• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.33-42
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• 2012

Background and Objectives : Dysarthria refers to speech disorder that causes difficulties in speech communication due to paralysis, muscle weakening, and incoordination of speech muscle mechanism caused by damaged central or peripheral nerve system. Pitch, strength and speed are influenced by dysarthria during detonation due to difficulties in muscle control. As evaluation items, alternate motion rate and diadochokinesis have been commonly used, and articulation is also an important evaluation items. The purpose of this study is to find acoustic characteristics on sound production of dysarthria patients. Materials and Methods : Research subjects have been selected as 20 dysarthria patients and 20 subjects for control group, and voice sample was composed of bilabial, alveolar sound, and velar sound in diadochokinetic rate, while consonant articulation test was composed of bilabial plosive, alveolar plosive, velar plosive. Analysis items were composed of 1) speaking rate, energy, articulation time of diadochokinesis, 2) voice onset time (VOT), total duration (TD), vowel duration (VD), hold of plosives. Results and Conclusions : The number of diadochokinetic rate of dysarthria was smaller than control group. Both control group and dysarthria group was highly presented in the order of /t/>/p/>/k/. Minimum energy range per cycle during diadochokinetic rate of dysarthria group was smaller than control group, and presented statistical significance in /p/, /k/, /ptk/. Maximum energy range was larger than control group, and presented statistical significance in /t/, /ptk/. Articulation time, gap, total articulation time during diadochokinetic rate of dysarthria group was longer than control group and presented statistical significance. The articulation time was presented in both control group and dysarthria group in the order of /k/>/t/>/p/, while Gap was presented in the order of /p/>/t/>/k/ for control group and /p/>/k/>/t/ for dysarthria group. VOT, TD, VD regarding plosives of dysarthria group were longer than control group. Hold showed large deviation compared to control group that had appeared due to declined larynx and articulation organ motility.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.40-46
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• 2011

Background and Objectives : Vocal fold bowing is an organic voice disorder that is associated with an abnormal structure of the vocal folds whereas vocal fold polyp is a functional voice disorder caused by an abnormal use of the vocal folds. Both types of vocal folds share a common property in that they make one's voice breathy or strained. The purpose of this study is to compare voice from two types of vocal folds and to offer information of clinical importance. Materials and Method: Vocal fold bowing and vocal fold polyp groups consisted of 7 male subjects, respectively. All subjects recorded /a/ in the state of measuring MPT (maximum phonation time), repeating 3 times, by a voice recorder (48 kHz sampling rate; 24 bit quantization). They answered the questions of K-VHI. Time domain parameters (such as perturbation parameters including HNR, Jitter, etc.) were calculated for the whole duration of /a/ and those of the frequency domain were measured in initial 40 ms and stable 40 ms of /a/, respectively. Mann-Whitney V-test was used for the time domain parameters and K-VHI survey, and Wilcoxon signed rank test was applied to the frequency domain parameters (H1, H2, H1-H2). Results: For K-VHI survey and the time domain analysis, there was no significant difference between bowing and polyp group. For frequency domain analysis, H1 and H2 showed a significantly different result between two groups. Vocal fold bowing group has longer duration and lower intensity than that of vocal fold polyp group in the 'aspirated interval', which could be observable prior to ordinary vowel oscillation. Conclusion: Both groups seem to show breathy voice. This could be referred on the basis of the value of H1-H2. The K-VHI survey says that subjects with vocal fold bowing feel more uncomfortable than subjects with vocal fold polyp.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.45-51
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• 2023

Voice issues such as voice weakness that arise with age can have social and emotional impacts, potentially leading to feelings of isolation and depression. This study aimed to investigate the changes in acoustic characteristics resulting from aging, focusing on voice quality and spoken fluency. To this end, tasks involving sustained vowel phonation and paragraph reading were recorded for 20 elderly and 20 young participants. Voice-quality-related variables, including F0, jitter, shimmer, and Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP) values, were analyzed along with speech-fluency-related variables, such as average syllable duration (ASD), articulation rate (AR), and speech rate (SR). The results showed that in voice quality-related measurements, F0 was higher for the elderly and voice quality was diminished, as indicated by increased jitter, shimmer, and lower CPP levels. Speech fluency analysis also demonstrated that the elderly spoke more slowly, as indicated by all ASD, AR, and SR measurements. Correlation analysis between voice quality and speech fluency showed a significant relationship between shimmer and CPP values and between ASD and SR values. This suggests that changes in spoken fluency can be identified early by measuring the variations in voice quality. This study further highlights the reciprocal relationship between voice quality and spoken fluency, emphasizing that deterioration in one can affect the other.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.101-113
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• 2020

This study aimed to explore how effective explicit form-focused instruction (FFI) is in teaching the schwa vowel /ə/ to EFL students in a classroom setting. The participants were 25 female high school students, who were divided into the experimental group (n=13) and the control group (n=12). One female American also participated in the study for a speech sample as a reference. The treatment, which involves shadowing model pronunciation by the researcher and a free text-to-speech software and the researcher's feedback in a private session, was given to the control group over a month and a half. The speech samples, for which the participants read the 14 polysyllabic stimulus words followed by the sentences containing the words, were collected before and after the treatment. The paired-samples t test and non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used for analysis. The results showed that the participants of the experimental group in the post-test reduced the duration of the schwa by around 40 percent compared to the pre-test. However, little effect was found in approximating the participants' distribution patterns of /ə/ measured by the F1/F2 formant frequencies to the reference point, which was 539 Hz (F1) by 1797 Hz (F2). The findings of this study suggest that explicit FFI with multiple repetitions and corrective feedback is partly effective in teaching pronunciation.