• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.517-523
• /
• 2000

Nasopharyngeal closure is a sphincter mechanism between the activities of the soft palate, lateral pharyngeal wall and the posterior pharyngeal wall, which divides the oral cavity and the nasal cavity. It participates in physiological activities such as swallowing, breathing and pronunciation. In case of an error in this mechanism, it is called a nasopharyngeal incompetence. The causes of this error are defects in (1) length, function, posture of the soft palate (2) depth and width of the nasopharynx, (3) activity of the posterior and lateral pharyngeal wall. The purpose of this study is to analyze the nasopharynx of cleft palate patients using lateral cephalograms and at the same time, evaluate the degree of hypernasality of each vowels to find its relationship with nasopharyngeal incompetence. The following results were obtained: 1. The length of the soft palate was markedly short than normal. 2. The adequate ratio was smaller than the normal value. 3. As the adequate ratio decreased, when articulating vowels, anatomic mVPI increased. 4. When articulating each vowels, anatomic VPI was in proportion with the degree of hypernasality. 5. The degree of hypernasality was greater in high vowels(/i/, /u/) than low vowel(/a/). From the above results, it can be concluded that in cleft palate patients, lateral cephalograms can be used effectively in diagnosing and evaluating nasopharyngeal incompetence. The anatomic structure of the nasopharynx has close relation to the degree of hypernasality.

• Journal of the korean academy of Pediatric Dentistry
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.95-111
• /
• 1997

The human speech organ consists of respiration system (lung, larynx), phonation system (vocal cord), articulation system (esophagus, pharynx, uvula, teeth, gingiva, palate, tongue, lip) and resonating system(oral cavity, nasal cavity, paranasal sinus). Because teeth are components of the articulation system, it has been reported that the persons with abnormally positioned teeth generally have abnormal occlusion and pronunciation. In this study, using /ㅅ(s)/, the most commonly mispronunced consonant in children with malocclusion, and the seven single vowels, /사(sa), 서($s\delta$), 소(so), 수(su), 스($s\omega$), 시(si), 세(se)/ and / ㅏ(a), ㅓ($\delta$), ㅗ(o), ㅜ(u), ㅡ($\omega$), 1(i), ㅔ(e)/ were recorded and analyzed using speech analysis program on computer by measuring formants and compared them for investigating the differences in pronunciation in children with Angle's class I occlusions and those with Angle's class II div.1 malocclusion. The result were as follows: 1. In the Angle's Class II div.1 group, there were no significant differences in F1 of all recorded sounds as compared with Angle's Class I group(p>0.05). 2. In the consonants, there were significant differences in F2 of /스($s\omega$)/ and F2/F1 ratio of /사(sa), 서($s\delta$), 시(si)/ between the two group(p<0.05). 3. In the vowels, there were significant differences F2/F1 ratio of /ㅓ($\delta$)/(p<0.05) and no significant differences in F2/F1 ratio between two group(p>0.05). 4. In the consonants, there were significant differences in F2 and F2/F1 ratio when succeeding vowels were high or low, and F2/F1 ratio when front in accordance with tongue position (p<0.05). 5. In the vowels, there were no significant differences in formant in accordance with tongue position(p>0.05)

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.191-205
• /
• 2000

The purpose of this study was undertaken to determine the effects of orthognathic surgery on speech. The hyposis stated herein is that functional behaviors of the dentofacial complex, such as speech production, may be adversely affected by deviations of a structural nature(especially, Class III malocclusion). Twenty adults with Class III malocclusion(13 female and 7 male) were studied preoperative, immediate postoperative and either 6 or 12 months postoperative lateral cephalograms. They had mandibular prognathism and had undergone mandible setback operation. The position of tongue, soft palate(Uvula), hyoid bone, respiratory track width, and pharyngeal depth were assessed on lateral cephalograms with 23 cephalometric variables, ANOVA, Paired t-tests and Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient tests were used to evalute the operative changes in all cephalometric parameters. A experienced speech and language pathologists performed narrow phonetic transcriptions of tape-recorded words and sentences produced by each of the ninth patients and the recording tapes were analyzed by phonetic computer program(Computerized Speech Lab(CSL) Model 4300BI(U.S.A.)) These judges also recorded their ratings of each patient's overall consonants, hypernasality, hyponasality, and articulation proficiency. The results obtained are as follows; 1. There were significant changes in distance of posterior pharyngeal wall to tongue (TI-TW2, TS-TW3) after the surgery at 6 months postoperatively(each p<0.01 p<0.05). 2. The posterior tongue point(TI, TS, PPT) moved posteriorly after surgery and remained to its changed position at 6 months postoperatively(p<0.05). The displacement of tongue was correlated with the movement of mandibular setback amount(p<0.05). The hyoid bone moved posteriorly superiorly after immediate postoperative period. There was significant changes in hyoid bone movement after immediated postoperative period(p<0.05), but returned to its original position during the follow-up period(p>0.05) 3. The soft palate was displaced posteriorly superiorly after immediated operative period and remained to its changed position at 6 months postoperatively(p<0.05). ANS-PNS-SPT angle increasing, PPU-PPPo distance narrowing was showed after surgery, and remained its appearance 6 months postoperatively(p<0.05). 4. There were significant changes in formant value and squre diagram of vowel sound after the orthognathic surgery and the follow-up period. There were significant changes in /ㅅ/sound and posterior tongue sound. 5. The posterior movement of tongue and the posteriosuperior movement of soft palate was correlated with mandibular setback amount after orthognathic surgery. On the vowel squre diagram, the author found that the place of articulation after operation moved downward, backward, upward. 6. In assessing speech abnormalities, dental occlusion should be considered as a contributing factor. The vast majority of subjects with preoperative misarticulations eliminated or reduced their errors following orthognathic surgery. There was significant difference in speech impovement between pre- and postoperation.

• Smart Media Journal
• /
• v.11 no.11
• /
• pp.17-24
• /
• 2022

With the spread of smart speakers based on voice recognition technology and deep learning technology, not only non-disabled people, but also the blind or physically handicapped can easily control home appliances such as lights and TVs through voice by linking home network services. This has greatly improved the quality of life. However, in the case of speech-impaired people, it is impossible to use the useful services of the smart speaker because they have inaccurate pronunciation due to articulation or speech disorders. In this paper, we propose a personalized voice classification technique for the speech-impaired to use for some of the functions provided by the smart speaker. The goal of this paper is to increase the recognition rate and accuracy of sentences spoken by speech-impaired people even with a small amount of data and a short learning time so that the service provided by the smart speaker can be actually used. In this paper, data augmentation and one cycle learning rate optimization technique were applied while fine-tuning ResNet18 model. Through an experiment, after recording 10 times for each 30 smart speaker commands, and learning within 3 minutes, the speech classification recognition rate was about 95.2%.