Aim When speech signals are transmitted via radio, the process of transmission may add noise to the signal of interest. This study aims to examine the effect of radio transmission on the quality of speech signals transmitted using a combined acoustic and perceptual approach. Method A standard acoustic recording of the Phonetically Balanced Kindergarten (PBK) word list read by a male speaker was played back in three conditions, one without radio transmission and two with two types of radio transmission. The vowel segments (/i, a, o, u/) embedded in the original and the re-recorded signals were analysed to yield measures of frequency loci of the first two formant frequencies (F1 and F2), amplitude difference between the first two harmonics (H1-H2), and singing power ratio (SPR). Other measures included Spectral Moment One (mean), Spectral Moment Two (variance), and the energy ratio between consonant and vowel (CV energy ratio). To examine how H1-H2 and SPR were related to the perception of vowel intelligibility and clarity, vowels at five levels of each of these two measures were selected as stimuli in the perceptual study. The auditory stimuli were presented to 20 normal hearing listeners, including 10 males and 10 females aged between 21 to 42 years, the listeners were asked to identify the vowel for each vowel stimulus in the vowel identification task and judge from a contrast pair which vowel sounded “clearer” in the clarity discrimination task. A follow-up study using vowel stimuli with a constant length and five H1-H2 or five SPR levels was conducted on five listeners to determine the relationship between the perception of speech clarity and H1-H2 or SPR. Results Results from a series of one-way or two-way analyses of variance (ANOVAs) or ANOVAs on Ranks and post-hoc test revealed that radio transmission had a significant effect on all of the selected acoustic measures except for the CV energy ratio. Signal degeneration due to radio transmission is characterized by changes of F1 or F2 frequencies toward a more compressed vowel space, a H1-H2 value indicating an increase of H1 dominance, a SPR value suggestive of an increase in the energy around the 2-4 kHz region, and a loss of differentiation between /s/ and /sh/ on the measures of Spectral Moments One and Two. Vowel duration was also found to play a major role in affecting the perception of vowel intelligibility and clarity. The follow-up study, with a control on vowel duration, found that SPR played a role in affecting the perception of vowel intelligibility and clarity. Conclusion It was concluded from the findings that measures of energy ratio between different frequency regions, as well as the frequencies of the first two formant frequencies, were sensitive in detecting the effect of radio transmission.

This study was undertaken in an effort to determine the effect of compensatory education on achievement and the self concepts of students in inner city schools. The subjects for this study were chosen from the third, fourth, and fifth grades of the Lincoln, Longfellow, Blaine, and Garfield public elementary schools of Muncie, Indiana. The experimental group received compensatory treatment which consisted of remedial reading, tutorial aid, and counseling, while the control group received the standard type of education given by the schools involved in the study. Both groups were selected by classroom teachers on the basis of personal judgment with no specific criteria given for the selection.Academic achievement was measured by the results of the Iowa Basic Achievement Test. This test was given twice (pre- and post-test) to both the control and experimental groups in grades four, and five. Grade three had been administered the Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT) as a pre-test the previous spring at the end of grade two. Grade three was tested by the Iowa Basic Achievement Test in a post-test the spring of 1973.Self concept was measured by the results of the test by Waetjen and Liddle, Self Concept as a Learner (SCAL). This test was given twice to both the control and experimental groups; the' pre-test in the fall of 1972 and the post-test in the spring of 1973.The results were used to evaluate the eight basic hypotheses. Statistical analysis of the results led to rejecting only one hypothesis. Hypothesis 7 was rejected at the .05 level of significance.In general, any gains shown by the experimental group over the control group were of small statistical magnitude, whether in the area of academic achievement, reading achievement or self concept. The same may be said of any of the differences between the various schools, grades, and class groups. No strong relationship between compensatory education and the probability of success could be clearly established from the data.A strong relationship was established, however, between compensatory and the probability of success for grade three. Since the impact of counseling, tutorial aid, or remedial reading was not analyzed separately, this relationship was attributed to the compensatory treatment as a whole and specifically to any one part of the program.

Spoken language conveys two forms of information: transactional (content, what is said) and interactional (how it is said). The transactional message shared during spoken communication has been studied extensively in different listening conditions and in people of all ages using standardized tests of speech intelligibility. However, research into interactional aspects of speech has been more limited. One specific aspect of interactional communication that warrants further investigation is the communication of emotion in speech, also called affective prosody. A series of experiments examined how younger and older adults produce affective prosody, recognize emotion in speech, and understand emotional speech in noise. The emotional valence and arousal properties of target words from an existing speech intelligibility test were rated by younger and older adults. New stimuli based on those words were recorded by a younger female and an older female using affective prosody to portray seven emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, pleasant surprise, sadness, neutral). Similar to previous studies, the acoustical parameter that best differentiated the emotions was fundamental frequency (F0). Specifically, discriminant analysis indicated that emotional category membership was best predicted by the mean and range of F0. Overall, recognition of emotion and intelligibility were high. While older listeners made more recognition errors and had poorer intelligibility overall, their patterns of responding did not differ significantly from those of the younger listeners on either measure. Of note, angry and sad emotions were recognized with the highest degree of accuracy, but intelligibility was highest for items spoken to portray fear or pleasant surprise. These results may suggest that there is a complementarity between the acoustic cues used to recognize emotions (how words are said) and those used to understand words (what is said). Alternatively, the effect of emotion on intelligibility may be modulated primarily by attentional rather than acoustical factors, with higher performance associated with alerting emotions.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 202-209). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-63). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2005." Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska--Lincoln, 2004. / PDF text: [1] leaf abstract, v, 64 leaves dissertation : ill. (some col.). Site viewed on Jan. 25, 2005. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [65-70] of dissertation).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2002. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xvi, 162 p. Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Lawrence L. Feth, Dept. of Speech and Hearing Science. Includes bibliographical references (p. 141-148).

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2004. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, May 10, 2000." Also available in print.