• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.17 no.2E
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• pp.38-46
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• 1998

In this paper, we propose a remote speech input device, a new method of user-friendly speech input in spontaneous speech recognition system. We focus the user friendliness on hands-free and microphone independence in speech recognition applications. Our method adopts two algorithms, the automatic speech detection and the microphone array delay-and-sum beamforming (DSBF)-based speech enhancement. The automatic speech detection algorithm is composed of two stages; the detection of speech and nonspeech using the pitch information for the detected speech portion candidate. The DSBF algorithm adopts the time domain cross-correlation method as its time delay estimation. In the performance evaluation, the speech detection algorithm shows within-200 ms start point accuracy of 93%, 99% under 15dB, 20dB, and 25dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments, respectively and those for the end point are 72%, 89%, and 93% for the corresponding environments, respectively. The classification of speech and nonspeech for the start point detected region of input signal is performed by the pitch information-base method. The percentages of correct classification for speech and nonspeech input are 99% and 90%, respectively. The eight microphone array-based speech enhancement using the DSBF algorithm shows the maximum SNR gaing of 6dB over a single microphone and the error reductin of more than 15% in the spontaneous speech recognition domain.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.48 no.9
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• pp.924-928
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• 2005

Purpose : Treatment efficacy for children with speech and language delay has been the subject of considerable debate in recent years. We evaluated the clinical features of children with delayed speech and language and their prognoses according to their etiologies after 6 months of speech and language therapy. Methods : From January, 2000 to March, 2004, we retrospectively reviewed 56 children with speech and language delay who were administered speech and language therapy for 6 months in Uijongbu St. Mary's Hospital. Results : Of 56 cases, the proportion of developmental language disorder was 66.1 percent, structural malformation 19.6 percent, mental retardation 12.5 percent, hearing defect 1.8 percent. The ratio of male to female was 4.6 : 1 and the most frequent age group was over 47 months. The mean age of first spontaneous words with useful meaning was 15.9 months. The mean gestational age of the subjects was 39.8 weeks. The proportion of full-term infants was 96.4 percent and of premature infants was 3.6 percent. As for the birth order, the proportion of the first baby was 51.8 percent, the one of second babies it was 42.9 percent, and percent of third babies it was 7.1 percent. After 6 months of language intervention, 32.4 percent of patients with developmental language disorder showed normal linguistic development. All the patients with mental retardation showed sustained language and speech delay. As for the patients with structural malformations, five out of 11 patients showed normal linguistic development. Conclusion : The relatively advanced old age of majority of participants in this study suggests the necessity of screening test for language delay in this local community.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.89-93
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• 2006

This paper presents ETRI broadcast news speech recognition system. There are two major issues on the broadcast news speech recognition: 1) real-time processing and 2) out-of-vocabulary handling. For real-time processing, we devised the dual decoder architecture. The input speech signal is segmented based on the long-pause between utterances, and each decoder processes the speech segment alternatively. One decoder can start to recognize the current speech segment without waiting for the other decoder to recognize the previous speech segment completely. Thus, the processing delay is not accumulated. For out-of-vocabulary handling, we updated both the vocabulary and the language model, based on the recent news articles on the internet. By updating the language model as well as the vocabulary, we can improve the performance up to 17.2% ERR.

• Korean Journal of Cleft Lip And Palate
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2008

In cleft palate patient, characteristic of speech disorder is the resonance disorder result from velopharyngeal incompetence. Clinically VPI caused by congenital factor as congenital palatal incompetence, submucosal cleft palate, and caused by acquired factor as CNS damage, tumor, palatal palsy. The clinicians more concerned about the speech disorders after cleft palate surgery rather than language pathologist. The resonance disorder devided for hypernasality, hyponasality and nasal emission, but as a rule, hypernasality is typical phenomenon of the resonance disorder. Traditionally clinicians and language pathologists evaluated four-stage or five-stage of hypernasality by subjective assessment. Although language pathologist is well-trained, results of the language level should be different. In late 1980s, Kay Elemetrics Corp. developed nasometer that objective nasalance identified with well-trained language pathologist and originate from nasometer Tonar I and II were developed by Fletcher. Therefore objective nasalance test was possible, the nasometer used in hospital, collage and speech clinic both and home and abroad. Standardization of the cleft palate speech assessment must be settled without delay because of different character result in different language and different assessment results by dialect in same language. In our study, we provide the data base for the standardization of cleft palate speech assessment which through report of objective assessment method, speech therapy effects and problems result in interdisciplinary teamwork by nasometer use in treatment of cleft palate patient.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
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• v.49 no.10
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• pp.1019-1025
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• 2006

Motor delay, when present, is usually the first concern brought by the parents of children with developmental delay. Cerebral palsy that is the most common motor delay, is a nonspecific, descriptive term pertaining to disordered motor function that is evident in early infancy and is characterized by changes in muscle tone, muscle weakness, involuntary movements, ataxia, or a combination of these abnormalities. A wide range of causative disorders and risk factors have been identified for cerebral palsy, and broadly classified into 5 groups; perinatal brain injury, brain injury related to prematurity, developmental abnormalities, prenatal risk factors, and postnatal brain injury. Delay in attaining developmental milestones is the most distinctive presenting complaint in children with cerebral palsy. A detailed history and thorough physical and neurologic examinations are crucial in the diagnostic process. The clinician should be cautious about diagnostic pronouncement unless the findings are unequivocal. Several serial examinations and history review are necessary. All children with cerebral palsy should undergo a neuroimaging study, preferably MRI, because an abnormality is documented on head MRI(89%) and CT(77%). The high incidence rates for mental retardation, epilepsy, ophthalmologic defects, speech and language disorders and hearing impairment make it imperative that all children with cerebral palsy be screened for mental retardation, ophthalmologic and hearing impairments, and speech and language disorders; nutrition, growth, and swallowing also should be closely monitored.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.77-91
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• 2002

This study investigated the use of grammatical morphemes (substantive morphemes and connective endings) of Korean speaking children with and without language impairment (LI). Participants were two children (ages 5;11 and 6;2) with SLI (specific language impairment), two LD (language delay) children (ages 6;3 and 6;5) with 70-84 range on a performance-IQ test, and two children (ages 5;7 and 6;1) with ND (normal development). Spontaneous language samples were elicited by play activities and story generation. A total of 8,059 (M=I,343, ranged 966-1,659) intelligible and nonimitative utterances were analyzed by the KCLA 2.0 (Korean Computerized Language Analysis 2.0) program for substantive morphemes and connective endings. The findings of this study were as follows; (1) The Korean speaking children with LI including SLI demonstrated less uses of grammatical morphemes than ND children. (2) Few differences were found between LI and ND children in the use of the grammatical morpheme types. (3) LI children produced significantly higher percentage of grammatical morpheme errors in spontaneous speech than ND children. (4) Few differences were found between SLI and LD children in degrees of the use and the error of grammatical morphemes.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.123-131
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to investigate the comprehension and production of various tense markings in Korean-speaking children with and without language delay. Thirty children with language delay(LD) and 30 typically developing(TD) children participated in the study. In each group, half were at the age of 4-years and the other half at 7-years. In both the comprehension and production task, 28 verbs containing four types of tense markings were used: past tense '-et ta', two present progressives '-ko itta', '-enta', and future tense '-elyeko hanta'. In the comprehension task, the children were presented with three printed still-scenes of video recording of a verb action, each representing future, present progressive, and past tense of the verb, respectively. Then they listened to the action verb with one of the 4 tense markings and had to pick the scene that matched the verb tense. In the production task, the children were given one of the three scenes and asked to produce the verb with appropriate tense marking. In both tasks, the LD children performed significantly worse than the TD children, and the older children performed significantly better than the younger children. Interestingly, the pattern of performances across different types of tense markings at the two language-age levels were closely similar in LD children and TD children. This similarity of groups seemed stronger in the comprehension task than the production task.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.1025-1029
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• 2007

It is widely assumed that Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is determined by inherent disposition and environmental factor. IQ is estimated by age-conversion score and stabilized around age 4 and IQ of adult age can be predicted after age 10. Though children with Mental Retardation (MR) are delayed in language development since early infant period, they receive only special education including speech and language therapy, but no special medication. In traditional Korean medicine, the etiology and treatment for developmental delay of language have been handed down for a long time. Some studies on herbs and prescriptions for improving language development have been undertaken recently. We have found several cases of significant elevation of IQ in the children treated with long term medications of Korean herbal medicine for improvement of language. Analyzing these cases, especially performance IQ showed significant change. Therefore we suggest that Korean herbal medicine might improve cognition development in children with MR.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.67-76
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• 2021

Nanta means "tapping" using percussion instruments such as drums, which is the rhythm of Samulnori, a tradtional Korean music. Nanta speech rhythm intervention program was developed and applied for the children with limited speech sound production and investigated its effect. Nanta program provided audible stimulation, various sound loudness and beats, and rhythms. Nanta program consists of three stages : Respiration, phonation and articulation with the rhythm. Six children with language development delay participated in this study. Children were encouraged to explore sounds and beats and freely express sounds and beats. Along with the rhythm, children also were encouraged to produce speech sounds by increasing the length of syllables in mimetic and imitating words. A total of 15 sessions were conducted twice a week for 40 minutes per session. For exploring the effectiveness, raw scores from preschool receptive-expressive scales (PRES) and receptive-expressive vocabulary test (REVT) were obtained and compared before and after therapy. The results demonstrated that significantly improved receptive (p=.027) and expressive language scores (p=.024) in PRES and receptive (p=.028) and expressive (p=.028) vocabulary scores following intervention using Wilcoxon signed-rank test.These findings suggest that the nanta rhythm program can be useful for improving language development and vocabulary in children with limited speech sound production.

• Journal of Genetic Medicine
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.44-47
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• 2021

Cerebral creatine deficiency syndrome (CCDS) is a disorder where a defect is present in transport of creatine in the brain. Creatine plays an essential role in the energy metabolism of the brain. This is a genetic disorder, autosomal recessive or X linked, characterized by intellectual disability, speech and language delay, epilepsy, hypotonia, etc. Until recently very few number of cases have been reported. Here we report a case of 1.5-year-old boy who had epilepsy (epileptic spasm and generalized tonic clonic seizure), intellectual disability, microcephaly, hypotonia and speech delay. His magnetic resonance imaging of brain showed cortical atrophy and electroencephalography showed burst suppression pattern. The diagnosis was confirmed by clinical exome sequencing which showed novel mutation of SLC6A8+ in exon 9, suggestive of X linked recessive CCDS. The patient was then treated with glycine, L-arginine and creatine monohydrate with multiple antiepileptic drugs.