Аннотация и учет речевых сбоев в задаче автоматического распознавания спонтанной украинской речи

В статье рассматривается проблема влияния речевых сбоев на процесс автоматического распознавания спонтанной украинской речи на примере автоматизированного стенографа для получения текста стенограммы из звукового файла. Записанная фонограмма обрабатывается системой распознавания слитной речи многих дикторов из больших словарей (больше 10 тыс. слов). Рассматриваются и систематизируются основные типы речевых сбоев в спонтанной украинской речи. На основе учета речевых сбоев и коррекции стенограммы производится очистка данных, что позволяет улучшать показатели надёжности распознавания речи.У статті розглядається проблема впливу мовних збоїв на процес автоматичного розпізнавання спонтанної української мови на прикладі автоматизованого стенографа для отримання тексту стенограми із звукового файла. Записана фонограма обробляється системою розпізнавання злитого мовлення багатьох дикторів з великих словників (більше 10 тис. слів). Розглядаються і систематизуються основні типи мовних збоїв спонтанної української мови. На основі врахування мовних збоїв та корекції стенограми робиться очищення даних, що дозволяє покращувати показники надійності розпізнавання мови.The paper is about the problem of disfluencies effect on the processing of automatic recognition of spontaneous Ukrainian speech. It is considered by example of a computerized stenographer. It makes the text from sound records based on the speech recognition system aided by human. Large vocabulary (more than 10K words) continuous speech recognition system for a number of speakers is used to process recorded files. The paper investigates and classifies the basic types of disfluencies in spontaneous Ukrainian speech. On the basis of disfluencies annotation and transcript correction the cleaning of the speech data was provided. It was made to improve the recognition rate in automatic speech recognition possible

La eficacia a largo plazo de un programa de intervención basada en la atención plena (MBI) para la tartamudez: un estudio de caso

A mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) to address emotional factors that may negatively impact the fluency of the subjects was implemented. A MBI consisting of 5 weekly 2-h sessions was designed and applied to two stuttering cases. The goals were to lower stuttering and to reduce anxiety through the acquisition of mindfulness skills. Participants were asked to video-record a speaking task and to fill out anxiety and mindfulness skills self-reports pre and post-intervention. Both participants diminished stuttering error rates from severe (participant 1) and moderate (participant 2) to mild. Participant 2, who showed high pre-treatment anxiety, showed a significant reduction. A year-follow-up revealed that therapeutic gains in anxiety, mindfulness skills, and stuttering were successfully maintained in both participants. This is the first study focused on emotional aspects of stuttering showing long-term improvements through a MBI. MBI programs could serve as a promising complement for stuttering treatments.Se utilizó una intervención basada en mindfulness (MBI) para abordar los factores emocionales que pueden afectar negativamente a la fluidez de los sujetos a través de un estudio de caso. Se diseñó un MBI que constaba de 5 sesiones semanales de 2 horas y se aplicó a dos casos de tartamudez. Los objetivos eran dismunuir la tartamudez y reducir los síntomas de ansiedad mediante la adquisición de habilidades de atención plena. Se pidió a los participantes que grabaran en video una tarea oral y que cumplimentaran los autoinformes de ansiedad y de habilidades de atención plena antes y después de la intervención. En ambos participantes disminuyó el índice de errores de tartamudeo de grave (participante 1) y moderado (participante 2) a leve. El participante 2, que mostró una elevada ansiedad previa al tratamiento, mostró una reducción significativa. Al año de seguimiento los beneficios terapéuticos en ansiedad, habilidades de atención plena y tartamudeo se mantuvieron con éxito en ambos participantes. Se trata del primer estudio centrado en los aspectos emocionales de la tartamudez que muestra mejoras a largo plazo a través de un MBI. Por lo tanto, los programas MBI podrían servir como complemento prometedor a los tratamientos de tartamudezJennifer E. Moreno-Jiménez was granted a predoctoral fellowship, FPI-UAM 2017 of the Universidad Autónoma de Madri

Reading Fluency in Children and Adolescents Who Stutter

Speech fluency is a major challenge for young persons who stutter. Reading aloud, in particular, puts high demands on fluency, not only regarding online text decoding and articulation, but also in terms of prosodic performance. A written text has to be segmented into a number of prosodic phrases with appropriate breaks. The present study examines to what extent reading fluency (decoding ability, articulation rate, and prosodic phrasing) may be altered in children (9–12 years) and adolescents (13–17 years) who stutter compared to matched control participants. Read speech of 52 children and adolescents who do and do not stutter was analyzed. Children and adolescents who stutter did not differ from their matched control groups regarding reading accuracy and articulation rate. However, children who stutter produced shorter pauses than their matched peers. Results on prosodic phrasing showed that children who stutter produced more major phrases than the control group and more intermediate phrases than adolescents who stutter. Participants who stutter also displayed a higher number of breath pauses. Generally, the number of disfluencies during reading was related to slower articulation rates and more prosodic boundaries. Furthermore, we found age-related changes in general measures of reading fluency (decoding ability and articulation rate), as well as the overall strength of prosodic boundaries and number of breath pauses. This study provides evidence for developmental stages in prosodic phrasing as well as for alterations in reading fluency in children who stutter

Experiments on Detection of Voiced Hesitations in Russian Spontaneous Speech

The development and popularity of voice-user interfaces made spontaneous speech processing an important research field. One of the main focus areas in this field is automatic speech recognition (ASR) that enables the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. However, ASR systems often work less efficiently for spontaneous than for read speech, since the former differs from any other type of speech in many ways. And the presence of speech disfluencies is its prominent characteristic. These phenomena are an important feature in human-human communication and at the same time they are a challenging obstacle for the speech processing tasks. In this paper we address an issue of voiced hesitations (filled pauses and sound lengthenings) detection in Russian spontaneous speech by utilizing different machine learning techniques, from grid search and gradient descent in rule-based approaches to such data-driven ones as ELM and SVM based on the automatically extracted acoustic features. Experimental results on the mixed and quality diverse corpus of spontaneous Russian speech indicate the efficiency of the techniques for the task in question, with SVM outperforming other methods

The Use of Speech Disfluency as an Indicant of Paradigm Development in Pharmacy\u27s Academic Subdisciplines

This study compared speech disfluency rates within five subdisciplines of pharmacy to estimate their paradigm development, and identified alternative factors associated with differing rates. Rates were observed in randomly selected courses. Lecturers completed a modified version of the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation survey and a self-rated anxiety measure. Ten percent of recordings were randomly selected for analysis by two judges to determine inter-reliability. An ANCOVA was conducted on the frequency of lecture disfluencies, with the frequency of interview disfluencies serving as the covariate. The overall mean disfluency rate in lectures was 2.11 disfluencies/minute. Average dislfuency rates among the five subdisciplines ranged from 1.28 to 2.74. It does not appear that type of discipline (even after controlling for subjects\u27 natural disfluency rates), self-rated anxiety, fear of negative evaluation or other alternative factors affect dislfuency rates in the classroom