• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.93-100
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences of feeding ability and articulatory function in the children with spastic cerebral palsy and typically developing children according to feeding subtypes. The feeding subtypes were limited by chewing, cup drinking and spoon feeding. 14 children with spastic cerebral palsy and 14 typically developing children were participated in this study. The results were following as; First, there were significant differences in overall articulatory function between two groups Second, all scores of articulators' function according to feeding subtypes in children with cerebral palsy was significantly higher than typically developing children Third, chewing mode in feeding subtypes was highly correlated with lip and tongue movement. compared to another Finally, the correlation between spoon feeding and mobility of lip and tongue was high in both groups. These results suggested that These results suggest that the effort to find out the differences feeding ability and appliances for articulatory function in CP children are meaningful in catching their speech ability indirectly. Moreover, the more organized feeding skills should be discussed in the relationship with verbal and nonverbal development.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.95-101
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• 2013

Aging is related to anatomical and physiological changes in respiratory and phonation organs. These changes influence articulation which leads to inaccurate speech and slow articulatory diadochokinesis(DDK). DDK indicates the range, rate, regularity, accuracy, and agility of articulation that reflect motor speech function. The purpose of this study is to investigate the rates and regularities of DDK in healthy Korean elderly through passive acoustic analysis (Praat). Thirty subjects between the ages of 65 and 94 participated in this study. Rate was observed for 5 seconds, while regularity was calculated based on the standard deviation on the following: 1) syllable duration of each task; 2) gap duration between syllables. Then, simple regression analysis was conducted in order to examine the effect of age on performance. The result showed that the slow rate was not a significant factor in terms of advancing age. Furthermore, regularity indicated a significant difference in the following: 1) /pʌ/, /kʌ/ and /pʌtʌkʌ/ in syllable duration; 2) /kʌ/ duration in the gap between syllables. In conclusion, articulatory coordination is reduced with the onset of aging. In particular, /kʌ/ would be a sensitive task for articulatory coordination.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.143-153
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• 2002

This study was designed to determine (1) the effects of the following stop consonant on the vowel length in isolated bi-syllabic words, (2) the mechanism which renders vowels longer in duration before lax stops than tense stops, (3) where the aspiratory interval is included, in the vowel portion or the preceding consonantal portion and (4) the influence of the preceding consonants upon the duration of the following vowel. Measurements were made of five timing variables on acoustic signals as three native Korean speakers uttered isolated bi-syllabic /VCV/ words in which the vowel was identical, /$\alpha$/, and the C slot was filled with bilabial stops. Findings: (1) the vowel length before the lax stops was significantly longer than before the tense stops, while the difference in the vowel duration between the tense stops was insignificant or negligible, (2) the vowel length varied as a function of the articulatory force of the following consonants, regardless of the phonological unit of syllable, (3) The aspiratory interval is interpreted as a portion of the preceding consonant and (4) The effects of the preceding consonants on the final vowel length were not rule-governed.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.193-212
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• 2010

The purpose of our study was to provide effective speech evaluation items examining the variables of speech that successfully predict the speech intelligibility in CP children. The subjects were 55 children with spastic type cerebral palsy. As for the speech evaluation, we performed a speech subsystem evaluation and a speech intelligibility test. The results of the study are as follows. The evaluation task for the speech subsystems consisted of 48 task items within an observational evaluation stage and three levels of severity. The levels showed correlations with gross motor functions, fine motor functions, and age. Second, the evaluation items for the speech subsystems were rearranged into seven factors. Third, 34 out of 48 task items that positively correlated with the syllable intelligibility rating were as follows. There were four items in the observational evaluation stage. Among the nonverbal articulatory function evaluation items, there were 11 items in level one. There were 12 items in level two. In level three there were eight items. Fourth, there were 23 items among the 48 evaluation tasks that correlated with the sentence intelligibility rating. There was one item in the observational evaluation stage which was in the articulatory structure evaluation task. In level one there were six items. In level two, there were eight items. In level three, there was a total number of eight items. Fifth, there was a total number of 14 items that influenced the syllable intelligibility rating. Sixth, there was a total number of 13 items that influenced the syllable intelligibility rating. According to the results above, the variables that influenced the speech intelligibility of CP children among the articulatory function tasks were in the respiratory function task, phonatory function task, and lip and chin related tasks. We did not find any correlation for the tongue function. The results of our study could be applied to speech evaluation, setting therapy goals, and evaluating the degree of progression in children with CP. We only studied children with the spastic type of cerebral palsy, and there were a small number of severe degree CP children compared to those with a moderate degree of CP. Therefore, when evaluating children with other degrees of severity, we may have to take their characteristics more into account. Further study on speech evaluation variables in relation to the severity of the speech intelligibility and different types of cerebral palsy may be necessary.

• Therapeutic Science for Rehabilitation
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.91-99
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• 2020

Objective : The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of the IOPI articulator strength training program on articulator(tongue and lip) muscle strength, numbers of /l, s, ʨ/ articulation accuracy, articulatory numbers, articulation regularity and accuracy in the alternate motion rates, and sequential motion rate changes in patients with spastic dysarthria. Methods : Three cases of patients with spastic dysarthria living in Jeju, Korea, were included in this study. A single subject design was selected to study changes in articulator(tongue and lip) muscle strength, numbers of /ㄹ, ㅅ, ㅈ/ articulation accuracy, articulatory numbers, articulation regularity and accuracy in the alternate motion rates and sequential motion rates. Results : After the articulator strength training program was conducted on patients with spastic dysarthria, there were positive changes in articulator(tongue and lip) muscle strength, numbers of /ㄹ, ㅅ, ㅈ/ articulation accuracy, articulatory numbers, articulation regularity and accuracy on the alternate motion rates and sequential motion rates. Conclusion : Our findings suggest that IOPI articulator strength training program could be very useful for the most representative childeren with cerebral palsy if conducted in various subtypes of dysarthric patients and linked with articulatory function training with IOPI at home.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.345-352
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• 1995

The LPC cepstrum coefficients, which are an acoustic features of speech signal, have been widely used as the feature parameter for various speech recognition systems and showed good performance. The vocal tract area function is a kind of articulatory feature, which is related with the physiological mechanism of speech production. This paper proposes the vocal tract area function as an alternative feature parameter for speech recognition. The linear predictive analysis using Burg algorithm and the vector quantization are performed. Then, recognition experiments for 5 Korean vowels and 10 digits are executed using the conventional LPC cepstrum coefficients and the vocal tract area function. The recognitions using the area function showed the slightly better results than those using the conventional LPC cepstrum coefficients.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.3-15
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• 2014

An articulatory study (using an Electromagnetic Articulography, EMA) was conducted to explore effects of prosodic boundary strength (Intonational Phrase/IP versus Word/Wd), and focus (Focused/accented, Neutral, Unfocused/unaccented) on the kinematic realization of /m/ in the coda (${\ldots}$am#i${\ldots}$) and the onset (${\ldots}$a#mi${\ldots}$) conditions in Korean. (Here # refers to a prosodic boundary such as an IP or a Wd boundary). Several important points have emerged. First, the boundary effect on /m/s was most robustly observed in the temporal dimension in both the coda (IP-final) and the onset (IP-initial) conditions, generally in line with cross-linguistically observable boundary-related lengthening patterns. Crucially, however, in contrast with boundary-related slowing-down effects that have been observed in English, both the IP-final and IP-initial temporal expansions of Korean /m/s were not accompanied by an articulatory slowing down. They were, if anything, associated with a faster movement in the lip opening (release) phase (into the vowel). This suggests that the mechanisms underlying boundary-related temporal expansions may differ between languages. Second, observed boundary-induced strengthening effects (both spatial and temporal expansions, especially on the IP-initial /m/s) were remarkably similar to prominence (focus)-induced strengthening effects, which is again counter to phrase-initial strengthening patterns observed in English in which boundary effects are dissociated from prominent effects. This suggests that initial syllables in Korean may be a common focus for both boundary and prominence marking. These results, taken together, imply that the boundary-induced strengthening in Korean is different in nature from that in English, each being modulated by the individual language's prosodic system. Third, the coda and the onset /m/s were found to be produced in a subtly but significantly different way even in a Wd boundary condition, a potentially neutralizing (resyllabification) context. This suggests that although the coda may be phonologically 'resyllabified' into the following syllable in a phrase-medial position, its underlying syllable affiliation is kinematically distinguished from the onset.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1996 no.11
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• pp.114-117
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• 1996

In this study, remote articulation training system which connects the hearing disabled trainee and the speech therapist via B-ISDN is introduced. The hearing disabled does not have the hearing feedback of his own pronunciation, and the chance of watching his speech organs' movement trajectory will offer him the self-training of articulation. So the system has two purposes of self articulation training and trainer's on-line checking in remote place. We estimate the vocal tract articulatory movements from the speech signal using inverse modelling and display the movement trajectory on the sideview of human face graphically. The trajectories of trainees' articulation is displayed along with the reference trajectories, so the trainee can control his articulating to make the two trajectories overlapped. For on-line communication and ckecking training record, the system has the function of video conferencing and transferring articulatory data.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.43-49
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• 1996

In this study, remote articulation training system which connects the hearing disabled trainee and the speech therapist via B-ISDN is introduced. The hearing disabled does not have the hearing feedback of his own pronuciation, and the chance of watching his speech organs movement trajectory will offer him the self-training of articulation. So the system has two purposes of self articulation training and trainer's on-line checking in remote place. We estimate the vocal tract articultory movements from the speech signal using inverse modelling and display the movement trajectoy on the sideview of human face graphically. The trajectories of trainees articulation is displayed along with the reference trajectories, so the trainee can control his articulating to make the two trajectories overlapped. For on-line communication and ckecking training record the system has the function of video conferencing and tranferring articulatory data.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2019

Formant trajectories reflect the continuous variation of speakers' articulatory movements over time. This study examined formant trajectories of English vowels produced by ninety-three American men and women; the values were normalized using the scale function in R and compared using generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs). Praat was used to read the sound data of Hillenbrand et al. (1995). A formant analysis script was prepared, and six formant values at the corresponding time points within each vowel segment were collected. The results indicate that women yielded proportionately higher formant values than men. The standard deviations of each group showed similar patterns at the first formant (F1) and the second formant (F2) axes and at the measurement points. R was used to scale the first two formant data sets of men and women separately. GAMMs of all the scaled formant data produced various patterns of deviation along the measurement points. Generally, more group difference exists in F1 than in F2. Also, women's trajectories appear more dynamic along the vertical and horizontal axes than those of men. The trajectories are related acoustically to F1 and F2 and anatomically to jaw opening and tongue position. We conclude that scaling and nonlinear testing are useful tools for pinpointing differences between speaker group's formant trajectories. This research could be useful as a foundation for future studies comparing curvilinear data sets.