• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• 제28권5호
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• pp.483-488
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• 2006

Velopharyngeal function refers to the combined activity of the soft palate and pharynx in closing and opening the velopharyngeal port to the required degree. In normal speech, various muscles of palate & pharynx function as sphincter and occlude the oropharynx from the nasopharynx during the production of oral consonant sounds. Inadequate velopharyngeal function caused by neurologic disorder - cerebral apoplexy, regressive diseases - disseminated sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, congenital deformity - cleft palate, cerebral palsy and etc. may result in abnormal speech characterized by hypernasality, nasal emission and decreased intelligibility of speech due to weak consonant production. In our study, we constructed speech aids prosthesis - Speech bulb in the incomplete cleft palate VPI patient with hypernasality and assessed velopharyngeal function with nasometer which can evaluate the speech characteristics objectively.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• 제25권2호
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• pp.72-79
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: The speech-in-noise test is typically performed using an audiometer. The results of the digit-in-noise recognition (DIN) test may be influenced by the flat frequency response of free-field audiometry and frequency of the hearing aid fit based on fitting rationale. This study aims to investigate the DIN test in unaided and aided conditions. Subjects and Methods: Thirty four adults with moderate and severe sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) participated in the study. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for 50% of the DIN test was obtained in the following two conditions: 1) the unaided condition, performed using an audiometer in a free field; and 2) aided condition, performed using a hearing aid with an unvented individual earmold that was fitted based on NAL-NL2. Results: There was a statistically significant elevation in the mean SNR for the severe SNHL group in both test conditions when compared with that of the moderate SNHL group. In both groups, the SNR for the aided condition was significantly lower than that of the unaided condition. Conclusions: Speech recognition in hearing-impaired patients can be realized by fitting hearing aids based on evidence-based fitting rationale rather than by measuring it using free-field audiometry measurement that is utilized in a routine clinic setup.

• 대한구순구개열학회지
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• 제11권1호
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• pp.13-22
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• 2008

Velopharyngeal insufficiency(VPI), characterized by hypernasal resonance and nasal air emission, is a speech disorder that can significantly compromise speech intelligibility. Cleft palate, previously repaired cleft palate and submucous cleft palate are associated with VPI. Less commonly, patients may acquire it after adenoidectomy with or without tonsillectomy or as a result of neuromuscular dysfunction. Comprehensive evaluation by a VPI team includes medical assessment focusing on airway obstructive symptoms, perceptual speech analysis, MRI and instrumental assessment. Options for intervention include speech therapy, intraoral prosthetic devices and surgery. Surgical methods can be categorized as palatal, palatopharyngeal or pharyngeal procedures. Each surgical approach has its strengths and limitations. Oro-maxillofacial surgeons are increasingly involved in the referral, evaluation, and treatment of velopharyngeal function. Therefore, understanding of physiology, anatomic structures, evaluation and treatment protocols in VPI is very important. This article presents protocol for evaluation of velopharyngeal function with a focus on indications for surgical interventions.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제13권1호
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• pp.25-36
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• 2021

This study examined the perception and production of eight English fricatives /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ/ by thirty Chinese English majors and thirty Chinese middle school students through a fricative identification test, an intelligibility test, and a goodness rating test and focused on error patterns and the perception-production relationship. The results showed that substitution errors occurred frequently in the perception and production of English fricatives by both the English majors and the middle school students. Further, the error patterns were attributed to various influencing factors such as the negative transfer from Chinese consonant inventory, hypercorrection or overcompensation mistakes, deficiency of L2 teaching, and acoustic similarities. Significant overall correlations were found between the fricative perception and production by the two subject groups but were not manifested in all the eight fricatives, indicating that Chinese learners' perceptual competence of target fricatives was not necessarily tied to their productive excellence of those sounds in all cases. Furthermore, precedences of perception over production were incompletely manifested in the eight fricatives, which suggested that perception might not always be a necessary prerequisite for production. Additionally, subject group and vowel context differences were observed. The English majors performed better than the middle school students, both perceptually and productively, and the subjects' performances in perception and production varied when vowel contexts changed.

• 공학교육연구
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• 제22권6호
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• pp.74-88
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• 2019

In recent years, the design has formed and operated convergence education in conjunction with many other academic fields, and ABEEK also encourages the participation of convergence engineering programs. The purpose of this study is to require design and software convergence major to operate program that accord engineering education certification criteria to develop a program outcomes evaluation system and examine its validity. The program outcomes evaluation system was developed in accordance with development research methods and procedures. As a result, developed evaluation system program outcomes for convergence-based program outcomes: convergence ability, creative thinking ability, entrepreneur ability, and design ability. Finally, it revised and supplemented them through expert validity examine. Expert validity review included 9 experts in engineering, IT engineering, education technology, and design. The validity, usefulness, intelligibility, universality, and explanatory power of the evaluation system were reviewed. The results of this study are expected to provide practical tools for operating ABBEK of convergence programs between design and engineering.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제40권3호
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• pp.234-240
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• 2021

본 논문에서는 잡음 환경에서 효과적인 음성 인식을 위해 마스크 기반의 음성 향상 기법을 개선한다. 마스크 기반의 음성 향상 기법에서는 심층 신경망을 기반으로 추정한 마스크를 잡음 오염 음성에 곱하여 향상된 음성을 얻는다. 마스크 추정 모델로 VoiceFilter(VF) 모델을 사용하고 추정된 마스크로 얻은 음성으로부터 잔여 잡음을 보다 확실히 제거하기 위해 Spectrogram Inpainting(SI)기법을 적용한다. 본 논문에서는 음성 향상 결과를 보다 개선하기 위해 마스크 추정을 위한 모델 학습 과정에 사용되는 조합된 손실함수를 제안한다. 음성 구간에 남아 있는 잡음을 보다 효과적으로 제거하기 위해 잡음 오염 음성에 마스크를 적용한 Triplet 손실함수의 Positive 부분을 컴포넌트 손실함수와 조합하여 사용한다. 실험 평가를 위한 잡음 음성 데이터는 TIMIT 데이터베이스와 NOISEX92, 배경음악 잡음을 다양한 Signal to Noise Ratio(SNR) 조건으로 합성하여 만들어 사용한다. 음성 향상의 성능 평가는 Source to Distortion Ratio(SDR), Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality(PESQ), Short-Time Objective Intelligibility(STOI)를 이용한다. 실험을 통해 평균 제곱 오차로만 훈련된 기존 시스템과 비교하여, VF 모델은 평균 제곱 오차로 훈련하고 SI 모델은 조합된 손실함수를 사용하였을 때 SDR은 평균 0.5dB, PESQ는 평균 0.06, STOI는 평균 0.002만큼 성능이 향상된 것을 확인했다.

• 대한두경부종양학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한두경부종양학회 2007년도 춘계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.80-84
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• 2007

Background and Objectives : The radial forearm free flap is a useful reconstructive method of surgical defects after oral and oropharyngeal tumor resection. We evaluated the swallowing and speech outcomes of radial forearm free flap reconstruction for oral and oropharyngeal cancers. Materials and Methods : We retrospectively reviewed clinical data of 84 patients who underwent reconstructive surgery for oral or oropharyngeal cancer using radial forearm free flap from August 1994 to January 2007. Modified barium swallowing (MBS) was done in 100 patients and speech-language assessment was done in 23 patients by a speech-language pathologist. Results were analyzed according to the swallowing functions and the speech-language assessments. Results : According to the results of MBS which was done postoperatively, aspiration occurred in three patients and velopharyngeal insufficiency occurred in four patients who had been reconstructed with multilobed free flap due to large mucosal defects. There was one patient who exhibited severe articulation impairment out of 23 patients. However, 19 patients out of 23 patients showed excellent intelligibility in speech. Conclusion : We concluded that the radial forearm free flap technique is an excellent reconstructive method for the restoration of palatal and pharyngeal function in oral and oropharyngeal cancer patients.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제12권4호
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• pp.19-25
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• 2020

This study examined thirty-one Korean students' pronunciation of an English passage using a speech recognition application, Speechnotes, and two Canadian raters' evaluations of their speech according to the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) band criteria to assess the possibility of using the application as a teaching aid for pronunciation education. The results showed that the grand average percentage of correctly recognized words was 77.7%. From the moderate recognition rate, the pronunciation level of the participants was construed as intermediate and higher. The recognition rate varied depending on the composition of the content words and the function words in each given sentence. Frequency counts of unrecognized words by group level and word type revealed the typical pronunciation problems of the participants, including fricatives and nasals. The IELTS bands chosen by the two native raters for the rainbow passage had a moderately high correlation with each other. A moderate correlation was reported between the number of correctly recognized content words and the raters' bands, while an almost a negligible correlation was found between the function words and the raters' bands. From these results, the author concludes that the speech recognition application could constitute a partial aid for diagnosing each individual's or the group's pronunciation problems, but further studies are still needed to match human raters.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.1-7
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• 2023

This study investigated the influences of probabilistic accessibility of the word being produced - as determined by its usage frequency and neighborhood density - on native and high-proficiency L2 speakers' realization of six English monophthong vowels. The native group hyperarticulated the vowels over an expanded acoustic space when the vowel occurred in words with low frequency and high density, supporting the claim that vowel forms are modified in accordance with the probabilistic accessibility of words. However, temporal expansion occurred in words with greater accessibility (i.e., with high frequency and low density) as an effect of low phonotactic probability in low-density words, particularly in attended speech. This suggests that temporal modification in the opposite direction may be part of the phonetic characteristics that are enhanced in communicatively driven focus realization. Conversely, none of these spectral and temporal patterns were found in the L2 group, thereby indicating that even the high-proficiency L2 speakers may not have developed experience-based sensitivity to the modulation of sub-categorical phonetic details indexed with word-level probabilistic information. The results are discussed with respect to how phonological representations are shaped in a word-specific manner for the sake of communicatively driven lexical intelligibility, and what factors may contribute to the lack of native-like sensitivity in L2 speech.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.37-44
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• 2023

This study investigates perceptual confusions of English fricatives among 121 Korean elementary school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with shorter periods of learning English. The objective is to examine how they perceive English fricative consonants and to provide educational guidelines. Two sets of English fricative identification tasks-voiceless fricatives and voiced fricatives-were administered to participants in a High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) setting. Their phonemic awareness of the fricatives was visualized in perceptual confusion maps via multidimensional scaling analysis. The findings are explored in terms of the impacts of Korean EFL learners' L1 linguistic aspects and a comparison with L1 learners. Learners' phonemic awareness patterns are then compared with their relative importance in speech intelligibility based on a functional load hierarchy. The results indicated that Korean elementary EFL learners recognized English fricatives in a manner largely akin to L1 learners, suggesting their ongoing acquisition progress. Additionally, the findings demonstrated that the young EFL learners possess sufficient phonemic awareness for most high functional load segments but encounter some difficulties with one high and one low functional pair. The findings of this study offer suggestions for diagnosing language learners' phonemic awareness abilities, thereby aiding in the development of practical guidelines for language instructional design and helping educators make informed decisions regarding teaching priority in L2 classes.