• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.8 no.3
• /
• pp.39-49
• /
• 2016

The present study examined the change of aerodynamic features after laryngomicrosurgery in patients with vocal polyps. Aerodynamic evaluation was performed in thirty-nine patients (15 males and 24 females) one week before surgery and four weeks after surgery. Evaluation protocols of vital capacity, maximum sustained phonation(MXPH), and voicing efficiency(VOFT) were used to collect 29 phonatory aerodynamic measures, requiring voice with a comfortable pitch and loudness. Statistically significant changes were found for phonation time and airflow values in the MXPH protocol, while changes were also found for airflow values, subglottal pressure values and acoustic resistance values in the VOFT protocol. Although phonation time was increased in both male and female patients, gender-dependent changes were found in airflow measurements. Men's phonation time increased with no difference in airflow rate, but women's phonation time increased with decreased airflow rate and lower subglottal pressure. The changes of aerodynamic features may be affected by women's self-perceived change for vocal attitude, which was reducing sense of vocal effort after surgery.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.73-83
• /
• 2004

Electromyographic studies of the cricopharyngeus muscle using hooked wire electrodes were performed in thyroidectomized patients. The shape of the cricoid cartilage and soft tissue thickness in the postcricoid area were evaluated during pitch elevation and pitch lowering using conventional neck lateral films. The cricopharyngeus muscle simultaneously activated in the initial task of speech and continuously activated. Its activity lessened in the interrogative stress contrast of sentence terminals and increased in the pitch lowered contrast of sentence terminal. On the radiologic findings the cricoid cartilage was tilted backward during high pitched phonation and tilted forward during low pitched phonation. The soft tissue thickness of postcricoid area was thicker at the low pitch than at high pitch. At low pitch the cricoid cartilage paralleled along the vertebral column. This result suggests that the bulging of cricopharyngeus muscle in contraction induce a thickened the postcricoid area thickened, and exert pressure anteriorly exerted on the cricoid cartilage. This contraction of the cricopharyngeus muscle may result in shortening the vocal fold and lowering pitch.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.8 no.2
• /
• pp.39-48
• /
• 2001

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in acoustic characteristics after drinking alcoholic beverages and singing in order to establish guidelines for vocal hygiene of both singers and non-singers. 21 university students (10 males and 11 females) vocalized /a/ before drinking, after drinking and after singing. Changes in vocal range and acoustic characteristics were analyzed by Dr. Speech 4.0 (Tigers Electronics). No significant difference was observed in vocal range following drinking. However, there was statistically significant changes in vocal range after singing. We may infer that appropriate amount of singing functioning as vocal warm-up, rather than drinking alone, resulted in improvement in their abilities to lengthen vocal folds. This is directly related to the ability to produce high-pitched sounds. Changes in jitter in female voices after singing was the only acoustic factor that was significant. Changes in Shimmer and NNE was not significant either after drinking nor singing. Subjects who were judged to perform better in singing were marked by minimum acoustic changes, which may due to their well-trained vocal fold function. The results of this study may address the necessity for vocal function exercises for the patients with neurogenic voice disorders including dysarthria. The need for more extensive research with a larger number of subjects including professional voice users is also addressed.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.117-124
• /
• 2013

This study examined that how precisely MFCC, LPC, energy, and pitch related parameters of the speech data, which have been used mainly for voice recognition system could predict the vocal emotion categories as well as dimensions of vocal emotion. 110 college students participated in this experiment. For more realistic emotional response, we used well defined emotion-inducing stimuli. This study analyzed the relationship between the parameters of MFCC, LPC, energy, and pitch of the speech data and four emotional dimensions (valence, arousal, intensity, and potency). Because dimensional approach is more useful for realistic emotion classification. It results in the best vocal cue parameters for predicting each of dimensions by stepwise multiple regression analysis. Emotion categorizing accuracy analyzed by LDA is 62.7%, and four dimension regression models are statistically significant, p<.001. Consequently, this result showed the possibility that the parameters could also be applied to spontaneous vocal emotion recognition.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.431-437
• /
• 2013

These days, many people live a healthy life, but suffering caused by chronic diseases. The main factors of chronic diseases are stress, blood pressure and obesity. Chronic diseases which are caused by high blood pressure are very high incidence. Therefore, this paper suggests the ways to prevent as diagnosis a phenomenon that occur rising in blood pressure consistently by analyzing the voice according th rising in blood pressure. For this, I studied some influence on voicing through rising in blood pressure by applying pitch that measure vocal fold vibration and intensity that measure voice energy size that is one of technique. That collect and analyse the voice after rising blood pressure by aerobic exercise.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.91-98
• /
• 2012

The purposes of this paper is to study the characteristics of compared to the speakers voice without depression and speakers with depression, and to propose a objective method for the measurement of the therapeutic effects as well as for diagnostics of depression based on the characteristics. The voice samples obtained from 11 female speakers with depression, aged from 20 to 40, diagnosed as having major depressive disorder by an psychiatrist were compared with those from 12 normal controls with matched sex, age, height, weight, education, smoking, and drinking. The voice samples are taken by a portable digital recorder(TASCAM DR-07, Japan) and analysed using the MDVP(Multi-Dimentional Voice Program) software module from CSL(Computerized Speech Lab, kay elemetrics, co, model 4100). The result of the investigation are as following. First, the average speaking fundamental frequency and loudness range of the speakers with depression group was statistically significantly lower than that of the control group. The pitch range of the control group was rather higher than that of the speakers with depression group, but without statistical significance. Overall speech rates have no statistical difference between two groups. Second, the average speaking fundamental frequency and loudness range have statistically significant negative correlation with Beck Depression Inventory, i. e. more severe depression exhibits lower average speaking fundamental frequency and loudness range. Other vocal parameters such as pitch range and overall speech rate have no statistically meaningful correlations with Beck Depression Inventory.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.15-25
• /
• 2003

A laryngograph was developed to measure the open and closed movements of vocal folds in our laboratory. This study attempted to evaluate its performance by comparing its glottal data with that of the original laryngograph. Ten normal Korean adults Participated in the experiment. Each subject produced a sustained vowel /a/ for about five seconds. This study compared f0 values, contact quotients of the duration of closed vocal folds over one glottal pulse, and area quotients of the closed over open vocal folds derived from glottal waves using both the original and new laryngographs. Results showed that the mean and standard deviation of the two laryngographs were almost comparable with a correlation coefficient 0.662 but minor systematic shift below those of the original laryngograph was observed. The absolute mean difference converged into 1 Hz, which indicates a possibility of adopting some threshold of rejecting inappropriate pitch values beyond a threshold value. The contact quotient of the normal subjects came out slightly over the 50% in a citation speech. Finally, the area quotient converged into 1. We will pursue further studies on the abnormal patients in the future.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.7 no.3
• /
• pp.153-165
• /
• 2000

During the phonation of voiced sounds, instants exist where the glottis is opened or closed, due to the periodic vibration of the vocal cord. When closed, this is called the glottal closure instant(GCI) or epoch.. The correct detection of the GCI is one of the important problems in speech processing for pitch detection, pitch synchronous analysis, and so on. Recently, it has been shown that the local maxima points of the wavelet transformed speech signal correspond to the GCIs of speech signal. In this paper, we investigate the accuracy of Gels estimated from this wavelet transformed speech signal. For this purpose we compare them with the negative peak points of the differentiated EGG signal that represents the actual GCIs of speech signal.

• The Journal of Information Systems
• /
• v.31 no.2
• /
• pp.137-158
• /
• 2022

Purpose As artificial intelligence voice agents (AIVA) have been widely adopted in services, diverse forms of their voices, which are the main interface with users, have been experimented. The purpose of this study is to examine how users evaluate vocal characteristics (gender, voice pitch, and voice pace) of AIVA, depending on prior research on human voice attractiveness. Design/methodology/approach This study employed an experimental survey which 516 participated in. Each participant was randomly assigned into one of eight situations (e.g., male - higher pitch - faster pace) and listened a AIVA voice sample, which introduce weather information. Next, a participant answered three consequence factors (attractiveness, trust, and anthropomorphism). Findings The results reveal that female voices of AIVA were perceived as more attractive and trustworthy than male voices. As far as voice pitch goes, while lower-pitch voices were preferred in female voices, higher-pitch voices were preferred in male voices. Finally, faster voices of AIVA were more attractive than slower voices.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
• /
• v.32 no.1
• /
• pp.9-14
• /
• 2021

Spasmodic dysphonia, essential tremor, and vocal tremor related with Parkinson's disease are different disorders showing fairly similar symptoms such as difficulty in the speech onset, and tremble in the voice. However, the cause and the resulting treatment of these diseases are different. Spasmodic dysphonia is a vocal disorder characterized by spasms of the laryngeal muscles during a speech, invoking broken, tense, forced, and strangled voice patterns. Such difficult-to-treat dysphonia disease is classified as central-origin-focal dystonia, of a yet unknown etiology. Its symptoms arise because of intermittent and involuntary muscle contractions during speech. Essential tremor, on the other hand, is characterized by a rhythmic laryngeal movement, resulting in alterations of rhythmic pitch and loudness during speech or even at rest. Severe cases of tremor may cause speech breaks like those of adductor spasmodic dysphonia. In the case of hyper-functional tension of vocal folds and accompanying tremors, it is necessary to distinguish these disorders from muscular dysfunction. A diversified assessment through the performance of specific speech tasks and a thorough understanding for the identification of the disorder is necessary for accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of patients with vocal tremors.