Background: Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Essential tremor (ET) who havebeen treated with Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) generally experience a positive effect,particularly regarding the motor symptoms. However, the patients’ communication skillsare often negatively affected and the assessment instrument currently used withinneurological clinical care is not sufficiently sensitive to assess these patients’ speechclarity, voice and intelligibility satisfactorily.Aim: This study’s purpose was to develop a prototype assessment tool for speech clarity,intelligibility and voice, with speech and language pathology (SLP) validity, that isadaptable to a neurological clinical care setting.Method: The assessment tool was designed using general design methodology. Aprototype was constructed and tested on speech samples of read text for reliability. ThreeSLP’s, three DBS nurses and three naive listeners (NL) were represented in the test group.Levels of agreement were calculated using Percent Close Agreement, PCA.Results: The results indicate a relatively high level of agreement between the groups, inparticular the SLP group and the DBS group (μ: 0.82, 0.79, and 0.74).Conclusion: The results demonstrate the need for an assessment tool with SLPcompetence to assess speech clarity, intelligibility and voice within neurological clinicalcare. The assessment tool was shown to be a useful and adequate prototype that can easilyevolve into a truly useful and versatile perceptual speech assessment tool. The results ofthis study should be treated cautiously, considering the test groups’ modest size. / Bakgrund: Patienter med Parkinsons sjukdom (PD) och patienter med Essentiell tremor(ET) som behandlats med Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) upplever i allmänhet en positiveffekt, framför allt gällande de motoriska symtomen. Emellertid påverkas oftapatienternas kommunikativa färdigheter negativt. De bedömingsmaterial som användsinom den kliniska nerurologiska vården; UPDRS/ETRS är alltför trubbiga för att kunna geen tillfredsställande bild av patientens tal, röst och förståelighet.Mål: Skapa ett bedömningsverktyg för tal, förståelighet och röst med logopedisk validitet,och som kan användas inom den kliniska neurologiska verksamheten i samband medDBS-behandling.Metod: Bedömningsverktyget designades enligt generell designmetodik. En prototypskapades och testades för reliabilitet på röstexempel av en läst text. Tre logopeder, treDBS-sköterskor och tre naiva lyssnare deltog i testningen. Grad av samstämmighetberäknades med Percent Close Agreement, PCA.Resultat: Resultaten indikerar en relativt hög grad av samstämmighet mellan grupperna(μ: 0.82, 0.79, respektive 0.74). Logopederna bedömde nästan alla röstexempel sompatienter i behov av logopedhjälp. DBS-gruppen och gruppen med naiva lyssnarebedömde ett mindre antal ha behov av logoped.Slutsats: Resultaten belyser behovet av ett bedömningsverktyg med logopedisk validitetför bedöming av tal, förståelighet och röst inom den kliniska neurologiska verksamheten.Bedömingsverktyget som framtagits i denna studie är en användbar och adekvat prototypsom enkelt skulle kunna utvecklas till ett verkligt användbart och mångsidigt perceptuelltbedömningsmaterial. Dock ska resultaten i denna studie tolkas en smula försiktigt medtanke på de låga antalet deltagare.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the effects of inhaled corticosteroid drugs (ICs) on the voice due to their frequent use in treating an increasing prevalence of asthma disorders. As part of a larger five-year study, the focus of this thesis is specifically on whether 8 weeks of in vivo exposure to ICs will cause changes in the sustained subglottal pressure, sustained airflow, and visual-perceptual ratings of edema and erythema in excised rabbit larynges. Researchers administered either ICs or a control nebulized isotonic saline solution to 22 rabbits in vivo, sacrificed them, and harvested their larynges for benchtop research. While ensuring proper tissue preservation, researchers then finely dissected the larynges to expose the true vocal folds and run phonation trials. Dependent variables included continuous acoustic signals (Hz), subglottal pressure (cm H2O), and airflow (L/min) data for 15 phonation trials per rabbit larynx. Researchers also collected still image photographs at this time and subsequently normalized them for use in the visual-perceptual portion of this thesis. For visual-perceptual ratings, raters used a 0-3 equal appearing interval scale to rate aspects of edema and erythema on left and right vocal fold and arytenoid tissues. Results indicate that, when compared to control larynges exposed to nebulized isotonic saline, experimental larynges treated with ICs require significantly higher subglottal pressure to maintain phonation, p < .05. Mean sustained phonation for experimental larynges is 11.24 cm H2O compared to 8.92 cm H2O for that of control larynges. Phonation trials for experimental larynges have significantly higher sustained airflow with a mean of 0.09 L/min compared to 0.07 L/min for that of control larynges, p < .05. Surprisingly, experimental larynges have higher average fundamental frequencies with less variability (mean: 519 Hz, standard deviation: 66 Hz) than that of control larynges (mean: 446 Hz, standard deviation: 130 Hz). On visual-perceptual ratings, experimental larynges have significantly higher severity ratings on all eight items rated, p < .0001 - p = .0305. Based on these results, it is concluded that ICs cause significant damage to rabbit vocal folds, as evidenced by higher sustained pressure, higher airflow, and higher severity ratings for experimental versus control larynges. The dependent variables in this thesis are novel in benchtop model research and demonstrate a unique perspective on this research question. Thus, this thesis informs future phonation, benchtop, and visual-perceptual research.

This doctoral thesis is the result of a research effort performed in two fields of speech technology, i.e., speech recognition and mispronunciation detection. Although the two areas are clearly distinguishable, the proposed approaches share a common hypothesis based on psychoacoustic processing of speech signals. The conjecture implies that the human auditory periphery provides a relatively good separation of different sound classes. Hence, it is possible to use recent findings from psychoacoustic perception together with mathematical and computational tools to model the auditory sensitivities to small speech signal changes. The performance of an automatic speech recognition system strongly depends on the representation used for the front-end. If the extracted features do not include all relevant information, the performance of the classification stage is inherently suboptimal. The work described in Papers A, B and C is motivated by the fact that humans perform better at speech recognition than machines, particularly for noisy environments. The goal is to make use of knowledge of human perception in the selection and optimization of speech features for speech recognition. These papers show that maximizing the similarity of the Euclidean geometry of the features to the geometry of the perceptual domain is a powerful tool to select or optimize features. Experiments with a practical speech recognizer confirm the validity of the principle. It is also shown an approach to improve mel frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCCs) through offline optimization. The method has three advantages: i) it is computationally inexpensive, ii) it does not use the auditory model directly, thus avoiding its computational cost, and iii) importantly, it provides better recognition performance than traditional MFCCs for both clean and noisy conditions. The second task concerns automatic pronunciation error detection. The research, described in Papers D, E and F, is motivated by the observation that almost all native speakers perceive, relatively easily, the acoustic characteristics of their own language when it is produced by speakers of the language. Small variations within a phoneme category, sometimes different for various phonemes, do not change significantly the perception of the language’s own sounds. Several methods are introduced based on similarity measures of the Euclidean space spanned by the acoustic representations of the speech signal and the Euclidean space spanned by an auditory model output, to identify the problematic phonemes for a given speaker. The methods are tested for groups of speakers from different languages and evaluated according to a theoretical linguistic study showing that they can capture many of the problematic phonemes that speakers from each language mispronounce. Finally, a listening test on the same dataset verifies the validity of these methods. / <p>QC 20120914</p> / European Union FP6-034362 research project ACORNS / Computer-Animated language Teachers (CALATea)

Currently a need exists in South Africa for an age-, linguistically- and culturally appropriate perceptual speech assessment protocol for Zulu-speaking pre-school children with cleft palate. The aim of this study was to develop a reliable perceptual speech assessment protocol for Zulu-speaking pre-school children with cleft palate based on the international guidelines (www.eurocran.org). Furthermore the clinical applicability and relevance of these guidelines for the perceptual assessment of cleft palate speech in the Zulu language were determined. The aims were reached by following a mixed methods research approach and by conducting the research in four phases. In phase one the protocol was compiled with the assistance of an expert Zulu linguist, in phase two the protocol was pre-tested on 12 normal Zulu-speaking pre-school children between three and six years of age; in phase three the perceptions of speech-language therapists regarding the clinical applicability of the protocol were determined after administration thereof on 12 Zulu-speaking pre-school children with cleft palate between the ages of three and six years; and finally in phase four the relevance of applying the international guidelines to the Zulu language was reflected on. A critical analysis of the protocol indicated that the international guidelines (www.eurocran.org) could be used to develop a perceptual speech assessment protocol in an African language namely Zulu. Results of the pilot study revealed that the protocol was age, culturally and linguistically appropriate for normal Zulu-speaking pre-school children. The speech-language therapist participants indicated that the protocol was clinically applicable to Zulu-speaking pre-school children with cleft lip and palate in terms of cultural sensitivity, administration time and its ability to elicit and identify cleft palate speech characteristics. The international guidelines (www.eurocran.org) could be applied to the Zulu language with an emphasis on the click sounds in Zulu. The results have clinical implications for cleft palate service delivery in South Africa. These implications were for in-service training of speech-language therapists regarding cleft palate to provide them with evidence-based guidelines for clinical practice. Implications for further research included the development of norms of speech development in the Zulu language and the standardization of the perceptual speech assessment protocol. This study is valuable as it is the first tool for the perceptual assessment of cleft palate speech in Zulu. The research methodology may serve as an example for the development of similar speech assessment protocols for children with cleft palate in other African languages. AFRIKAANS: Tans bestaan daar ‘n behoefte in Suid-Afrika vir ‘n ouderdoms-, taal- en kultureel toepaslike persepsuele spraak assesseringsmateriaal vir Zoeloe-sprekende voorskoolse kinders met gesplete lip en verhemelte. Die doel van hierdie studie was om ‘n betroubare en geldige Zoeloe persepsuele spraak assesseringsprotokol vir voorskoolse kinders met gesplete lip en verhemelte te ontwikkel gebasseer op die internasionale riglyne (www.eurocran.org). Die kliniese toepaslikheid en relevansie van die internasionale riglyne vir die persepsuele assessering van gesplete lip en verhemelte is bepaal. Die doelwitte is bereik deur ‘n gemengde kwalitatiewe en kwantitatiewe navorsingsmetode te volg asook deur die navorsing in vier fases uit te voer. In fase een is die protokol ontwikkel met die bystand van ‘n Zoeloe taalkundige, in fase twee is die protokol getoets op 12 normale Zoeloe-sprekende kinders tussen drie en ses jaar, in fase drie is die persepsies van drie spraak-taalterapeute verkry aangaande die kliniese toepaslikheid van die protokol na afloop van evaluasies op 12 Zoeloe-sprekende voorskoolse kinders met gesplete lip en verhemelte tussen drie en ses jaar, in fase vier is gereflekteer op die toepaslikheid van die internasionale riglyne vir Zoeloe. ‘n Kritiese analise van die protokol het aangedui dat die internasionale riglyne (www.eurocran.org) gebruik kon word om ‘n persepsuele spraak assesseringsprotokol in ‘n Afrika taal, naamlik Zoeloe, op te stel. Resultate van die voorstudie het aangedui dat die protokol taal-, ouderdoms- en kultureel toepaslik was vir die normale Zoeloe-sprekende voorskoolse kinders. Die spraak-taalterapeute as deelnemers het aangedui dat die protokol klinies toepaslik was vir voorskoolse kinders met gesplete lip en verhemelte in terme van die kulturele sensitiwiteit van die protokol, administrasie tyd asook die vermoë om die spesifieke gesplete lip en verhemelte spraakkenmerke te ontlok. Die internasionale riglyne (www.eurocran.org) kon gevolg word vir Zoeloe met insluiting van die suigklanke in die Zoeloe taalstruktuur. Die resultate het implikasies vir dienslewering in Suid-Afrika met betrekking tot gesplete lip en verhemelte. Hierdie implikasies sluit in-diens opleiding van spraak-taalterapeute in om aan hul riglyne te verskaf vir beste praktyk. Implikasies vir verdere navorsing omsluit die ontwikkeling van norme in terme van die spraak ontwikkeling in Zoeloe asook die moontlike standardisering van die persepsuele spraak asesseringsprotokol. Die studie is waardevol aangesien dit die eerste poging was om ‘n persepsuele spraak assesseringsprotokol in Zoeloe te ontwikkel vir die evaluasie van kinders met gesplete lip en verhemelte. Die navorsingsmetodologie kan gevolg word vir die ontwikkeling van soortgelyke spraak assesseringprotokolle vir kinders met gesplete lip en verhemelte in ander Afrika tale. Copyright / Dissertation (MCommunication Pathology)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / unrestricted

[ES] El control de ruido ambiental es una preocupación de primera magnitud para las sociedades avanzadas, debido a los problemas derivados que ocasionan en la salud de los ciudadanos. Una de las soluciones más extendidas para el control del ruido en su fase de transmisión en la utilización de pantallas acústicas. La aparición de nuevos materiales formados por redes de dispersores acústicos aislados, denominados cristales de sonido, está revolucionando el campo del apantallamiento acústico, posibilitando el avance tecnológico de esta área. Así, en los últimos años, las pantallas acústicas basadas en cristales de sonido se han posicionado como una alternativa viable a las pantallas acústicas tradicionales, puesto que ofrecen múltiples ventajas frente a las soluciones actuales. En el presente trabajo se muestra primeramente una recopilación de los avances realizados en el campo del apantallamiento acústico mediante esta tipología de pantallas. No obstante, aún existen líneas de investigación abiertas en esta área, que es necesario abordar para conseguir el objetivo de aplicar esta tecnología como atenuadores de sonido en las infraestructuras de transporte. Durante el periodo de formación de la doctoranda, se ha trabajado en algunas de las líneas de investigación activas en este campo del apantallamiento acústico. Una de estas investigaciones condujo al descubrimiento de interferencias entre los efectos de la resonancia y la dispersión múltiple de los cristales de sonido cuando estos efectos se producen en rangos de frecuencia cercanos. También hemos diseñado un nuevo dispositivo de reducción de ruido basado en cristales de sonido, utilizando herramientas de optimización multiobjetivo, que permitan apantallar y reflejar de forma difusa el ruido. El empleo de esta nueva herramienta de diseño identificó la necesidad de realizar un estudio comparativo de los métodos de simulación más utilizados para estimar el rendimiento de los dispositivos basados en cristales de sonido. Por último, hemos realizado un estudio psicoacústico para determinar la percepción de la reducción de molestia que proporcionan las pantallas acústicas basadas en cristales sonido y las barreras tradicionales, determinando si los parámetros objetivos que evalúan su rendimiento coinciden con la respuesta subjetiva de los usuarios. / [CA] El control de soroll ambiental és una preocupació de primera magnitud per a les societats avançades, a causa dels problemes derivats que ocasionen en la salut dels ciutadans. Una de les solucions més esteses per al control del soroll en la seua fase de transmissió en la utilització de pantalles acústiques. L'aparició de nous materials formats per xarxes de dispersors acústics aïllats, denominats cristals de so, està revolucionant el camp de l'apantallament acústic, possibilitant l'avanç tecnològic d'esta àrea. Així, en els últims anys, les pantalles acústiques basades en cristals de so s'han posicionat com una alternativa viable a les pantalles acústiques tradicionals, ja que oferixen múltiples avantatges enfront de les solucions actuals. En el present treball es mostra primerament una recopilació dels avanços realitzats en el camp de l'apantallament acústic per mitjà d'esta tipologia de pantalles. No obstant això, encara hi ha línies d'investigació obertes en esta àrea, que és necessari abordar per a aconseguir l'objectiu d'aplicar esta tecnologia com a atenuadors de so en les infraestructures de transport. Durant el període de formació de la doctoranda, s'ha treballat en algunes de les línies d'investigació actives en este camp de l'apantallament acústic. Una d'estes investigacions va conduir al descobriment d'interferències entre els efectes de la ressonància i la dispersió múltiple dels cristals de so quan estos efectes es produïxen en rangs de freqüència pròxims. També hem dissenyat un nou dispositiu de reducció de soroll basat en cristals de so, utilitzant ferramentes d'optimització multiobjectiu, que permeten apantallar i reflectir de forma difusa el soroll. L'ús d'esta nova ferramenta de disseny va identificar la necessitat de realitzar un estudi comparatiu dels mètodes de simulació més utilitzats per a estimar el rendiment dels dispositius basats en cristals de so. Finalment, hem realitzat un estudi psicoacústic per a determinar la percepció de la reducció de molèstia que proporcionen les pantalles acústiques basades en cristals so i les barreres tradicionals, determinant si els paràmetres objectius que avaluen el seu rendiment coincidixen amb la resposta subjectiva dels usuaris. / [EN] Control of environmental noise is a major concern for advanced societies because of the resulting problems for citizens' health. One of the most widespread solutions for controlling noise in its transmission phase is the use of acoustic screens. The emergence of new materials made up of arrays of isolated acoustic scatterers, called sonic crystals, is revolutionizing the field of acoustic screening. In recent years, acoustic screens based on sonic crystals have positioned themselves as a viable alternative to traditional acoustic screens, as they offer multiple advantages over current traditional solutions. This Doctoral dissertation compiles the advances in the field of acoustic screening using this type of sonic crystals. However, there is still active research in this area which needs to be addressed and studied in order to apply this technology as noise reduction devices in transport infrastructures. Therefore, during the PhD student's training period, we have researched the acoustic phenomena produced by isolated scatterers in order to better understand the physical phenomena behind the lasts designs of this type of screen. One of these researches led to the discovery of interferences between the effects of resonance and multiple scattering of sonic crystals when occurring in nearby frequency ranges. Also we have designed a new noise reduction device based on sonic crystals, using multi-objective optimization tools, which would block and diffuse the noise. This new designing tool identified the need for a comparative study of the most commonly used simulation methods to estimate the performance of devices based on sonic crystals. Finally, we have carried out a psychoacoustic study that determined the perception of the annoyance reduction provided by acoustic screens based on sonic crystals and traditional barriers, determining whether the objective parameters that evaluate their performance match to the subjective response of the users. / Agradezco al Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación por la ayuda concedida dentro del programa Doctores Industriales. Asimismo, a mi tutor en empresa Dr. Juan José Martín Pino, por posibilitar la realización de esta investigación dentro de la empresa BECSA. Al Departamento de Física Aplicada de la Universitat Politècnica de València, a la Comisión Académica del Programa de Doctorado de Matemáticas y al Centro de Tecnologías Físicas: Acústica, Materiales y Astrofísica. / Peiró Torres, MDP. (2021). Research of the acoustic phenomenon produced by isolated scatterers and its applicability as a noise reducing device in transport infrastructures. Search for an optimised and sustainable design [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/164903 / TESIS