• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.3-10
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• 2013

This study proposes a method to measure mental fatigue using speech technology, which has not been used in previous research and is easier than existing complex and difficult methods. It aims at establishing a relationship between the human voice and mental fatigue based on experiments to measure the influence of mental fatigue on the human voice. Two monotonous tasks of simple calculation such as finding the sum of three one digit numbers were used to measure the feeling of monotony and two sets of subjective questionnaires were used to measure mental fatigue. While thirty subjects perform the experiment, responses to the questionnaire and speech data were collected. Speech features related to speech source and the vocal tract filter were extracted from the speech data. According to the results, speech parameters deeply related to mental fatigue are a mean and standard deviation of fundamental frequency, jitter, and shimmer. This study shows that speech technology is a useful method for measuring mental fatigue.

• Proceedings of the ESK Conference
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.339-345
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• 1997

This paper presents an experimental study of te relationship between sound parameters of synthesized voice warning and perceived (psychoacoustic) urgency. Twenty four subjcts participated in two experimental sessions to evaluate and quantify the effects of te voice parameters. Experiments showed that speech rate, fundamental frequency, fundamental frequency contour types and voice types have clear and consistent effect on perceived urgency. The results of these experiments can be applied to the improvement of existing auditory warning systems and the design of new systems.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.77-80
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• 2002

This study proposes phonation type index k as a descriptor of the overall spectral tilt, which is free from the effects of fundamental frequency and vowel quality. The newly proposed phonation type index k presents a simple and single measure of the overall spectral tilt. Phonation type index k can be applied to speech technology. It can also be used in diagnosing patients voice qualities in speech pathology. The distribution of phonation type index k, which is speaker-dependent, may be useful in forensic phonetics and voice recognition as an indicator of speaker identity.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.109-119
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• 2013

The purpose of this paper is to show the tendency of evaluators in the pronunciation evaluation of English utterances. The tendency was visualized using the evaluation model of English pronunciation proposed in [1]. One hundred fifty female university students and four evaluators participated in the study. Students read eight English sentences aloud as evaluators evaluated English pronunciation by their own criteria. The models based on their pronunciation evaluation proved to be efficient in showing their evaluation tendency in terms of the fundamental frequency, intensity, segmental durations, and segmental spectra as compared to those of the five native speakers of English chosen for building the models. However, human evaluators were not always consistent in their evaluation and sometimes gave conflicting scores to the same students.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.10-14
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• 2005

Background and Objectives : Vowels are characterized on the basis of formant patterns. The first formant(F1) is determined by high-low placement of the tongue, and the second formant (F2) by front-back placement of the tongue. The fundamental frequency(F0) of a soprano often exceed the normal frequency of the first formant. And the vocal intensity is boosted when F0 is high and a harmonic coincides with a formant. This is called a formant tuning. Experienced singers thus learned how to tune their formants over a resonable range by lowering the tongue to maximize their vocal intensity. So, the current study aimed to identify the formant tuning in one experienced soprano by comparing the first formants of vowel [i] in three different voice production : speech, ascending scale, and vocalize. Materials and Method : All voices recordings of vowel [i] in speech, ascending scale (from F4 note to A4 note), and vocalize(:Ridente la calam") were made with digital audio tape-corder in a sound treated room. And the captured data were analyzed by the long term average(LTA) power spectrum using the FFT algorithm of the Computerized Speech Lab(CSL, Kay elementrics, Model, 4300B). Results : Although the first formant of vowel [i] in speech was 238Hz, those of ascending scale [i] were 377Hz, 405Hz, 453Hz respectively in F4(349z), G4(392Hz), A4(440Hz) note, and 722Hz, 820Hz, 918Hz respectively in F5 (698Hz), G5(784Hz), A5(880Hz) note. In vocalize, first formants of [i] were 380Hz, 398Hz, 453Hz respectively in F4, G4, A4 note, and 720Hz, 821Hz, 890Hz respectively in F5, G5, A5 note. Conclusion : These results showed that the first formant of ascending scale and vocalize sustained higher frequency than fundamental frequency in high pitch. This finding implicates that the formant tuning of vowel [i] in ascending scale was also noted in vocalize.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.133-136
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to determine the correlation between the Average Fundamental Frequency, Fo-Tremor Frequency, Jitter, Shimmer, Amplitude Tremor Intensity Index, and Noise to Harmonic Ratio of MDVP and Fo, Fo Tremor, Jitter, Shimmer, Amp Tremor, HNR, and NNE of Dr. Speech. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used for analysis. The results showed that there was a strong correlation between Fo and Shimmer of both instruments. However, the remaining parameters did not show a significant correlation.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.163-171
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• 2018

A mixed dysarthria with combinations of hypokinetic, ataxic, and spastic components is a common clinical feature of multiple system atrophy (MSA). Due to the rapid progress of dysarthria after diagnosis, people with MSA experience difficulty with verbal communication, which eventually affects their quality of life negatively. In this study, SPEAK $OUT!^{(R)}$, an intensive 1:1 treatment of dysarthria for improving functional communicative ability, was provided to twelve people with MSA. To evaluate the efficacy of SPEAK $OUT!^{(R)}$ in people with MSA, aerodynamic, acoustic, and perceptual analyses were conducted. Pre-and post-therapy data included maximum phonation time, vocal intensity, and fundamental frequency during /a/ sustained phonation and passage reading; frequency range between high /a/ and low /a/ phonation; jitter, shimmer, and HNR for vocal quality; speech rate during passage reading; and perceptual evaluation scores for articulation precision and intonation. The participants achieved statistically significant improvement in vocal intensity, pitch range, vocal quality, speech rate, and speech intelligibility. In conclusion, SPEAK $OUT!^{(R)}$ is a feasible treatment for people with MSA to efficaciously improve their speech ability.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.105-116
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• 2004

The fundamental frequency of a vowel is known to be affected by the identity of the preceding consonant. The general agreement is that strong consonants trigger higher F0 than weak consonants. However, there has been a disagreement on the shape of this segmentally affected F0 contours. Some studies report that shapes of contours are differentiated based on the consonant type, but others regard this observation as misleading. This research attempts to resolve this controversy by investigating shapes and slopes of F0 contours of Korean word level speech data produced by four male speakers. Instead of entirely relying on traditional human intuition and judgment, I employed an automatic F0 contour analysis technique known as tilt parameterisation (Taylor 2000). After necessary manipulation of an F0 contour of each data token, various parameters are collapsed into a single tilt value which directly indicates the shape of the contour. The result, in terms of statistical inference, shows that it is not viable to conclude that the type of consonant is significantly related to the shape of F0 contour. A supplementary measurement is also made to see if the slope of each contour bears meaningful information. Unlike shapes themselves, slopes are suspected to be practically more practical for consonantal differentiation, although confirmation is required through further refined experiments.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.251-260
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• 2007

The structure changes of the vocal folds are related to the fundamental frequencies (F0). In other words, the increasing in vocal fold length and thickness makes the result of dropping in the F0 during the mutational period. The purpose of this study was to investigate F0 of normal children's voice in mutational period. 360 children (180 boys and 180 girls) were participated in this experiment. The age was ranged from 11 to 16 years. The subjects were asked to produce sustained comer vowels (/a/ /i/ /u/) five times each and the data were analyzed using the MDVP of CSL. The result shows that the F0 are considerably decreased with age and reach to adults' F0 by 16 years in most cases. In particular, the F0 of male subjects were rapidly decreased between the ages from 12 ($226.98\;{\pm}\;19\;Hz$) to 13 years ($169.3\;{\pm}\;25\;Hz$), while the F0 of female subjects were slowly changed from the later period of 12 to 16 years old. This result may be used by the meaning of guideline and lead the basic data to differentiate between normal voice and voice disorder.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.15-22
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• 2016

This study aims to examine whether the fundamental frequency (F0) varies depending on languages or distinguishes between L1 (first language) and L2 (second language) speech and whether the type of materials which vary in control of consonant voicing affects the use of F0-especially, mean F0. For this purpose, we compared productions of two languages produced by Korean L2 learners of English to those of Korean-English bilingual speakers. Twelve Korean L2 speakers of English and twelve Korean-English bilingual speakers participated in this study. The subjects read aloud 22 declarative sentences-balanced and unbalanced-once in English and once in Korean. Mean F0 of Korean was higher than that of English for both speaker groups, and the difference in the value of mean F0 between the Korean and English sentences was different depending on the type of materials that the participants read. With regard to F0 range, the L2 speakers had a larger F0 range in English than in Korean; however, the effect of language on F0 range was not statistically significant for the bilingual speakers. These results indicate that language-specific properties may affect the use of F0, in particular, mean F0.