The purpose of this research was to test the hypothesis that speakers with small vowel diagrams. The vowels [I ae a u] were analysed for 20 male subjects by means of a sound spectrograph. From the measurements of vowel formants two speakers with large aoustic vowel diagrams Ball State UniversityMuncie, IN 47306

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-125). 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 Wyoming, 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 17, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-139).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 112-121).

abstract: Individuals with voice disorders experience challenges communicating daily. These challenges lead to a significant decrease in the quality of life for individuals with dysphonia. While voice amplification systems are often employed as a voice-assistive technology, individuals with voice disorders generally still experience difficulties being understood while using voice amplification systems. With the goal of developing systems that help improve the quality of life of individuals with dysphonia, this work outlines the landscape of voice-assistive technology, the inaccessibility of state-of-the-art voice-based technology and the need for the development of intelligibility improving voice-assistive technologies designed both with and for individuals with voice disorders. With the rise of voice-based technologies in society, in order for everyone to participate in the use of voice-based technologies individuals with voice disorders must be included in both the data that is used to train these systems and the design process. An important and necessary step towards the development of better voice assistive technology as well as more inclusive voice-based systems is the creation of a large, publicly available dataset of dysphonic speech. To this end, a web-based platform to crowdsource voice disorder speech was developed to create such a dataset. This dataset will be released so that it is freely and publicly available to stimulate research in the field of voice-assistive technologies. Future work includes building a robust intelligibility estimation model, as well as employing that model to measure, and therefore enhance, the intelligibility of a given utterance. The hope is that this model will lead to the development of voice-assistive technology using state-of-the-art machine learning models to help individuals with voice disorders be better understood. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Computer Science 2020

Systems designed to enhance intelligibility of speech in noise are difficult to evaluate quantitatively because intelligibility is subjective and often requires feedback from large populations for consistent evaluations. Attempts to quantify the evaluation have included related measures such as the Speech Intelligibility Index. These require separating speech and noise signals, which precludes its use on experimental recordings. This thesis develops a procedure using an Intelligibility Ruler (IR) for efficiently quantifying intelligibility. A calibrated Mean Opinion Score (MOS) method is also implemented in order to compare repeatability over a population of 24 subjective listeners. Results showed that subjects using the IR consistently estimated SII values of the test samples with an average standard deviation of 0.0867 between subjects on a scale from zero to one and R2=0.9421. After a calibration procedure from a subset of subjects, the MOS method yielded similar results with an average standard deviation of 0.07620 and R2=0.9181.While results suggest good repeatability of the IR method over a broad range of subjects, the calibrated MOS method is capable of producing results more closely related to actual SII values and is a simpler procedure for human subjects.

No description available.

Nineteen normal-hearing university undergraduates performed an "objective" and a "subjective" test of speech intelligibility accuracy (SIA), speed (SIS) and ease (SIE) for different levels of low-pass filtered speech. During objective testing subjects listened to monosyllabic words low-pass filtered through an earphone, and repeated words as correctly and quickly as possible. They simultaneously turned off a probe light as quickly as possible whenever it appeared. Objective SIA was assessed as percentage of incorrectly-repeated phonemes, objective SIS as elapsed time between word presentation and a subject's voice response, and objective SIE as probe-reaction time to turning off the light. During subjective testing subjects listened to common sentences low-pass filtered through a loudspeaker in a background of competing speech. Subjective SIA, SIS and SIE were assessed using magnitude estimation in which subjects assigned numbers to how accurately, quickly or easily they understood the sentences. The most important finding was generally improved accuracy, speed and ease of objectively- and subjectively-measured speech intelligibility with decreased filtering. The experimenter further analyzed results by determining how well each measure of SIA, SIS and SIE met assumptions of test sensitivity, selectivity, reliability, convergence, discriminability and sufficiency. Overall, the objective SIA measure best met assumptions, followed by the three subjective measures, the objective SIS measure, and the objective SIE measure. Results have clinical and research implications for testing and understanding normal and impaired speech intelligibility and perception. First, results are encouraging for audiologists who use objective SIA and subjective measures to test speech intelligibility of their patients. Second, results suggest that persons listening to degraded speech, or persons with auditory problems, may have difficulties in SIS and SIE as well as problems already documented for SIA. Accordingly, audiologists should consider SIS and SIE during audiologic evaluations, aural rehabilitation, and auditory research. Finally, a few subjects showed exceptionally fast voice-response and probe-reaction times which has implications for understanding the nature and limits of human auditory processing.

In this thesis I contribute to arguments showing how the human body is much more than a vessel that enables us to experience the world through our senses. Our sense of embodiment and our embodied performances give meaning to and shape the world in which we live. I argue that our bodies are crucial to socio-political change and subverting discriminatory cultural assumptions and ideologies. Deviant performances can cause us to be less than intelligible individuals. That is, according to Judith Butler, we become less than intelligible when we do not perform in such a way that meets certain cultural expectations. Dominant expectations are typically implicitly understood to be common-sense values. Unfortunately, many of our implicit values have embedded unjust prejudices that directly affect our thinking and behaviour. These discriminatory implicit values are couched in “the background.” Alexis Shotwell’s expansion of what John R. Searle terms “the background” is particularly useful to understand the political nature of implicitly held beliefs. These discriminatory assumptions couched in the background systematically oppress us. However, the prejudices of the background can be exposed through repeatedly performing our bodies in certain ways. Additionally, our performances can enable us to pool our intellectual resources together and live out the socio-political change we desire. In doing so, performances and identities that were once considered unintelligible can become intelligible and can alter cultural climates. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2012-10-09 13:54:49.323