• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.71-78
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• 2020

Background and Objectives: Currently limited information is available on speech stimuli processing at the subcortical level in the recipients of cochlear implant (CI). Speech processing in the brainstem level is measured using speech-auditory brainstem response (S-ABR). The purpose of the present study was to measure the S-ABR components in the sound-field presentation in CI recipients, and compare with normal hearing (NH) children. Subjects and Methods: In this descriptive-analytical study, participants were divided in two groups: patients with CIs; and NH group. The CI group consisted of 20 prelingual hearing impairment children (mean age=8.90±0.79 years), with ipsilateral CIs (right side). The control group consisted of 20 healthy NH children, with comparable age and sex distribution. The S-ABR was evoked by the 40-ms synthesized /da/ syllable stimulus that was indicated in the sound-field presentation. Results: Sound-field S-ABR measured in the CI recipients indicated statistically significant delayed latencies, than in the NH group. In addition, these results demonstrated that the frequency following response peak amplitude was significantly higher in CI recipients, than in the NH counterparts (p<0.05). Finally, the neural phase locking were significantly lower in CI recipients (p<0.05). Conclusions: The findings of sound-field S-ABR demonstrated that CI recipients have neural encoding deficits in temporal and spectral domains at the brainstem level; therefore, the sound-field S-ABR can be considered an efficient clinical procedure to assess the speech process in CI recipients.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.115-124
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• 2010

The current study investigated the role of acoustic correlates of domain-initial strengthening in lexical segmentation of a non-native language. In a series of cross-modal identity-priming experiments, native Korean listeners heard English auditory stimuli and made lexical decision to visual targets (i.e., written words). The auditory stimuli contained critical two word sequences which created temporal lexical ambiguity (e.g., 'mill#company', with the competitor 'milk'). There was either an IP boundary or a word boundary between the two words in the critical sequences. The initial CV of the second word (e.g., [$k_{\Lambda}$] in 'company') was spliced from another token of the sequence in IP- or Wd-initial positions. The prime words were postboundary words (e.g., company) in Experiment 1, and preboundary words (e.g., mill) in Experiment 2. In both experiments, Korean listeners showed priming effects only in IP contexts, indicating that they can make use of IP boundary cues of English in lexical segmentation of English. The acoustic correlates of domain-initial strengthening were also exploited by Korean listeners, but significant effects were found only for the segmentation of postboundary words. The results therefore indicate that L2 listeners can make use of prosodically driven phonetic detail in lexical segmentation of L2, as long as the direction of those cues are similar in their L1 and L2. The exact use of the cues by Korean listeners was, however, different from that found with native English listeners in Cho, McQueen, and Cox (2007). The differential use of the prosodically driven phonetic cues by the native and non-native listeners are thus discussed.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 1996.10a
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• pp.343-348
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• 1996

This paper examines the contribution of vocalic information (after the onset of voicing) to the perception of Korean alveolar stops: the aspirated /$t^{h}$/, the lenis /t/, and the fortis /$t^{*}$/. These stops have been analyzed as differing in VOT (Abramson & Lisker, 1964), the glottal width or aspiration (Kim, 1970), and F0 and intensity build-up (Han & Weitzman, 1970). These studies focused on the articulatory and acoustic qualities of the consonants and often assumed that the consonantal portion before the onset of voicing plays the main role in maintaining the three-way distinction. In contrast, the role of the following vowels was given less attention. In order to investigate the contribution of the following vowels, a perceptual study was conducted using stimuli cross-spliced from three naturally produced syllables [$t^{h}al$] 'mask', [tal] 'moon', and [$t^{*}al$]) 'daughter'. Stimuli were presented to 12 Korean listeners for identification. Each subject responded to a total of 486 tokens. The results show that vowels play the primary role when the cut occurs at the star of voicing. Even with cuts at 10 ms and 40 ms into voicing, the following vowel still plays a clear role. This suggests that vowels carry the important information for distinguishing the three stops.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.73-77
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to observe how Korean learners of English perceive a weak syllable in words with WS syllable pattern. According to the automated discrimination task using E-Prime, the proportion of right answer and reaction time of the stimuli with same word pairs (a-a, b-b) was more and faster respectively than that with different word pairs (a-b, b-a). Specifically, in a-b or b-a stimuli structure, familiarity(word frequency) of stressed word succeeding weak syllable and whether the weak syllable had coda in it was two important factors in distinguishing between a word with and without weak syllable. Even though the high English proficiency Koreans had faster reaction time than the low English proficiency Koreans, all Korean learners somewhat had difficulty perceiving the weak syllable at the beginning of the word.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.77-86
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• 2022

In this study, we reported the validation results of the Korean Affective Voice Database (KAV DB), an affective voice database available for scientific and clinical use, comprising a total of 113 validated affective voice stimuli. The KAV DB includes audio-recordings of two actors (one male and one female), each uttering 10 semantically neutral sentences with the intention to convey six different affective states (happiness, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, and neutral). The database was organized into three separate voice stimulus sets in order to validate the KAV DB. Participants rated the stimuli on six rating scales corresponding to the six targeted affective states by using a 100 horizontal visual analog scale. The KAV DB showed high internal consistency for voice stimuli (Cronbach's α=.847). The database had high sensitivity (mean=82.8%) and specificity (mean=83.8%). The KAV DB is expected to be useful for both academic research and clinical purposes in the field of communication disorders. The KAV DB is available for download at https://kav-db.notion.site/KAV-DB-75 39a36abe2e414ebf4a50d80436b41a.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.137-142
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• 2012

The aim of this study is to investigate the usefulness of the multiple-choice name matching test (MC-NMT) in adults with aphasia by comparing the Korean version of the Boston Naming Test (K-BNT) and subsets of the Korean version of the Western Aphasia Battery (K-WAB). Thirty-nine patients who suffer from aphasia participated in the study. All patients were examined by the K-BNT, MC-NMT and K-WAB. The MC-NMT consisted of the 30 original BNT object stimuli which were presented with four response choices (written words) with similar frequency, including one correct and three incorrect responses. Cards containing the drawings were presented to the patient one at time. An item was passed if the patient chose the correct response within 10 seconds. We subdivided two groups into a total group and a low K-BNT group (at and below 15 points). We evaluated the correlation between the K-BNT, MC-NMT score and production, naming, repetition, comprehension, reading and writing scores in subsets of the K-WAB. There was a highly positive correlation between the K-BNT score and naming score of the K-WAB in total patients. However, the MC-NMT was highly correlated with reading scores in the K-WAB. In low score K-BNT patients, the K-BNT strongly correlated with production, naming and repetition scores of the K-WAB. These findings mean that K-BNT reflects motor language function. However, the MC-NMT was strong correlated comprehension, reading and writing of the K-WAB. This finding reflects sensory language function. We suggest that the combination of K-BNT and newly developed MC-NMT will be useful to evaluate speech functions in aphasic patients.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.133-139
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• 2020

Background and Objectives: The Gaps-In-Noise (GIN) test is a clinically effective measure of the integrity of the central auditory nervous system. The GIN procedure can be applied to a pediatric population above 7 years of age. The present study conducted the GIN test to compare the abilities of auditory temporal resolution among typically developing children, children with speech sound disorder (SSD), and children with cognitive difficulty (CD). Subjects and Methods: Children aged 8 to 11 years-(total n=30) participated in this study. There were 10 children in each of the following three groups: typically developing children, children with SSD, and children with CD. The Urimal Test of Articulation and Phonology was conducted as a clinical assessment of the children's articulation and phonology. The Korean version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III (K-WISC-III) was administered as a screening test for general cognitive function. According to the procedure of Musiek, the pre-recorded stimuli of the GIN test were presented at 50 dB SL. The results were scored by the approximated threshold and the overall percent correct score (%). Results: All the typically developing children had normal auditory temporal resolution based on the clinical cutoff criteria of the GIN test. The children with SSD or CD had significantly reduced gap detection performance compared to age-matched typically developing children. The children's intelligence score measured by the K-WISC-III test explained 37% of the variance in the percent-correct score. Conclusions: Children with SSD or CD exhibited poorer ability to resolve rapid temporal acoustic cues over time compared to the age-matched typically developing children. The ability to detect a brief temporal gap embedded in a stimulus may be related to the general cognitive ability or phonological processing.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.133-139
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• 2020

Background and Objectives: The Gaps-In-Noise (GIN) test is a clinically effective measure of the integrity of the central auditory nervous system. The GIN procedure can be applied to a pediatric population above 7 years of age. The present study conducted the GIN test to compare the abilities of auditory temporal resolution among typically developing children, children with speech sound disorder (SSD), and children with cognitive difficulty (CD). Subjects and Methods: Children aged 8 to 11 years-(total n=30) participated in this study. There were 10 children in each of the following three groups: typically developing children, children with SSD, and children with CD. The Urimal Test of Articulation and Phonology was conducted as a clinical assessment of the children's articulation and phonology. The Korean version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III (K-WISC-III) was administered as a screening test for general cognitive function. According to the procedure of Musiek, the pre-recorded stimuli of the GIN test were presented at 50 dB SL. The results were scored by the approximated threshold and the overall percent correct score (%). Results: All the typically developing children had normal auditory temporal resolution based on the clinical cutoff criteria of the GIN test. The children with SSD or CD had significantly reduced gap detection performance compared to age-matched typically developing children. The children's intelligence score measured by the K-WISC-III test explained 37% of the variance in the percent-correct score. Conclusions: Children with SSD or CD exhibited poorer ability to resolve rapid temporal acoustic cues over time compared to the age-matched typically developing children. The ability to detect a brief temporal gap embedded in a stimulus may be related to the general cognitive ability or phonological processing.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.91-101
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• 2021

This study aimed to investigate speech motor control in adults who stutter (AWS) by testing whether articulation rate changes with practice and linguistic complexity. Eleven AWS and 11 adults who do not stutter (AWNS) repeated four sentences of different lengths and syntactic complexity [simple-short (SS), simple-long (SL), complex-long (CL), and faulty-long (FL) sentences]. Overall articulation rates of each sentence were measured and compared between groups. Practice effects were evaluated by comparing the articulation rates of the first three, middle four, and last three productions. Overall, the AWS had significantly slower articulation rates than AWNS across the four sentences. The longer sentences showed significantly slower articulation rates than the baseline sentence (SS). The articulation rates of the middle four and the last three productions were significantly faster than those of the first three productions of each sentence in both groups. The articulation rates of the SS, SL, and CL sentences indicated a consistent practice effect. The slower articulation rates of the AWS are consistent with a speech motor limitation. There was no interaction with linguistic complexity or practice, so a slower articulation rate may be a general feature of the speech of AWS. Both AWS and AWNS showed practice effects with faster articulation rates which may reflect a degree of adaptation to the stimuli.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.87-103
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• 2004

This study investigates Korean listeners' perception of the English stop epenthesis between the sonorant and fricative segments. Specifically this study investigates 1) how often English epenthetic stops are perceived by native Korean listeners, given the fact that Korean does not allow consonant clusters in codas; and 2) whether perception of the epenthetic stops, which are optional phonetic variations, not phonemes, could be improved without any explicit training. 120 English non-words with a mono-syllable structure of CVC1C2, where C1=/m, n, $\eta$, 1/, and C2=/s, $\theta$, $\int$/, were given to two groups of native Korean listeners, and they were asked to detect the target stops such as [p], [t], and [k]. The number of their responses were computed to determine how often listeners succeed in recovering the string of segments produced by the native English speaker. The results of the present study show that English epenthetic stops are poorly identified by native Korean listeners with low English proficiency, even in the case where stimuli with strong acoustic cues are provided with, but perception of epenthetic stops is closely related with listeners' English proficiency, showing the possibility of the improvement of perception. It further shows that perception of epenthetic stops shows asymmetry between coronal and non-coronal consonants.