using the monaural impairment factors such as S/N ratio and cut-off frequency showed that articulation scores were changed systematically according to the level of impairment factors. In addition, we investigated the effect of azimuth of a single competing sound source upon articulation scores. The syllables were always reproduced by the loudspeaker in front of the subject, while Hoth noise( -5dB/oct) were reproduced by the loudspeaker with varying azimuth around subject. The result indicated that the articulation depended on the azimuth of competing sound sources and no significant differences among lists were found in all experimental conditions.