Future Prospects of the Application of the Infant Cry in the Medicine

Babies cry for the same reason adults talk: to let others know about their needs or problems. The infant cry contains, besides, more information about the baby, particularly, information about the health of the infant (e.g. airway affections cause different sounds from the original). Thus, we can conclude on diseases from the modified cry signal. In this study 35 infants with hearing disorders and 35 healthy babies are tested. The author compares several attributes of the cry in the time domain between the two groups

Acoustic Analysis of Crying Signal in Infants with Disabling Hearing Impairment

Objective: Crying is a multimodal, dynamic behavior and the first way to communicate. Early identification of hearing impairment is critical for prevention of speech and language disorders. The present study aimed to assess the acoustic features of infant's cry signals to find possible differences between two groups including hearing-impaired (HI) infants and normal hearing (NH) control. Methods: The data were collected from 34 (17 HI, 17 NH) infants under 2 months of age. Recording of the infant cry signals was collected during the examination of the Babinski reflex and was subsequently submitted for acoustic analysis. The total duration of the recording for each infant was approximately 30 seconds. The acoustical features included fundamental frequency (F0), formants (F1, F2, and F3), intensity, jitter, shimmer, ratios of F2/F1 and F3/F1, ratio of harmonic to noise, and voice break. The recording device was an Olympus ws-321M voice recorder with 44,100 Hz sampling frequency in the stereo form. Praat analysis software (version 27, 3, 5) was used to analyze the crying signals. The data were then statistically analyzed using SPSS version 21. Results: Acoustic analysis of the crying signals showed that HI infants have lower intensity and higher F0 and voice break than NH infants. However, the other differences were not statistically significant. Conclusion: The results of the present study demonstrated that the acoustic components including F0, intensity, and voice break may be used as indices to discriminate HI infants from NH infants under 2 months of age. These findings can be increased our knowledge concerning the functional mechanisms of the vocal organ in HI and NH infants. © 201

Application of Pattern Recognition Techniques to the Classification of Full-Term and Preterm Infant Cry

Objectives: Scientific and clinical advances in perinatology and neonatology have enhanced the chances of survival of preterm and very low weight neonates. Infant cry analysis is a suitable noninvasive complementary tool to assess the neurologic state of infants particularly important in the case of preterm neonates. This article aims at exploiting differences between full-term and preterm infant cry with robust automatic acoustical analysis and data mining techniques. Study design: Twenty-two acoustical parameters are estimated in more than 3000 cry units from cry recordings of 28 full-term and 10 preterm newborns. Methods: Feature extraction is performed through the BioVoice dedicated software tool, developed at the Biomedical Engineering Lab, University of Firenze, Italy. Classification and pattern recognition is based on genetic algorithms for the selection of the best attributes. Training is performed comparing four classifiers: Logistic Curve, Multilayer Perceptron, Support Vector Machine, and Random Forest and three different testing options: full training set, 10-fold cross-validation, and 66% split. Results: Results show that the best feature set is made up by 10 parameters capable to assess differences between preterm and full-term newborns with about 87% of accuracy. Best results are obtained with the Random Forest method (receiver operating characteristic area, 0.94). Conclusions: These 10 cry features might convey important additional information to assist the clinical specialist in the diagnosis and follow-up of possible delays or disorders in the neurologic development due to premature birth in this extremely vulnerable population of patients. The proposed approach is a first step toward an automatic infant cry recognition system for fast and proper identification of risk in preterm babies

Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications

The MAVEBA Workshop proceedings, held on a biannual basis, collect the scientific papers presented both as oral and poster contributions, during the conference. The main subjects are: development of theoretical and mechanical models as an aid to the study of main phonatory dysfunctions, as well as the biomedical engineering methods for the analysis of voice signals and images, as a support to clinical diagnosis and classification of vocal pathologies

The Perception of Stress Pattern in Young Cochlear Implanted Children: An EEG Study

Children with sensorineural hearing loss may (re)gain hearing with a cochlear implant—a device that transforms sounds into electric pulses and bypasses the dysfunctioning inner ear by stimulating the auditory nerve directly with an electrode array. Many implanted children master the acquisition of spoken language successfully, yet we still have little knowledge of the actual input they receive with the implant and specifically which language sensitive cues they hear. This would be important however, both for understanding the flexibility of the auditory system when presented with stimuli after a (life-) long phase of deprivation and for planning therapeutic intervention. In rhythmic languages the general stress pattern conveys important information about word boundaries. Infant language acquisition relies on such cues and can be severely hampered when this information is missing, as seen for dyslexic children and children with specific language impairment. Here we ask whether children with a cochlear implant perceive differences in stress patterns during their language acquisition phase and if they do, whether it is present directly following implant stimulation or if and how much time is needed for the auditory system to adapt to the new sensory modality. We performed a longitudinal ERP study, testing in bimonthly intervals the stress pattern perception of 17 young hearing impaired children (age range: 9–50 months; mean: 22 months) during their first 6 months of implant use. An additional session before the implantation served as control baseline. During a session they passively listened to an oddball paradigm featuring the disyllable “baba,” which was stressed either on the first or second syllable (trochaic vs. iambic stress pattern). A group of age-matched normal hearing children participated as controls. Our results show, that within the first 6 months of implant use the implanted children develop a negative mismatch response for iambic but not for trochaic deviants, thus showing the same result as the normal hearing controls. Even congenitally deaf children show the same developing pattern. We therefore conclude (a) that young implanted children have early access to stress pattern information and (b) that they develop ERP responses similar to those of normal hearing children

Acoustic and Respiratory Characteristics of Infant Vocalization

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore vibratory regime of infant phonation. The first study examined 1) differences in overall levels of acoustic and respiratory variables between different regimes and 2) differences in relationships between the acoustic and respiratory variables among regimes. The second study examined 3) the acoustic and respiratory ranges of modal phonation with respect to other regimes and 4) the range of modal phonation among infants of different ages. Two datasets were used in the study. Dataset I was acquired from eight infants of ages 8-18 months, and Dataset II from one infant of ages 4-6 months. Their vocalizations and respiratory movements were recorded during adult-interaction. Phonated segments were identified through waveform, spectrogram, and auditory inspection, and categorized into six mutually exclusive regimes (modal, pulse, loft, subharmonics, biphonation, and chaos). For each regime segment, the following measurements were made: fundamental frequency (F0), sound pressure level (SPL), expiratory slope, and relative lung volume at regime initiation. A series of linear mixed-effects model analysis and analysis of variance revealed differences in mean F0 between regimes, mean SPL, and mean. Correlations between the acoustic and respiratory variables differed among regimes, indicating their relationships were regime-dependent. The most revealing findings were that regime categories readily distributed into different regions of the intensity-frequency space, and that F0 ranges of modal regime tended to decrease with increasing age. In addition to modal, pulse, and loft distributing around the mid, low, and high intensity-frequency regions, respectively, biphonation and subharmonics were found between modal and loft ranges. The upper end of F0 range for pulse was much higher in infants compared to adults, however, biphonation and subharmonics rarely occurred between pulse and modal ranges. A range of modal F0 was about 500 Hz for the young infant in the vocal expansion stage, and about 200 Hz for older infants in the (post-)canonical stage. Although the results are tentative, this finding suggests that F0 variability decreases with age and phonation becomes more restricted to a lower end of an F0 range

Towards an Integrative Information Society: Studies on Individuality in Speech and Sign

The flow of information within modern information society has increased rapidly over the last decade. The major part of this information flow relies on the individual’s abilities to handle text or speech input. For the majority of us it presents no problems, but there are some individuals who would benefit from other means of conveying information, e.g. signed information flow. During the last decades the new results from various disciplines have all suggested towards the common background and processing for sign and speech and this was one of the key issues that I wanted to investigate further in this thesis. The basis of this thesis is firmly within speech research and that is why I wanted to design analogous test batteries for widely used speech perception tests for signers – to find out whether the results for signers would be the same as in speakers’ perception tests. One of the key findings within biology – and more precisely its effects on speech and communication research – is the mirror neuron system. That finding has enabled us to form new theories about evolution of communication, and it all seems to converge on the hypothesis that all communication has a common core within humans. In this thesis speech and sign are discussed as equal and analogical counterparts of communication and all research methods used in speech are modified for sign. Both speech and sign are thus investigated using similar test batteries. Furthermore, both production and perception of speech and sign are studied separately. An additional framework for studying production is given by gesture research using cry sounds. Results of cry sound research are then compared to results from children acquiring sign language. These results show that individuality manifests itself from very early on in human development. Articulation in adults, both in speech and sign, is studied from two perspectives: normal production and re-learning production when the apparatus has been changed. Normal production is studied both in speech and sign and the effects of changed articulation are studied with regards to speech. Both these studies are done by using carrier sentences. Furthermore, sign production is studied giving the informants possibility for spontaneous speech. The production data from the signing informants is also used as the basis for input in the sign synthesis stimuli used in sign perception test battery. Speech and sign perception were studied using the informants’ answers to questions using forced choice in identification and discrimination tasks. These answers were then compared across language modalities. Three different informant groups participated in the sign perception tests: native signers, sign language interpreters and Finnish adults with no knowledge of any signed language. This gave a chance to investigate which of the characteristics found in the results were due to the language per se and which were due to the changes in modality itself. As the analogous test batteries yielded similar results over different informant groups, some common threads of results could be observed. Starting from very early on in acquiring speech and sign the results were highly individual. However, the results were the same within one individual when the same test was repeated. This individuality of results represented along same patterns across different language modalities and - in some occasions - across language groups. As both modalities yield similar answers to analogous study questions, this has lead us to providing methods for basic input for sign language applications, i.e. signing avatars. This has also given us answers to questions on precision of the animation and intelligibility for the users – what are the parameters that govern intelligibility of synthesised speech or sign and how precise must the animation or synthetic speech be in order for it to be intelligible. The results also give additional support to the well-known fact that intelligibility in fact is not the same as naturalness. In some cases, as shown within the sign perception test battery design, naturalness decreases intelligibility. This also has to be taken into consideration when designing applications. All in all, results from each of the test batteries, be they for signers or speakers, yield strikingly similar patterns, which would indicate yet further support for the common core for all human communication. Thus, we can modify and deepen the phonetic framework models for human communication based on the knowledge obtained from the results of the test batteries within this thesis.Siirretty Doriast

Relationship of Parent-Child Temperament and Parent Responsivity on Language Outcomes in Autistic Children

The purpose of this quantitative, correlational study was to investigate the relationship between parent and child temperament on language acquisition as well as the relationship between parent responsivity and parent-child temperament in autistic children. Participants were 25 parent-child dyads of autistic children between the ages 2 and 8 years of age (18 boys, 7 girls). Parents provided ratings of their temperament and their child’s temperament. The child’s expressive language, receptive language, and receptive vocabulary were assessed by a licensed speech-language pathologist. Parents’ engagement with their children were rated by undergraduate research assistants blind to the study using a Likert rating scale for parent-responsive behaviors. There were several significant findings in the 2-year-old and 3- to 6-year-old age groups. In the 2-year-old age group, significant correlation coefficients were found for the associations between adult effortful control and the autistic child’s language, child extraversion and their language, parent responsivity and adult extraversion and negative affect, and finally parent responsivity and child effortful control. Then in the 3- to 6-year age group, there was a significant positive correlation between the autistic child’s negative affect and their expressive language. Lastly, in the 7- to 8-year age group, there was a near significant association between adult effortful control and the autistic child’s language. Overall, these findings indicate the importance of identifying the parent's and child's temperament and the impact both have on the autistic child’s language and their parent’s responsive behaviors to enhance the therapy model and improve relationships to maximize the child’s ability to acquire language