Surface electromyographic control of a novel phonemic interface for speech synthesis

Many individuals with minimal movement capabilities use AAC to communicate. These individuals require both an interface with which to construct a message (e.g., a grid of letters) and an input modality with which to select targets. This study evaluated the interaction of two such systems: (a) an input modality using surface electromyography (sEMG) of spared facial musculature, and (b) an onscreen interface from which users select phonemic targets. These systems were evaluated in two experiments: (a) participants without motor impairments used the systems during a series of eight training sessions, and (b) one individual who uses AAC used the systems for two sessions. Both the phonemic interface and the electromyographic cursor show promise for future AAC applications.F31 DC014872 - NIDCD NIH HHS; R01 DC002852 - NIDCD NIH HHS; R01 DC007683 - NIDCD NIH HHS; T90 DA032484 - NIDA NIH HHShttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Surface+electromyographic+control+of+a+novel+phonemic+interface+for+speech+synthesishttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Surface+electromyographic+control+of+a+novel+phonemic+interface+for+speech+synthesisPublished versio

Ability-Based Methods for Personalized Keyboard Generation

This study introduces an ability-based method for personalized keyboard generation, wherein an individual's own movement and human-computer interaction data are used to automatically compute a personalized virtual keyboard layout. Our approach integrates a multidirectional point-select task to characterize cursor control over time, distance, and direction. The characterization is automatically employed to develop a computationally efficient keyboard layout that prioritizes each user's movement abilities through capturing directional constraints and preferences. We evaluated our approach in a study involving 16 participants using inertial sensing and facial electromyography as an access method, resulting in significantly increased communication rates using the personalized keyboard (52.0 bits/min) when compared to a generically optimized keyboard (47.9 bits/min). Our results demonstrate the ability to effectively characterize an individual's movement abilities to design a personalized keyboard for improved communication. This work underscores the importance of integrating a user's motor abilities when designing virtual interfaces.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Duration and variability in dysarthric speakers with traumatic brain injury

Dysarthria of speech can occur in many acquired and congenital neurological conditions and can impact the articulatory, respiratory, phonatory, laryngeal and/or velopharyngeal subsystems of speech. Studies of dysarthria describe the differences that occur in speech performance due to different types and severities of dysarthria. The conditions that cause dysarthria are often accompanied by severe physical impairments that make standard access to computer technology inefficient. Many individuals with physical disabilities use a wide range of assistive technology options to access computers. However, if a co-occurring dysarthria is present, speech recognition (SR) technology is not an option. Studies of SR use by people with dysarthria describe the limited success many have with such technology. Limited investigations exist examining the impact of specific acoustic characteristics of dysarthric speech on SR technology. This study investigated the durations of single words and sound types with acoustic analysis as well as the variability of word durations of ten participants with dysarthria due to Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and ten control participants. The study also examined the relationships between word intelligibility and word duration and word intelligibility and variability for the participants with TBI. Results showed statistically significant differences on word and sound type durations between the dysarthric and control participants. Specifically, a pattern of doubling or near-doubling of durations was consistent across word and sound type durations. Extraneous features were identified from the acoustic signals of the dysarthric speakers and included pre-vocalizations, insertions, omissions, substitutions, and voicing of voiceless consonants. When controlling for these features, the word and sound type durations remained significantly greater for the dysarthric compared to the control participants. Differences existed in standard deviations but not the coefficient of variability between dysarthric and control speakers. There was no correlation between word intelligibility and word duration or word intelligibility and variability. Implications for SR technology development based on the study\u27s findings were discussed