63 research outputs found
Emotion recognition based on the energy distribution of plosive syllables
We usually encounter two problems during speech emotion recognition (SER): expression and perception problems, which vary considerably between speakers, languages, and sentence pronunciation. In fact, finding an optimal system that characterizes the emotions overcoming all these differences is a promising prospect. In this perspective, we considered two emotional databases: Moroccan Arabic dialect emotional database (MADED), and Ryerson audio-visual database on emotional speech and song (RAVDESS) which present notable differences in terms of type (natural/acted), and language (Arabic/English). We proposed a detection process based on 27 acoustic features extracted from consonant-vowel (CV) syllabic units: \ba, \du, \ki, \ta common to both databases. We tested two classification strategies: multiclass (all emotions combined: joy, sadness, neutral, anger) and binary (neutral vs. others, positive emotions (joy) vs. negative emotions (sadness, anger), sadness vs. anger). These strategies were tested three times: i) on MADED, ii) on RAVDESS, iii) on MADED and RAVDESS. The proposed method gave better recognition accuracy in the case of binary classification. The rates reach an average of 78% for the multi-class classification, 100% for neutral vs. other cases, 100% for the negative emotions (i.e. anger vs. sadness), and 96% for the positive vs. negative emotions
Emotion recognition from syllabic units using k-nearest-neighbor classification and energy distribution
In this article, we present an automatic technique for recognizing emotional states from speech signals. The main focus of this paper is to present an efficient and reduced set of acoustic features that allows us to recognize the four basic human emotions (anger, sadness, joy, and neutral). The proposed features vector is composed by twenty-eight measurements corresponding to standard acoustic features such as formants, fundamental frequency (obtained by Praat software) as well as introducing new features based on the calculation of the energies in some specific frequency bands and their distributions (thanks to MATLAB codes). The extracted measurements are obtained from syllabic units’ consonant/vowel (CV) derived from Moroccan Arabic dialect emotional database (MADED) corpus. Thereafter, the data which has been collected is then trained by a k-nearest-neighbor (KNN) classifier to perform the automated recognition phase. The results reach 64.65% in the multi-class classification and 94.95% for classification between positive and negative emotions
Negative vaccine voices in Swedish social media
Vaccinations are one of the most significant interventions to public health, but vaccine hesitancy creates concerns for a portion of the population in many countries, including Sweden. Since discussions on vaccine hesitancy are often taken on social networking sites, data from Swedish social media are used to study and quantify the sentiment among the discussants on the vaccination-or-not topic during phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Out of all the posts analyzed a majority showed a stronger negative sentiment, prevailing throughout the whole of the examined period, with some spikes or jumps due to the occurrence of certain vaccine-related events distinguishable in the results. Sentiment analysis can be a valuable tool to track public opinions regarding the use, efficacy, safety, and importance of vaccination
Envelhecimento vocal: estudo acústico-articulatório das alterações de fala com a idade
Background: Although the aging process causes specific alterations in the
speech organs, the knowledge about the age effects in speech production is still
disperse and incomplete. Objective: To provide a broader view of the age-related
segmental and suprasegmental speech changes in European Portuguese (EP),
considering new aspects besides static acoustic features, such as dynamic and
articulatory data. Method: Two databases, with speech data of Portuguese
adult native speakers obtained through standardized recording and segmentation
procedures, were devised: i) an acoustic database containing all EP oral
vowels produced in similar context (reading speech), and also a sample of semispontaneous
speech (image description) collected from a large sample of adults
between the ages 35 and 97; ii) and another with articulatory data (ultrasound
(US) tongue images synchronized with speech) for all EP oral vowels produced in
similar contexts (pseudowords and isolated) collected from young ([21-35]) and
older ([55-73]) adults. Results: Based on the curated databases, various aspects
of the aging speech were analyzed. Acoustically, the aging speech is characterized
by: 1) longer vowels (in both genders); 2) a tendency for F0 to decrease
in women and slightly increase in men; 3) lower vowel formant frequencies in
females; 4) a significant reduction of the vowel acoustic space in men; 5) vowels
with higher trajectory slope of F1 (in both genders); 6) shorter descriptions with
higher pause time for males; 7) faster speech and articulation rate for females;
and 8) lower HNR for females in semi-spontaneous speech. In addition, the total
speech duration decrease is associated to non-severe depression symptoms and
age. Older adults tended to present more depressive symptoms that could impact
the amount of speech produced. Concerning the articulatory data, the tongue
tends to be higher and more advanced with aging for almost all vowels, meaning
that the vowel articulatory space tends to be higher, advanced, and bigger in older
females. Conclusion: This study provides new information on aging speech for
a language other than English. These results corroborate that speech changes
with age and present different patterns between genders, and also suggest that
speakers might develop specific articulatory adjustments with aging.Contextualização: Embora o processo de envelhecimento cause alterações
específicas no sistema de produção de fala, o conhecimento sobre os efeitos da
idade na fala é ainda disperso e incompleto. Objetivo: Proporcionar uma visão
mais ampla das alterações segmentais e suprassegmentais da fala relacionadas
com a idade no Português Europeu (PE), considerando outros aspetos, para além
das características acústicas estáticas, tais como dados dinâmicos e articulatórios.
Método: Foram criadas duas bases de dados, com dados de fala de adultos
nativos do PE, obtidos através de procedimentos padronizados de gravação e
segmentação: i) uma base de dados acústica contendo todas as vogais orais do
PE em contexto semelhante (leitura de palavras), e também uma amostra de fala
semiespontânea (descrição de imagem) produzidas por uma larga amostra de
indivíduos entre os 35 e os 97 anos; ii) e outra com dados articulatórios (imagens
de ultrassom da língua sincronizadas com o sinal acústico) de todas as vogais
orais do PE produzidas em contextos semelhantes (pseudopalavras e palavras
isoladas) por adultos de duas faixas etárias ([21-35] e [55-73]). Resultados:
Tendo em conta as bases de dados curadas, foi analisado o efeito da idade em
diversas características da fala. Acusticamente, a fala de pessoas mais velhas é
caracterizada por: 1) vogais mais longas (ambos os sexos); 2) tendência para
F0 diminuir nas mulheres e aumentar ligeiramente nos homens; 3) diminuição
da frequência dos formantes das vogais nas mulheres; 4) redução significativa
do espaço acústico das vogais nos homens; 5) vogais com maior inclinação da
trajetória de F1 (ambos os sexos); 6) descrições mais curtas e com maior tempo
de pausa nos homens; 7) aumento da velocidade articulatória e da velocidade de
fala nas mulheres; e 8) diminuição do HNR na fala semiespontânea em mulheres.
Além disso, os idosos tendem a apresentar mais sintomas depressivos que podem
afetar a quantidade de fala produzida. Em relação aos dados articulatórios, a
língua tende a apresentar-se mais alta e avançada em quase todas as vogais com
a idade, ou seja o espaço articulatório das vogais tende a ser maior, mais alto
e avançado nas mulheres mais velhas. Conclusão: Este estudo fornece novos
dados sobre o efeito da idade na fala para uma língua diferente do inglês. Os
resultados corroboram que a fala sofre alterações com a idade, que diferem em
função do género, sugerindo ainda que os falantes podem desenvolver ajustes
articulatórios específicos com a idade.Programa Doutoral em Gerontologia e Geriatri
Fine‐structure processing, frequency selectivity and speech perception in hearing‐impaired listeners
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