• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.254-257
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• 2016

Background The postoperative speech outcomes of submucous cleft palate (SMCP) surgery are known to be poorer than those of other types of cleft palate. We attempted to objectively characterize the postoperative complications and speech outcomes of the surgical treatment of SMCP through a comparison with the outcomes of incomplete cleft palate (ICP). Methods This study included 53 SMCP patients and 285 ICP patients who underwent surgical repair from 1998 to 2015. The average age of the patients at the time of surgery was $3.9{\pm}1.9years$ for the SMCP patients and $1.3{\pm}0.9years$ for the ICP patients. A retrospective analysis was performed of the complications, the frequency of subsequent surgical correction for velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD), and speech outcomes. Results In both the SMCP and ICP patients, no cases of respiratory difficulty, bleeding, or wound disruption were noted. Delayed wound healing and fistula occurred in 18.9% and 5.7% of the SMCP patients and in 14% and 3.2% of the ICP patients, respectively. However, no statistically significant difference in either delayed wound healing or fistula occurrence was observed between the two groups. The rate of surgical correction for VPD in the SMCP group was higher than in the ICP group. In the subset of 26 SMCP patients and 62 ICP patients who underwent speech evaluation, the median speech score value was 58.8 in the SMCP group and 66 in the ICP group, which was a statistically significant difference. Conclusions SMCP and ICP were found to have similar complication rates, but SMCP had significantly worse speech outcomes.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.94-99
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• 1997

This paper describes a technique of probabilistic spectral subtraction which uses the knowledge of both noise and speech so as to reduce automatic speech recognition errors in noisy environments. Spectral subtraction method estimates a noise prototype in non-speech intervals and the spectrum of clean speech is obtained from the spectrum of noisy speech by subtracting this noise prototype. Thus noise can not be suppressed effectively using a single noise prototype in case the characteristics of the noise prototype are different from those of the noise contained in input noisy speech. To modify such a drawback, multiple noise prototypes are used in probabilistic subtraction method. In this paper, the probabilistic characteristics of noise and the knowledge of speech which is embedded in hidden Markov models trained in clean environments are used to suppress noise. Futhermore, dynamic feature parameters are considered as well as static feature parameters for effective noise suppression. The proposed method reduced error rates in the recognition of 50 Korean words. The recognition rate was 86.25% with the probabilistic subtraction, 72.75% without any noise suppression method and 80.25% with spectral subtraction at SNR(Signal-to-Noise Ratio) 10 dB.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.10B no.2
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• pp.213-218
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• 2003

In this paper, we implement a crossword game, which operate by speech. The CAA (Cross Array Algorithm) produces the crossword array randomly and automatically using an domain-dictionary. For producing the crossword array, we construct seven domain-dictionaries. The crossword game is operated by a mouse and a keyboard and is also operated by speech. For the user interface by speech, we use a speech recognizer and a speech synthesizer and this provide more comfortable interface to the user. The efficiency evaluation of CAA is performed by estimating the processing times of producing the crossword array and the generation ratio of the crossword array. As the results of the CAA's efficiency evaluation, the processing times is about 10ms and the generation ratio of the crossword array is about 50%. Also, the recognition rates were 95.5%, 97.6% and 96.2% for the window sizes of "$7{\times}7$", "$9{\times}9$," and "$11{\times}11$" respectively.}11$" respectively.vely.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.189-198
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the occupational performance of Korean workers with and without hearing loss and analyze the hearing-related difficulties in the working environment. Subjects and Methods: The Amsterdam checklist for hearing and work was used for the analyses and the occupational environments of the Korean workers were investigated. Out of 129 total participants, 86 workers experienced severe to profound hearing loss and 43 had the normal hearing ability. The hearing-impaired workers were recruited from two leading vocational centers and normal-hearing workers were their colleagues. Results: The hearing-impaired workers were found to take fewer sick leaves and exhibited higher rates of permanent job statuses compared to the normal-hearing workers. Workers with hearing loss rarely detected background sound; however, they could perceive reverberation more frequently. They felt more satisfied with their careers than the normal hearing workers as they received social support and needed to put their effort into hearing for most hearing activities. Furthermore, the effort in hearing increased with the increase in job demand, job control, social support, and career satisfaction. The working hours per week increased with the increase in age, education level, job demand, job control, and social support. Different trends were observed in 9 out of 12 variables while comparing the data from the present study with that obtained from the hearing-impaired workers of the Netherlands, indicating a large difference between countries. Conclusions: Although the hearing-impaired Korean workers operate diligently with good job positions, it is necessary to enhance their acoustic environment and provide them social support. Considering the cultural background of the hearing-impaired workers, the development of suitable vocational rehabilitation programs and specific questionnaires is strongly recommended worldwide.

• Korean Journal of Audiology
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.189-199
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• 2021

Background and Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the occupational performance of Korean workers with and without hearing loss and analyze the hearing-related difficulties in the working environment. Subjects and Methods: The Amsterdam checklist for hearing and work was used for the analyses and the occupational environments of the Korean workers were investigated. Out of 129 total participants, 86 workers experienced severe to profound hearing loss and 43 had the normal hearing ability. The hearing-impaired workers were recruited from two leading vocational centers and normal-hearing workers were their colleagues. Results: The hearing-impaired workers were found to take fewer sick leaves and exhibited higher rates of permanent job statuses compared to the normal-hearing workers. Workers with hearing loss rarely detected background sound; however, they could perceive reverberation more frequently. They felt more satisfied with their careers than the normal hearing workers as they received social support and needed to put their effort into hearing for most hearing activities. Furthermore, the effort in hearing increased with the increase in job demand, job control, social support, and career satisfaction. The working hours per week increased with the increase in age, education level, job demand, job control, and social support. Different trends were observed in 9 out of 12 variables while comparing the data from the present study with that obtained from the hearing-impaired workers of the Netherlands, indicating a large difference between countries. Conclusions: Although the hearing-impaired Korean workers operate diligently with good job positions, it is necessary to enhance their acoustic environment and provide them social support. Considering the cultural background of the hearing-impaired workers, the development of suitable vocational rehabilitation programs and specific questionnaires is strongly recommended worldwide.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.07a
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• pp.110-112
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• 2002

In this paper, a new technique for Thai isolated speech phoneme segmentation is proposed. Based on Thai speech feature, the isolated speech is first divided into low and high frequency components by using the technique of wavelet decomposition. Then the energy contour of each decomposed signal is computed and employed to locate phoneme boundary. To verity the proposed scheme, some experiments have been performed using 1,000 syllables data recorded from 10 speakers. The accuracy rates are 96.0, 89.9, 92.7 and 98.9% for initial consonant, vowel, final consonant and silence, respectively.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.55-64
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• 2004

This study was to determine the effects of a massage and oro-facial exercise program on spastic dysarthric patients' lip muscle function using an electromyogram (EMG). Three subjects with Spastic Dysarthria participated in the study. The surface electrodes were positioned on the Levator Labii Superior Muscle (LLSM), Depressor Labii Inferior Muscle (DLIM), and Orbicularis Oris Muscle (OOM). To examine lip muscle function improvement, the EMG signals were analyzed in terms of RMS (Root Mean Square) values and Median Frequency. In addition, the diadochokinetic movements and the rate of sentence reading were measured. The results revealed that the RMS values were decreased and the Median Frequency moved to a high frequency area. Diadochokinesis and sentence reading rates were improved.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.430-436
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• 1988

LSF(Line Spectral Frequency) derived from LPC has known as a very useful transmission parameter of speech signals, for it has a good linear interpolation characteristics and a low spectrum distortion at low bit rates coding. This paper presents that it is possible to extract directly the formant frequencies of speech signals from LSF parameter without application of FFT algorithm by comparing the distribution of LSF parameter with the frequency distribution of analysis filter. This paper suggests the advanced algorithm that results in improving the speed of convergence at analytic solution method. Also, for the flexibility of parameters, the process that transforms from LSF to LPC is presented.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.79-90
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of stuttering severity on articulation rate measured from different types of utterances in preschool children who stutter. Participants were 40 boys who stutter (CWS) and age-matched 10 boys who do not stutter (CWNS). CWS were sub-grouped based on the severity of their stuttering: 15 mild, 13 moderate, and 12 severe. Utterances were categorized as "overall utterance" including all utterances that children spoke and "fluent utterance" which did not contain any disfluencies. Utterances containing abnormal disfluencies were categorized as "SLD utterance" for CWS. The results revealed no significant difference among groups in any type of utterance. There were significant positive correlations in articulation rates between utterance types. Stuttering severity was not a factor for characterizing the articulation rate of each type of utterance. Also, current findings suggest that articulation rate may not predict speech motor control ability in preschool CWS.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.1190-1196
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• 2016

We propose a new bandpass filter (BPF)-based online channel normalization method to dynamically suppress channel distortion when the speech and channel noise components are unknown. In this method, an adaptive modulation frequency filter is used to perform channel normalization, whereas conventional modulation filtering methods apply the same filter form to each utterance. In this paper, we only normalize the two mel frequency cepstral coefficients (C0 and C1) with large dynamic ranges; the computational complexity is thus decreased, and channel normalization accuracy is improved. Additionally, to update the filter weights dynamically, we normalize the learning rates using the dimensional power of each frame. Our speech recognition experiments using the proposed BPF-based blind channel normalization method show that this approach effectively removes channel distortion and results in only a minor decline in accuracy when online channel normalization processing is used instead of batch processing