2,308 research outputs found

    Automatic Speech Recognition System to Analyze Autism Spectrum Disorder in Young Children

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    It's possible to learn things about a person just by listening to their voice. When trying to construct an abstract concept of a speaker, it is essential to extract significant features from audio signals that are modulation-insensitive. This research assessed how individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) recognize and recall voice identity. Autism spectrum disorder is the abbreviation for autism spectrum disorder. Both the ASD group and the control group performed equally well in a task in which they were asked to choose the name of a newly-learned speaker based on his or her voice. However, the ASD group outperformed the control group in a subsequent familiarity test in which they were asked to differentiate between previously trained voices and untrained voices. Persons with ASD classified voices numerically according to the exact acoustic characteristics, whereas non - autistic individuals classified voices qualitatively depending on the acoustic patterns associated to the speakers' physical and psychological traits. Child vocalizations show potential as an objective marker of developmental problems like Autism. In typical detection systems, hand-crafted acoustic features are input into a discriminative classifier, but its accuracy and resilience are limited by the number of its training data. This research addresses using CNN-learned feature representations to classify children's speech with developmental problems. On the Child Pathological and Emotional Speech database, we compare several acoustic feature sets. CNN-based approaches perform comparably to conventional paradigms in terms of unweighted average recall

    The importance of "scaffolding" in clinical approach to deafness across the lifespan

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    Throughout the present work of thesis, the concept of scaffolding will be used as a fil rouge through the chapters. What I mean for “scaffolding approach”, therefore, is an integrated and multidisciplinary clinical and research methodology to hearing impairments that could take into account persons as a whole; an approach that needs to be continuously adapted and harmonized with the individuals, pursuant to their progress, their limits and resources, in consideration of their audiological, cognitive, emotional, personal, and social characteristics. The following studies of our research group will be presented: A study (2020) designed to assess the effects of parent training (PT) on enhancing children’s communication development (chapter two); Two studies of our research group (2016; 2020) concerning variables influencing comprehension of emotions and nuclear executive functions in deaf children with cochlear implant (chapter three and chapter four) In chapter five a presentation and description of our Mind-Active Communication program, main topics and aims, multidisciplinary organizations of group and individual sessions with a description of used materials and methodology is given. Finally, a preliminary evaluation to explore the use of this multidisciplinary rehabilitative program on quality of life, psychological wellbeing, and hearing abilities in a sample of cochlear implanted elderly persons is reported

    Developmental refinement of cortical systems for speech and voice processing

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    Development typically leads to optimized and adaptive neural mechanisms for the processing of voice and speech. In this fMRI study we investigated how this adaptive processing reaches its mature efficiency by examining the effects of task, age and phonological skills on cortical responses to voice and speech in children (8-9years), adolescents (14-15years) and adults. Participants listened to vowels (/a/, /i/, /u/) spoken by different speakers (boy, girl, man) and performed delayed-match-to-sample tasks on vowel and speaker identity. Across age groups, similar behavioral accuracy and comparable sound evoked auditory cortical fMRI responses were observed. Analysis of task-related modulations indicated a developmental enhancement of responses in the (right) superior temporal cortex during the processing of speaker information. This effect was most evident through an analysis based on individually determined voice sensitive regions. Analysis of age effects indicated that the recruitment of regions in the temporal-parietal cortex and posterior cingulate/cingulate gyrus decreased with development. Beyond age-related changes, the strength of speech-evoked activity in left posterior and right middle superior temporal regions significantly scaled with individual differences in phonological skills. Together, these findings suggest a prolonged development of the cortical functional network for speech and voice processing. This development includes a progressive refinement of the neural mechanisms for the selection and analysis of auditory information relevant to the ongoing behavioral task

    The effectiveness of a multi-sensory phonological awareness and letter knowledge training programme for disadvantaged first graders

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    The study aimed to determine the effectiveness of a multi-sensory phonological awareness and letter knowledge programme for disadvantaged first graders. One control group and one experimental group, each consisting of 20 children, were matched for age, gender, school readiness, socio-economic status and phonological awareness. Twenty-nine sessions of phonological awareness and letter knowledge training were administered to the experimental group while the control group received vocabulary stimulation activities for the same length of time. Results indicated that the programme was highly effective in improving phonological awareness, letter knowledge, reading and spelling skills. The experimental group scored significantly higher than the control group on simple phonological awareness tasks such as segmenting the sounds in a word, letter knowledge and in their ability to read and spell real and pseudowords. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of both phonological awareness and letter knowledge in the process of literacy acquisition

    Open-set Speaker Identification

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    This study is motivated by the growing need for effective extraction of intelligence and evidence from audio recordings in the fight against crime, a need made ever more apparent with the recent expansion of criminal and terrorist organisations. The main focus is to enhance open-set speaker identification process within the speaker identification systems, which are affected by noisy audio data obtained under uncontrolled environments such as in the street, in restaurants or other places of businesses. Consequently, two investigations are initially carried out including the effects of environmental noise on the accuracy of open-set speaker recognition, which thoroughly cover relevant conditions in the considered application areas, such as variable training data length, background noise and real world noise, and the effects of short and varied duration reference data in open-set speaker recognition. The investigations led to a novel method termed “vowel boosting” to enhance the reliability in speaker identification when operating with varied duration speech data under uncontrolled conditions. Vowels naturally contain more speaker specific information. Therefore, by emphasising this natural phenomenon in speech data, it enables better identification performance. The traditional state-of-the-art GMM-UBMs and i-vectors are used to evaluate “vowel boosting”. The proposed approach boosts the impact of the vowels on the speaker scores, which improves the recognition accuracy for the specific case of open-set identification with short and varied duration of speech material

    Brain Learning, Attention, and Consciousness

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    The processes whereby our brains continue to learn about a changing world in a stable fashion throughout life are proposed to lead to conscious experiences. These processes include the learning of top-down expectations, the matching of these expectations against bottom-up data, the focusing of attention upon the expected clusters of information, and the development of resonant states between bottom-up and top-down processes as they reach an attentive consensus between what is expected and what is there in the outside world. It is suggested that all conscious states in the brain are resonant states, and that these resonant states trigger learning of sensory and cognitive representations. The model which summarize these concepts are therefore called Adaptive Resonance Theory, or ART, models. Psychophysical and neurobiological data in support of ART are presented from early vision, visual object recognition, auditory streaming, variable-rate speech perception, somatosensory perception, and cognitive-emotional interactions, among others. It is noted that ART mechanisms seem to be operative at all levels of the visual system, and it is proposed how these mechanisms are realized by known laminar circuits of visual cortex. It is predicted that the same circuit realization of ART mechanisms will be found in the laminar circuits of all sensory and cognitive neocortex. Concepts and data are summarized concerning how some visual percepts may be visibly, or modally, perceived, whereas amoral percepts may be consciously recognized even though they are perceptually invisible. It is also suggested that sensory and cognitive processing in the What processing stream of the brain obey top-down matching and learning laws that arc often complementary to those used for spatial and motor processing in the brain's Where processing stream. This enables our sensory and cognitive representations to maintain their stability a.s we learn more about the world, while allowing spatial and motor representations to forget learned maps and gains that are no longer appropriate as our bodies develop and grow from infanthood to adulthood. Procedural memories are proposed to be unconscious because the inhibitory matching process that supports these spatial and motor processes cannot lead to resonance.Defense Advance Research Projects Agency; Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-95-1-0657); National Science Foundation (IRI-97-20333

    Teaching children with special needs: a Western Australian perspective

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    The education of children with special needs in Australia gained considerable impetus from the report of the Interim Committee for the Australian Schools Commission under the chairmanship of Professor Karmel when, in 1973, it made strong recommendations for a substantial increase in the government expenditure on special education. It highlighted inadequacies in the existing services in special education both in terms of facilities and manpower and suggested greater responsibilities for the education of handicapped children be taken by the State Education Departments. The upgrading of qualifications of teachers in Special Education and the necessary establishment of suitable courses in Australian tertiary institutions were notable consequences of the recommendations

    Activities and Strategies for Parents and Teachers to Promote Fluent Reading Acquisition in Emergenct Readers Through the Use of an Internet Web Page and Printed Materials

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    Research relating to phonics, whole language, and a balanced approach as it relates to fluent reading acquisition was read, evaluated, and summarized. A web page with activities and links to other web sites was designed and installed on the internet to provide parents and teachers with material intended to help them promote fluent reading acquisition in emergent readers
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