Transparent pronunciation scoring using articulatorily weighted phoneme edit distance

Peer reviewe

Non-game like training benefits spoken foreign-language processing in children with dyslexia

Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2023 Junttila, Smolander, Karhila, Kurimo and Ylinen.Children with dyslexia often face difficulties in learning foreign languages, which is reflected as weaker neural activation. However, digital language-learning applications could support learning-induced plastic changes in the brain. Here we aimed to investigate whether plastic changes occur in children with dyslexia more readily after targeted training with a digital language-learning game or similar training without game-like elements. We used auditory event-related potentials (ERPs), specifically, the mismatch negativity (MMN), to study learning-induced changes in the brain responses. Participants were 24 school-aged Finnish-speaking children with dyslexia and 24 age-matched typically reading control children. They trained English speech sounds and words with “Say it again, kid!” (SIAK) language-learning game for 5 weeks between ERP measurements. During the game, the players explored game boards and produced English words aloud to score stars as feedback from an automatic speech recognizer. To compare the effectiveness of the training type (game vs. non-game), we embedded in the game some non-game levels stripped of all game-like elements. In the dyslexia group, the non-game training increased the MMN amplitude more than the game training, whereas in the control group the game training increased the MMN response more than the non-game training. In the dyslexia group, the MMN increase with the non-game training correlated with phonological awareness: the children with poorer phonological awareness showed a larger increase in the MMN response. Improved neural processing of foreign speech sounds as indicated by the MMN increase suggests that targeted training with a simple application could alleviate some spoken foreign-language learning difficulties that are related to phonological processing in children with dyslexia.Peer reviewe

The Effects of a Digital Articulatory Game on the Ability to Perceive Speech-Sound Contrasts in Another Language

Digital and mobile devices enable easy access to applications for the learning of foreign languages. However, experimental studies on the effectiveness of these applications are scarce. Moreover, it is not understood whether the effects of speech and language training generalize to features that are not trained. To this end, we conducted a four-week intervention that focused on articulatory training and learning of English words in 6-7-year-old Finnish-speaking children who used a digital language-learning game app Pop2talk. An essential part of the app is automatic speech recognition that enables assessing children's utterances and giving instant feedback to the players. The generalization of the effects of such training in English were explored by using discrimination tasks before and after training (or the same period of time in a control group). The stimuli of the discrimination tasks represented phonetic contrasts from two non-trained languages, including Russian sibilant consonants and Mandarin tones. We found some improvement with the Russian sibilant contrast in the gamers but it was not statistically significant. No improvement was observed for the tone contrast for the gaming group. A control group with no training showed no improvement in either contrast. The pattern of results suggests that the game may have improved the perception of non-trained speech sounds in some but not all individuals, yet the effects of motivation and attention span on their performance could not be excluded with the current methods. Children's perceptual skills were linked to their word learning in the control group but not in the gaming group where recurrent exposure enabled learning also for children with poorer perceptual skills. Together, the results demonstrate beneficial effects of learning via a digital application, yet raise a need for further research of individual differences in learning.Peer reviewe

User Experiences from L2 Children Using a Speech Learning Application : Implications for Developing Speech Training Applications for Children

We investigated user experiences from 117 Finnish children aged between 8 and 12 years in a trial of an English language learning programme that used automatic speech recognition (ASR). We used measures that encompassed both affective reactions and questions tapping into the children' sense of pedagogical utility. We also tested their perception of sound quality and compared reactions of game and nongame-based versions of the application. Results showed that children expressed higher affective ratings for the game compared to nongame version of the application. Children also expressed a preference to play with a friend compared to playing alone or playing within a group. They found that assessment of their speech is useful although they did not necessarily enjoy hearing their own voices. The results are discussed in terms of the implications for user interface (UI) design in speech learning applications for children.Peer reviewe

Captaina : Integrated pronunciation practice and data collection portal

Peer reviewe

SIAK – A Game for Foreign Language Pronunciation Learning

Peer reviewe

Varhaisen vaiheen startup-yrittäjien paikkakokemukset eurooppalaisissa ekosysteemeissä

Even though establishing a startup company abroad has become easier in recent years, most entrepreneurs still establish their companies in their country of residence and often in the city they are already located at. In this case, the entrepreneurs usually do not systematically choose or search for an optimal location. Instead, they settle for a "good enough" operating environment. Previous studies have suggested several factors that drive this behaviour. This research exploits a theoretical framework to find out how the founders themselves experience and perceive the location in which they have established their startups following this behavioural pattern: do they feel that it offers them sufficient support during their entrepreneurial process and is the local entrepreneurial ecosystem functional and sufficient from their point of view? This study applies qualitative research methods. The research data has been collected through interviews and 30 European early-stage startup founders from Austria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, and Sweden have been interviewed. The data has been analysed using the ideal-type analysis method and interpreted with the help of the theoretical framework. As a result of the analysis, three categories of location perception, ideal types, are presented. Based on the three identified ideal types, it is found that the stage of the startup process and, in later stages of the process, the ability to use social capital to solve critical challenges affects the location perception of early-stage startup founders. The role of social capital in location perception is noteworthy, as its importance for entrepreneurial success has been identified in several previous studies. The effect of social capital on the location perception, and subsequently to the emotional status of the founder, probably strengthens the effect on entrepreneurial performance positively or negatively, depending on the existence of social capital or the founder’s ability to use it. The results also show that some startup founders lack the necessary social capital or the ability to use it and that they would need support from the ecosystem for this. The research applies an analysis method developed in the field of psychology and sociology, ideal type analysis, which is not commonly used in management or entrepreneurship research. The results of the work show that the method is also applicable to these disciplines and offers the opportunity to bring new psychological perspectives to the interpretation of the results, the need for which has been highlighted in previous publications in the field. Unlike regular master’s thesis, this research is reported in the form of an article and therefore has a somewhat different structure. Due to the requirements set for the thesis, it is presented here in a longer form, and the manuscript sent for peer review will be a condensed version of the work

Transparent pronunciation scoring using articulatorily weighted phoneme edit distance

For researching effects of gamification in foreign language learning for children in the “Say It Again, Kid!” project we developed a feedback paradigm that can drive gameplay in pronunciation learning games. We describe our scoring system based on the difference between a reference phone sequence and the output of a multilingual CTC phoneme recogniser. We present a white-box scoring model of mapped weighted Levenshtein edit distance between reference and error with error weights for articulatory differences computed from a training set of scored utterances. The system can produce a human-readable list of each detected mispronunciation's contribution to the utterance score. We compare our scoring method to established black box methods.Peer reviewe

Gaming enhances learning-induced plastic changes in the brain

This is an accepted manuscript of a paper published by Elsevier (in press). The accepted manuscript of the publication may differ from the final published version.Digital games may benefit children’s learning, yet the factors that induce gaming benefits to cognition are not well known. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of digital game-based learning in children by comparing the learning of foreign speech sounds and words in a digital game or a non-game digital application. To evaluate gaming-induced plastic changes in the brain, we used the mismatch negativity (MMN) brain response that reflects the access to long-term memory representations. We recorded auditory brain responses from 37 school-aged Finnish-speaking children before and after playing a computer-based language-learning game. The MMN amplitude increased between the pre- and post-measurement for the game condition but not for the non-game condition, suggesting that the gaming intervention enhanced learning more than the non-game intervention. The results indicate that digital games can be beneficial for children’s speech-sound learning and that gaming elements per se, not just practice time, support learning.This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (projects no 274058 and 274075), the Doctoral Programme in Psychology, Learning and Communication, and the University of Helsinki Research Funds