Study to determine potential flight applications and human factors design guidelines for voice recognition and synthesis systems

A study was conducted to determine potential commercial aircraft flight deck applications and implementation guidelines for voice recognition and synthesis. At first, a survey of voice recognition and synthesis technology was undertaken to develop a working knowledge base. Then, numerous potential aircraft and simulator flight deck voice applications were identified and each proposed application was rated on a number of criteria in order to achieve an overall payoff rating. The potential voice recognition applications fell into five general categories: programming, interrogation, data entry, switch and mode selection, and continuous/time-critical action control. The ratings of the first three categories showed the most promise of being beneficial to flight deck operations. Possible applications of voice synthesis systems were categorized as automatic or pilot selectable and many were rated as being potentially beneficial. In addition, voice system implementation guidelines and pertinent performance criteria are proposed. Finally, the findings of this study are compared with those made in a recent NASA study of a 1995 transport concept

Acoustic Modelling for Under-Resourced Languages

Automatic speech recognition systems have so far been developed only for very few languages out of the 4,000-7,000 existing ones. In this thesis we examine methods to rapidly create acoustic models in new, possibly under-resourced languages, in a time and cost effective manner. For this we examine the use of multilingual models, the application of articulatory features across languages, and the automatic discovery of word-like units in unwritten languages

The effects of English proficiency on the processing of Bulgarian-accented English by Bulgarian-English bilinguals

This dissertation explores the potential benefit of listening to and with one’s first-language accent, as suggested by the Interspeech Intelligibility Benefit Hypothesis (ISIB). Previous studies have not consistently supported this hypothesis. According to major second language learning theories, the listener’s second language proficiency determines the extent to which the listener relies on their first language phonetics. Hence, this thesis provides a novel approach by focusing on the role of English proficiency in the understanding of Bulgarian-accented English for Bulgarian-English bilinguals. The first experiment investigated whether evoking the listeners’ L1 Bulgarian phonetics would improve the speed of processing Bulgarian-accented English words, compared to Standard British English words, and vice versa. Listeners with lower English proficiency processed Bulgarian-accented English faster than SBE, while high proficiency listeners tended to have an advantage with SBE over Bulgarian accent. The second experiment measured the accuracy and reaction times (RT) in a lexical decision task with single-word stimuli produced by two L1 English speakers and two Bulgarian-English bilinguals. Listeners with high proficiency in English responded slower and less accurately to Bulgarian-accented speech compared to L1 English speech and compared to lower proficiency listeners. These accent preferences were also supported by the listener’s RT adaptation across the first experimental block. A follow-up investigation compared the results of L1 UK English listeners to the bilingual listeners with the highest proficiency in English. The L1 English listeners and the bilinguals processed both accents with similar speed, accuracy and adaptation patterns, showing no advantage or disadvantage for the bilinguals. These studies support existing models of second language phonetics. Higher proficiency in L2 is associated with lesser reliance on L1 phonetics during speech processing. In addition, the listeners with the highest English proficiency had no advantage when understanding Bulgarian-accented English compared to L1 English listeners, contrary to ISIB. Keywords: Bulgarian-English bilinguals, bilingual speech processing, L2 phonetic development, lexical decision, proficienc

Efficient error correction for speech systems using constrained re-recognition

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-75).Efficient error correction of recognition output is a major barrier in the adoption of speech interfaces. This thesis addresses this problem through a novel correction framework and user interface. The system uses constraints provided by the user to enhance re-recognition, correcting errors with minimal user effort and time. In our web interface, users listen to the recognized utterance, marking incorrect words as they hear them. After they have finished marking errors, they submit the edits back to the speech recognizer where it is merged with previous edits and then converted into a finite state transducer. This FST, modeling the regions of correct and incorrect words in the recognition output, is then composed with the recognizer's language model and the utterance is re-recognized. We explored the use of our error correction technique in both the lecture and restaurant domain, evaluating the types of errors and the correction performance in each domain. With our system, we have found significant improvements over other error correction techniques such as n-best lists, re-speaking or verbal corrections, and retyping in terms of actions per correction step, corrected output rate, and ease of use.by Gregory T. Yu.M.Eng

A study of the relationship between phonological awareness and phonological processing in four and five year old children

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DX187535 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo