• KIEAE Journal
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• 제7권3호
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• pp.63-70
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• 2007

It is known that early reflections, their energy and delay times after the arrival of direct sound are important factors for speech intelligibility. In this basis, acoustical parameters like D50 and C80 had been proposed and are widely used for assessing the listening condition of rooms. These parameters are focused on the fraction of the early energy to the total, regardless of the spatial characteristics of the early reflections. This means that all the early reflections, arrived in certain time boundary. from front, behind, down and upside have the same impact on speech intelligibility. From the questionable simplicity, the influence of the direction of early reflections on speech intelligibility is examined in this study. A computer simulation speech intelligibility test, conducted for 22 university students, found that the reflection of vertical direction with method of the Paired comparison also the preference of 0.746 degree was visible an increase.

• 음성과학
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• 제11권4호
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• pp.173-184
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• 2004

This study aims to discuss the test methodologies that evaluate the speech intelligibility of hearing-impaired adults using various contexts. Seven adults with severe hearing loss participated in the experiment. The context of the speech intelligibility consists of 77 pairs of one-syllable words with phonemic contrasts, 30 two-syllable words and the list of each 12 and 10 sentences. The speech intelligibility of various contexts had significant correlation, and both one-syllable words with phonemic contrasts and the sentence 1 had higher correlation than other tests. The one-syllable words with phonemic contrasts took longer to test than others, and it demanded more effort to select the pair of words. However, from the point of view of the identification of segmental difficulties, the one-syllable words with phonemic contrasts that reflected segmental factors contributing to the intelligibility was useful.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.1-7
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relations between phonetic differences among Korean learners' production of English front vowels, pronunciation intelligibility and speaking proficiency test score. To do so, thirty Korean university students were asked (1) to read English text book paragraphs and (2) describe a picture. Two English native raters and one Korean rater evaluated Korean subjects' English pronunciation intelligibility and speaking. In addition, subjects' English vowel productions were acoustically analyzed(F0, F1, F2, vowel duration, intensity). The results of the study show that the vowel quality and pitch of the unstressed vowels and lax vowel are related to the pronunciation intelligibility. In addition, the scores of pronunciation intelligibility and speaking are highly related.

• 대한음성학회지:말소리
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• 제61호
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• pp.1-14
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between segmental correctness and speech intelligibility in adults with hearing impairment. Segmental correctness was measured by percentage of correct vowels(PCV) and percentage of correct consonants(PCC). The results were shown as follows: First, PCV and PCC could predict speech intelligibility with statistical significance. Second, in consonant classes divided by place and manner of articulation, the PCC of plosives and alveolar sounds were significant predicting variables in each group ($R^{2}=50%;\;59%$). According to this study, the importance of segmental correctness on speech intelligibility of adults with hearing impairment was confirmed. Also correctness of plosive sounds in manner and alveolar sounds in place were significant factors to speech intelligibility.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제4권3호
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• pp.161-169
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of speech intelligibility of spontaneous speech and the vowel space parameters in patients with Parkinson's disease. Ten PD patients (M=5, F=5) and a corresponding control group of ten normal adults participated in this study. Firstly, subjects were asked to tell a story about their hometown and youth in order to analyze speech intelligibility. Secondly, the subjects were also asked to repeat four vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/) five times in order to compare their vowel spaces. The results were as follows: (1) the speech intelligibility of the PD group was lower than that of the control group. (2) Four parameters including vowel area, vowel articulatory index, formant centralization ratio, F2i/F1u ratio were significantly different in each group. For instance, vowel area and F2 ratio were wider and higher, respectively. As a result, a decrease in speech intelligibility of patients with PD is likely to show different types of errors from the normal group. The results of this research are meaningful in a sense that they could provide the objective standard of speech intelligibility and vowel space parameters.

• 한국음향학회지
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• 제22권8호
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• pp.694-702
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• 2003

이 연구는 말장애의 진단에 유용한 일음절 낱말대조 명료도 검사 (낱말명료도)의 타당도와 신뢰도를 얻기 위한 것이다. 첫번째로 낱말명료도의 타당성을 확인하기 위하여 문장명료도와의 상관을 구한 결과 상관은 .83으로 비교적 높았다. 두 번째로는 평가자들 간의 일치도를 분석하였다. 낱말명료도는 명료도 손상의 수준에 상관없이 평가자들간에 일정한 변산을 보였다. 마지막으로 낱말명료도 평가도구를 이용하여 마비말장애인의 명료도를 떨어뜨리는데 주요한 역할을 하는 음소대조 요인을 살펴본 결과 종성이 가장 오류가 많았으며 다음으로 초성, 중성의 순서였으나, 회귀분석 결과 초성이 전체 명료도에 미치는 영향이 가장 컸다.

• 음성과학
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.89-99
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• 2005

The purpose of the present study were (1) to assess differences in tongue performances and speech intelligibility between normal and dysarthric speakers; and (2) to analyze the possible interrelationships between tongue strength, range of motion, and speech intelligibility in dysarthric patients. In order to measure maximum strength of anterior and lateral tongue strength, a force transducer has been designed. And a ruler was used for guaging range of motion. 'Word intelligibility test' was administered to each group. The results were analyzed by a quantitative statistical method(t test, Pearson product- moment correlation, and one-way ANOVA). The results were as follows; (1) dysarthric speakers showed significantly poorer performance than the normal in the tongue strength, range of motion, and speech intelligibility tasks; (2) the correlation between speech intelligibility and instrumental tongue performance was high in the dysarthric group; and (3) instrumental assessment was coincide with perceptual judgement of dysarthric tongue performance. The present investigation demonstrated that tongue weakness is causally related to articulation deficits in dysarthric. The clinical use of the force transducer would help a speech pathologist to quantify the degree of tongue weakness.

• 말소리와 음성과학
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• 제8권2호
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• pp.41-48
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the association among articulation rate, speech intelligibility and working memory in children with dysarthria. Two subject groups of 11 spastic and 11 flaccid dysarthria, respectively, aged between 8 and 17 years of age participated in this study. All participants were administered the following tests: K-WISC III PIQ test, speech intelligibility, working memory and articulation rate. Group differences were compared by an independent t-test. Pearson correlation were computed between all measures. The results of this study are as follows: First, articulation rate and intelligibility were significantly lower for the spastic dysarthria than for the flaccid dysarthria. Second, there was a significant correlation between articulation rate and intelligibility in children with flaccid dysarthria. Lastly, there was no significant correlation between articulation rate and working memory in both groups. The results suggest that articulation rate is not necessarily accompanied by working memory capacity in children with dysarthria, and there are differences in the effect of articulation rate on intelligibility depending on the type of dysarthria.

• 대한후두음성언어의학회지
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• 제10권2호
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• pp.140-148
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• 1999

The use of obturator is the prosthetic rehabilitation approach for restoration of the defected maxillary shape and function for the patients with palatal defect. The obturator can change the shape of vocal tract and nasality, but few reports on the effects of the change were presented. So, the authors performed the experimental study to compare the difference between the sizes of vowel triangles produced by maxillectomized patients before and after obturator-wearing and to consider how much improvement in speech intelligibility can be expected by obturator wearing. The 8 patients who were totally maxillectomized due to palatal cancer were participated as subjects. They produced 5 vowels(/a/, /i/, /u/, /e/, /o/) before and after obturator-wearing. The formants of the vowels were analyzed by the spectrogram of CSL, and their speech intelligibility were judged by normal 8 listeners. As results, the frequency of the first and the second formant showed no significant difference between the articulation before and after wearing, but the comparison of the sizes of vowel triangles, related with the speech intelligibility, showed significant difference. The vowel triangle of the articulation after wearing was larger than that of the articulation before wearing. /i/ showed the lowest speech intelligibility score among the vowel articulation before wearing. After wearing obturators, their scores increased on the whole, especially, in /a/, but the intelligibility of /u/ decreased after wearing.

• 음성과학
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.173-184
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• 2001

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of manipulating loudness and pitch in terms of speech intelligibility and voice of a patient with Parkinson's Disease. The subject, who was diagnosed as a patient with Parkinson's disease 11 years ago, demonstrated a severely breath voice with low intensity. The accuracy of articulation in consonants was intelligible only at the single word level, and the overall intelligibility in continuous speech was low. The results showed that the subject's articulation accuracy and speech intelligibility was significantly improved after having loudness and pitch training. Habitual Fo, Jitter, Shimmer, Fo tremor, Amp tremor were decreased after training. In addition, the value of HNR also increased after training. It was shown that the changes of these acoustic parameters were closely related to the decrease of breathiness in Parkinson's voice, and this decrease of breathiness affected speech intelligibility considerably. Based on the experimental results, it was claimed that the vocal training by manipulating the loudness and pitch could be highly effective in improving the voice quality and speech intelligibility in Parkinson's Disease.