bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Relationship between the use of portable audio devices and taking notice of the approach informing sound of quiet vehicles
Authors: Hamamura Mariko , Takamaki Shotaro , Obuchi Yasunari
Published: November 2016

Lively discussion about the approach informing sound of quiet vehicles is being conducted; however, people often listen to media on portable audio devices in various environments and may not notice the approach informing sound. To clarify the relationship between the use of portable audio devices and the experience of encountering dangers associated with the approach of quiet vehicles, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 158 university students. Portable audio device ownership was 99.3%; only one respondent reported not owning such a device. Twenty-two respondents (15.5%) had encountered dangerous situations while using these devices outdoors. Thirteen respondents reported that they had experienced near-misses with vehicles while walking or biking, and seven reported that the vehicles were quiet vehicles. Multiple correspondence analysis revealed some differences in the usage habits of portable audio devices between the users who had and had not encountered dangerous situations. To improve notification effectiveness of quiet vehicles, usage habits related to portable audio devices, especially concerning young people, should be considered. In addition, means of preventing portable audio device users’ tendency to “tune out” other sounds should be addressed.
Computational analysis of aeroacoustic noise generated from a rotating tire with a longitudinal groove
Authors: Kato Daisuke , Lee Gonghwi , Abe Yoshiaki , Nonomura Taku , Oyama Akira , Fujii Kozo , Ikeda Toshiyuki , Koishi Masataka
Published: November 2016

It is known that acoustic waves which is higher than 1000 Hz are generated from a rotating tire, and one possibility of their generation mechanism is aeroacoustic effect. The main objective of this study is to understand the generation mechanism and acoustic wave characteristic for realization of low noise tire. For this main objective, the effects of a longitudinal groove shape on acoustic field are investigated in the present study. Three cases, without a groove case (slick tire), a small longitudinal groove and large longitudinal groove are analyzed by large eddy simulations. The result shows that compression or expansion of the vortex is alleviated and weaken sound source by attaching a groove on tire surface. On the other hand, we also confirm that a groove contributes generation of new fluctuation and affects the spread of fluctuations. It can be considered that acoustic fields of front side of tire are affected by a tradeoff between the effect of compression or expansion of the vortex and those of the spread of fluctuation.
Acoustic radiation force on non-spherical objects in a liquid
Authors: Lipkens Bart , Ilinskii Yurii A. , Zabolotskaya Evgenia A.
Published: November 2016

Macro-scale acoustophoretic separation has applications in oil/water separation and biopharmaceutical cell clarification. Interesting phenomena include deformation of oil droplets and clustering of cells into cylindrical shapes. Particle and cluster size are not necessarily small relative to the wavelength. A general computational framework is needed to calculate the acoustic radiation force on particles, clusters, and cells of various shapes. Ilinskii et al. presented a method to evaluate an acoustic radiation force on spherical objects, based on expansion of incident and scattered field in spherical waves. The acoustic force is given by the incident wave amplitudes and dimensionless scattering coefficients. This method is generalized for particle shapes which are not spherical. The incident acoustic and scattered field are expanded with respect to spherical waves. An evaluation of the scattering amplitudes for non-spherical objects can be done numerically. Analytically, scattering amplitudes are calculated from boundary conditions for spheroidal functions that are solutions of a wave equation in spheroidal coordinates ξ, η, φ. Boundary conditions are defined at surface ξ= constant, i.e. on an ellipsoid surface. Solutions for prolate and oblate ellipsoids have been estimated. The asymptotic values of spheroidal solutions are determined for ξ large enough to obtain required amplitudes of scattered field. Ilinskii et al. POMA, 19 (2013).
Study on the non-contact trapping of a small object using a pipe radiating travelling waves and a reflective rod—The effect of the shape of reflector surface on the trapping state
Authors: Aoyagi Manabu , Tamura Hideki , Takano Takehiro
Published: November 2016

Flexural damped travelling waves can be excited in a lossy transmission pipe. The waves generate travelling acoustic flow in the inside of pipe and near the pipe end and the acoustic flow serves as travelling acoustic waves. It has been confirmed that a non-contact transportation of a small object can be performed in the pipe, and additionally, a small object can be trapped at a nodal point of the standing wave formed by placing a reflector rod near the pipe end. In the experiment, a polycarbonate pipe (Outer dia.:13 mm, Inner dia.:9 mm, Length:160 mm) for the lossy ultrasonic transmission pipe that a piezo-ceramic annular plate vibrating in the first radial vibration mode is adhered at the pipe end was tried and the study on the effect of the shape of reflector surface on the trapping state is considered. The reflector is made of an acrylic rod (Dia.:13 mm) and the reflective surface is formed in to the conical shape. It was confirmed that the conical shape to be adapted for the trapping exists. To improve in the trapping force of the device, we considered the pipe attaching a reflective ring at the pipe end. The apparatus and distinctive characteristics are shown.
Non contact pick-up of drop of liquid from micro-well with megahertz ultrasound
Authors: Tanaka Hiroki , Mizuno Yosuke , Nakamura Kentaro
Published: November 2016

In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to the noncontact transport of small objects and droplets as an important technology in pharmacy industries, and new material science/engineering. Our aim in this report is to develop a noncontact pipette, and we focused on the method to pick-up a single droplet from micro-well plate without contact. A focused immersion transducer is placed below a micro-well plate. By emitting burst waves at 1.5 MHz, a droplet is ejected from the well and caught by the pressure nodal plane in the standing wave field. First, by observing the deformation of the ejected droplet and the surface of liquid in the micro-well plate with a high-speed video camera, we discussed the principle of droplet pick-up. Next, in order to pick-up any type liquid, we investigated the effect of surface tension and viscosity on the noncontact ejection of droplet for water, ethanol, and silicone oil. In this experiment, we found a linear relationship between the ejected droplet volume and the surface tension. In addition, we discuss the ratio of Ohnesorge number to Reynolds number in association with the stability of drop-on-demand inkjet printing operations, and determine the condition for droplet jetting.
Pressure dependence of the attenuation and sound speed in a bubbly medium: Theory and experiment
Authors: Jafari Sojahrood Amin , Li Qian , Haghi Hossein , Karshafian Raffi , Porter Tyrone M. , Kolios Michael C.
Published: November 2016

Existence of bubbles in a medium changes the attenuation and sound speed (Cs) of the medium. The relationship between the nonlinear oscillations of the MBs and acoustical parameters of the medium is not fully understood. In this work, monodisperse solutions of lipid coated bubbles with mean diameter of 5.2 micron and peak concentration of (5000 microbubbles/ml) were sonicated with a broadband pulse with center frequency of 2.25 MHz. The attenuation and Cs, were measured over a pressure range of 10-100 kPa. Using our recent nonlinear model and by solving the Marmattont Model, the attenuation and Cs of the solution were numerically analyzed. Experimental results showed that as the pressure increased, the attenuation peak increased by ~7-8 dB while its frequency decreased from 2.05 to 1.55 MHz. The maximum Cs of the medium increased with pressure (1521 to 1529 m/s) and shifted towards lower frequencies (2.34 to 1.95 MHz). At a fixed frequency (e.g., 1.65 MHz) the Cs increased by ~14%. The Cs of the bubbly medium remained the same as the Cs in the absence of bubbles at the frequency of the attenuation peaks. Numerical simulations were in good agreement with experimental observations and confirm the experimentally observed phenomenon.
Better-ear glimpsing in Japanese adult bilateral cochlear implant users
Authors: Rana Baljeet , Buchholz Jörg M. , Morgan Catherine , Sharma Mridula , Weller Tobias , Konganda Shivali A. , Shirai Kyoko , Kawano Atsushi
Published: November 2016

Better-ear glimpsing (BEG) is a phenomenon that helps understanding speech in the presence of fluctuating, spatially separated distractors. This phenomenon has been studied in normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired listeners but remains untapped in adults with cochlear implants (CIs). Further, it has not been investigated how far providing CIs in both ears can improve BEG over providing a single CI in one ear. In the current study, seven Japanese adult bilateral CI users with post-lingual deafness were recruited. Male and female speech distractors were presented from + 900 and—900 and target questions taken from the Helen sentence test (translated into Japanese, spoken by a native Japanese female speaker) were presented from the front. Speech comprehension thresholds (SCTs) were measured in both a co-located and spatially separated condition with CIs in both ears and only in one ear. BEG was calculated as the difference in SCTs between the co-located and spatially separated condition. BEG noted with bilateral CIs was about 2 dB and with unilateral CI was about 0.3 dB, which is significantly smaller than found in NH listeners. The bilateral benefit noted was about 3 dB indicating the advantage of having CIs in both the ears.
Effect of audibility, frequency region, and hearing loss on better-ear glimpsing
Authors: Rana Baljeet , Buchholz Jörg M.
Published: November 2016

Better-ear glimpsing (BEG), which utilises short-term interaural level difference cues (ILDs), helps understanding speech in noise. Since ILDs are mainly available at high frequencies where hearing loss is usually strongest, hearing-impaired (HI) listeners cannot take full advantage of BEG. One possible solution is to provide artificially generated ILDs at low and mid frequencies where hearing loss is usually less pronounced. Rana and Buchholz [JASA, 2016] showed that HI listeners can take advantage of such artificial ILDs, but their received benefit in speech intelligibility was still smaller than for normal-hearing (NH) listeners. To understand how far this difference can be explained by differences in audibility, speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) were measured in four frequency regions (low, mid, high, and broadband) at four audibility levels (0, 10, 20, and 30 dBSL) in 10 NH and 10 HI listeners. SRTs were measured for BKB like sentences in the presence of vocoded speech distractors. The difference between co-located and spatially separated SRTs was used as a measure of BEG. Results revealed that providing equal audibility removed the performance differences between groups. Moreover, the effect of BEG was roughly frequency independent and increased by about 2 dB for each 10 dB increase in sensation level.
The role of modulation characteristics on the interaction between hearing aid compression and signal-to-noise ratio
Authors: Reinhart Paul , Zahorik Pavel , Souza Pamela
Published: November 2016

Hearing aids use compression amplification to provide greater gain to lower amplitude sounds than higher amplitude sounds. When there are two signals (i.e., speech-in-noise) hearing aids alter the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by disproportionately increasing the lower amplitude signal compared to the higher amplitude signal. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between hearing aid compression and SNR alteration along a continuum of signal modulation characteristics. Sentence stimuli were combined with either 1-, 2-, or 6-talker modulated noise at a range of SNRs. Speech-in-noise signals were processed at a range of reverberation times with the speech and noise signals co-located. Stimuli were then processed at a range of compression release times (RT) using a hearing aid simulation which mimicked six-channel hearing aid processing. Signals were acoustically analyzed using a digital inversion method which employed phase cancellation to separate speech and noise signals at the output of the compressor. This enabled us to quantify changes to SNR as a result of compression. Results indicated that shorter RTs altered SNR more than longer RTs; however, reverberation reduced or eliminated the differences among RTs. Additionally, less modulated maskers lead to poorer output SNRs than modulated maskers. [Work supported by NIH.]
Real-time simulation of hearing impairment: Application to speech-in noise intelligibility
Authors: Grimault Nicolas , Parizet Etienne , Corneyllie Alexandra , Brocolini Laurent , Weyn Richard , Garcia Samuel
Published: November 2016

Accurately simulating cochlear hearing loss in real time is of paramount importance for various applications, including easier testing of the impact of cochlear damage on auditory perception in real-life situations, evaluating sound qualities as perceived by hearing-impaired listeners, and pedagogical demonstrations. Following an idea originally proposed by Irino and colleagues, a real-time hearing-loss simulator was developed. Using an inverse compressive gammarchirp filters analysis, the simulator aims to replicate the increase of hearing thresholds, the level-dependent widening of auditory filters, and modification of the loudness curve (recruitment). The characteristics of the simulator, and basic psychoacoustical measurements performed with and without the simulator (absolute thresholds, auditory filters estimated with notch-noise data, cochlear input/output functions estimated with temporal masking curves) will be presented. Finally, an experiment comparing the intelligibility of speech in noise for real and simulated hearing-impaired listeners with a French version of the Four Alternative Auditory Feature Test (FAAF) will be presented. On average, the results of normal-hearing listeners using the simulator were found to be similar to the results obtained in individuals with hearing loss of presumed cochlear origin, suggesting that the simulator is valid.
Within-listener comparisons of vowel confusions in pediatric, bilateral cochlear implantees
Authors: Bierer Julie A. , DiNino Mishaela
Published: November 2016

Tremendous variability in speech perception abilities exists in children and adults who wear cochlear implants (CIs). Preliminary data in adults suggests that variability in the interface between CI channels and auditory neurons can influence spectral resolution and thus vowel perception. One method for assessing the electrode-neuron interface is by using focused electrical fields to measure thresholds. A quick method for measuring thresholds across the array has recently been validated in adults. Here, the findings are extended to children who were bilaterally implanted sequentially. These children have different etiologies than the typically studied adults and different durations of auditory deprivation and implant use between their two ears. By comparing within listeners, the role of cognitive or linguistic factors is minimized. Within ears, the confusions listeners made were consistent between conditions of quiet and 4-talker babble background noise at a + 10 dB signal-to-noise ratio. For individual children, however, confusion patterns differed between the ears, suggesting that time with the implant and the electrode-neuron interface may indeed play a role in vowel confusions, as opposed to more global perception factors. Finally, the pattern of high-threshold regions corresponds to predictable vowel confusions, similar to those observed in adults.
Cochlear implant listener vowel identification performance and confusion patterns with selective channel activation programs
Authors: DiNino Mishaela , Winn Matthew B. , Bierer Julie A.
Published: November 2016

Cochlear implants (CIs) restore auditory perception to profoundly deaf individuals, yet identification of speech sounds remains limited by degraded or warped spectral representations. The present study aimed to measure the ways in which the perception of vowels (distinguished primarily by their spectra) is affected by selective activation of high or low quality electrode channels. Individualized experimental processing programs were created for eight CI users by selectively deactivating channels with poor electrode-neuron interfaces (identified by high auditory perception thresholds with focused stimulation), and reallocating frequencies to remaining electrodes (“High Off”). A contrary program in which channels with better electrode-neuron interfaces were deactivated (“Low Off”) was created for each participant for comparison. A program with all channels activated (“All”) served as a control. CI users performed a vowel recognition task with each experimental program. Overall percent correct did not change significantly across programs. However, perceptual distance and perceptual vowel space analyses indicated large differences in vowel confusion patterns between listening with “All,” “High Off,” and “Low Off” programs within individual CI users. These results suggest that vowel perception is dramatically altered by CI channel deactivation and frequency reallocation, which is not evident solely from average identification performance.
Can spectral centroid explain voice pitch and vocal-tract length perception in normal-hearing and cochlear implant listeners?
Authors: Gaudrain Etienne
Published: November 2016

Voice pitch (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL) are two principal voice characteristics that play a major role in segregating voices in cocktail party situations. Cochlear implant (CI) listeners struggle with taking advantage of voice differences in such situations. Recent studies show that they have difficulties discriminating voices on the basis of these two cues. Yet, the mechanisms underlying perception of these cues in CI users, but also in normal hearing (NH) listeners, remain largely unknown. In CIs, F0 can be coded temporally and spectrally in the lower frequency channels, but some recent studies have suggested that spectral centroid (SC) could be used instead. VTL could be perceived through its effect on individual formants, but is also often likened to timbre, and as such, it has been argued that VTL perception might rely on SC. However, these assumptions tend to overlook the SC variability occurring in natural speech. In this study, it is shown how this variability would influence F0 and VTL JNDs in NH and CI listeners if they were based on SC, using a signal detection theory model. The results suggest that SC is unlikely to be a reliable cue for vocal F0 and VTL perception in natural speech.
Perception of geminate consonants and devoiced vowels in Japanese by elderly and young listeners
Authors: Iwagami Eri , Arai Takayuki , Yasu Keiichi , Yanagisawa Emi , Kobayashi Kei
Published: November 2016

The goal of this study is to compare the perception of geminate consonants and devoiced vowels by elderly and young Japanese speakers. This study consisted of two perceptual experiments (Exp. 1and Exp. 2). In Exp.1, materials were nonsense words “ata” and “atta” having the structures: ‘V1CV2’, ‘V1C:V2’, and the following three parameters were changed: 1) formant transition of V1 (FT), 2) V1 duration, and 3) closure duration. In Exp. 2, materials were 27 Japanese words whose vowels can be devoiced. The results of Exp. 1 showed that compared with young listeners the perceptual boundary of geminate for elderly listeners shifted towards longer closure duration in the absence of FT. Moreover, the results of Exp. 2 showed that the misperception rate of young listeners was low with and without devoicing, whereas the rate was high with devoicing and low without devoicing in elderly listeners.
Articulation rates of people who do and do not stutter during oral reading and speech shadowing
Authors: A Rongna , Ochi Keiko , Yasu Keiichi , Sakai Naomi , Mori Koichi
Published: November 2016

Purpose: Previous studies indicate that people who stutter (PWS) speak more slowly than people who do not stutter (PWNS), even in the fluent utterances. The present study compared the articulation rates of PWS and PWNS in two different conditions: oral reading and speech shadowing in order to elucidate the factor that affect the speech rate in PWS. Method: All participants were instructed to read aloud a text and to shadow a model speech without seeing its transcript. The articulation rate (mora per second) was analyzed with an open-source speech recognition engine “Julius” version 4.3.1 (https://github.com/julius-speech/julius). The pauses and disfluencies were excluded from the calculation of the articulation rate in the present study. Results: The mean articulation rate of PWS was significantly lower than that of PWNS only in oral reading, but not in speech shadowing. PWS showed a significantly faster articulation rate, comparable to that of the model speech, in shadowing than in oral reading, while PWNS did not change the articulation rate depending on the task. Conclusion: The group and task comparisons indicate that the ability of PWS to rapidly articulate is not impaired but somehow impeded during oral reading.
Acoustics of palilalia: A case study
Authors: Akbari Christina C. , Shollenbarger Amy
Published: November 2016

Palilalia is a rather rare speech disorder associated with a variety of etiologies including Parkinson's disease, stroke, epilepsy, and others. According to the literature, palilalia is characterized by repetitions of words, phrases, and/or sentences produced with an increasing rate and decreasing intensity. Because of the rare nature of this disorder, literature involving the characteristics is limited and somewhat contradictive. Although the original definition involves increasing rate and decreasing intensity, some researchers (i.e., Kent & Lapointe, 1982) have found different characteristics such as decreasing rate and increasing intensity when examining individual cases. This study adds to the literature regarding characteristics of palilalic speech in terms of change in rate and fundamental frequency from the original utterance to the first repeated train. This study utilized a single-subject design involving a 42 year old male who suffered an anoxic brain injury. Spontaneous speech samples were collected and analyzed. The results showed significant differences in terms of rate and fundamental frequency with the first repeated train in comparison to the original utterance. The rate was significantly faster and the fundamental frequency was significantly higher in the repeated utterance.
Exploiting the Ganong effect to probe for phonetic uncertainty resulting from hearing loss
Authors: Gianakas Steven P. , Winn Matthew
Published: November 2016

The “Ganong effect” is the tendency to perceive an ambiguous speech sound as a phoneme that would complete a real word, rather than completing a nonsense/fake word. For example, a sound that could be heard as either /g/ or /k/ is perceived as /g/ when followed by “ift” but perceived as /k/ when followed by “iss.” Because the target speech sound (/g/ or /k/) is the same across both environments, this effect demonstrates the influence of top-down processing rather than simply bottom-up processing in speech perception. We hypothesized that degradations in the auditory system (including simulations of hearing loss or cochlear implantation), speech stimuli will be rendered more ambiguous, and an increased Ganong effect should be observed. Participants heard three speech continua that varied by spectral cues of varying speeds, including fast (stop formant transitions), medium (fricative spectra), and slow (vowel formants). Stimuli were presented with clear spectral quality, or with varying amounts of spectral degradation using a noise vocoder. Responses were analyzed within stimulus pairs using binomial logistic regression, revealing increased Ganong effect with degraded speech. This test is proposed as a simple measure of how phonetic uncertainty can lead to an individual’s increased reliance on top-down processing.
Auditory frequency discrimination in preschool and school-age children with specific language impairment
Authors: Liu Huei-Mei , Tsao Feng-Ming
Published: November 2016

The view of “perceptual processing deficits” in children with specific language impairment (SLI) emphasized that the detection and discrimination of basic acoustic components contributed to their difficulties in higher linguistic process. The purpose of this study was to examine the auditory frequency discrimination in Mandarin-speaking children with SLI across ages. Eighteen 5-year-old SLI and 18 age-matched controls, 20 8-year-old SLI and 20 controls participated. All the participants were assessed by the standardized intelligence and language tests. In the computerized auditory frequency discrimination task, children were asked to do AX discrimination of 1000-1030Hz and 1000-1070 Hz in conditions with and without noise masking. A mixed ANOVA was used to examine the effects of group, frequency difference, and masking conditions. The results showed that both preschool and school-age children with SLI performed significantly poorer on the frequency discrimination compared to the controls, especially in the masking condition. The preschoolers performed poorer on the frequency difference of 30 Hz than 70 Hz, but the school-age children performed similarly on both frequency differences. Individuals’ frequency discrimination were positively correlated with their language performance across two ages. These results suggest that deficits in frequency discrimination in children with SLI are important to their language difficulties.
Effect of F0 on the intelligibility of emotional speech in noise for younger and older listeners
Authors: Besser Jana , Pichora-Fuller Margaret K. , Goverts S T. , Kramer Sophia E. , Festen Joost M.
Published: November 2016

This study investigated if F0 variability could explain why intelligibility in noise is better for speech spoken to portray fear compared to emotionally neutral speech. Word recognition accuracy was measured for stimuli produced with neutral vocal emotion, for intact stimuli portraying fear, and for six versions of the fear stimuli with varying reductions in F0 variability. Younger and older adults were tested in speech-spectrum noise and two-talker babble. Younger adults outperformed older adults. As F0 variability in the fear stimuli was reduced, performance in speech-spectrum noise for both age groups decreased and approached performance for the neutral stimuli. In the two-talker babble, even when F0 variability was most reduced, performance remained higher for the fear stimuli than the neutral stimuli, especially for older adults. The mean F0 for the fear stimuli was higher than for the neutral stimuli, while mean F0 of the neutral stimuli and the two-talker masker were similar. Thus, although the greater F0 variability in the fear stimuli confers an advantage to both age groups in speech-spectrum noise, F0 mean and variability both contribute to the effect of emotion on intelligibility in two-talker babble, especially for older listeners.
Suprasegmental characteristics of spontaneous speech produced in good and challenging communicative conditions by younger and older adults
Authors: Tuomainen Outi , Hazan Valerie
Published: November 2016

Our study investigates strategies used to clarify our speech and compensate for masking effects when communicating in challenging listening conditions in older and younger adults. A total of 50 older (OA, 65-85 years, 30 F) and 23 younger adults (YA, 18-35 years, 14 F) were recorded (in “Talker A” role) while they completed the problem-solving diapix task with a young adult (“Talker B”) in four listening conditions: with no interference (NORM), when Talker B had a simulated hearing loss (HLS), Talker B heard babble (BAB1) or both heard babble (BAB2) noise. We measured articulation rate, fundamental frequency (f0) median and range, energy in 1-3 kHz band reflecting spectral tilt (ME1-3 kHz) for Talker A. In NORM, OAs were slower speakers and had lower ME1-3 kHz and wider f0 range than YAs. Median f0 also converged for men and women in OA talkers. In adverse conditions, YAs slowed down their speech (HLS) and increased the f0 range (BAB1 and BAB2) more than OAs, and OAs raised their median f0 more than YAs (BAB2). These results indicate that there are age-related changes in suprasegmental characteristics of spontaneous speech, and that OA talkers use different strategies than YA talkers to clarify their speech.
Fathers’ and mothers’ differential talk to sons and daughters with hearing loss
Authors: VanDam Mark , Jessup Carsen , Tully Tracy
Published: November 2016

In a natural family environment, fathers have been shown to talk less than mothers, and fathers may talk more to sons than to daughters. There is conflicting evidence showing mothers’ word use increases talking both to sons and to daughters. Further, preschoolers who are hard-of-hearing have been shown to encounter a similar number of parent utterances as compared with their typically-developing peers. This work looks at fathers and mothers talking to their preschool boys and girls and explores whether child hearing loss affects parent word use. Here we used all-day recordings from a wearable child audio recorder, analyzed using automatic speech processing algorithms to determine estimated number of syllables spoken by fathers, mothers, boys, and girls. About half of the families included children with hearing loss. Results showed that mothers talked more than fathers, parents offered about the same amount of talk to boys or girls who were typically developing, fathers talked more to their boys who were hard-of-hearing, and mothers talked more their girls who were hard-of-hearing. The asymmetry of fathers talking more to boys with hearing loss and mothers talking more to girls with hearing loss is considered in terms of the differential experience hypothesis.
Age estimation in Japanese speech based on feature selection
Authors: Morimoto Atsushi , Niitsuma Masahiro , Yamashita Yoichi
Published: November 2016

This paper addresses age estimation of Japanese speech utterance, using paralinguistic information in speech. Our speech conveys not only linguistic information but also paralinguistic and non-linguistic information. Nonlinguistic information includes potentially valuable social information such as personal parameters, body conditions, gender and ages. This significant information, however, has not been investigated enough. The main purpose of our study was to develop less-invasive methods to extract this information, by proposing a method to classify speakers’ age into five groups (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s). 6375-dimentional audio features were extracted from 1579 samples of 913 male speakers extracted from CSJ (Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese) and feature selection was conducted based on Fisher's Ratio. Naïve Bayes with top 20 parameters of Fischer’s ratio, yields highest accuracy rate of 51.2%.
The articulation of direct bone conducted sound in noisy environment
Authors: Maeda Hidehiko , Yonemoto Kiyoshi
Published: November 2016

We have constructed the direct bone conducted sound (DBC) detection system which is connected with piezo electronic accelerometer and the titanium implant of bone-anchored hearing aid (Baha) implanted on the temporal bone. Our previous study has reported that the sound distortion of the DBC was less than that of conventional bone conducted sound (BC) due to its property of outputting the DBC without going through the skin. This study reports the articulation of the DBC in noisy environment. The subject who output the DBC wears a Baha on his left side for hearing loss. He pronounced 50 monosyllables and words in quiet and extremely noisy environment. His voices were output simultaneously throughout three pathways, DBC, BC, and air conducted sound (AC). Sixteen participants with normal hearing heard those voices and answered how those were heard. In the quiet environment, the percentage of collect answers of the AC showed statistically significance (<.01) than those of the DBC and the BC. However, in extremely noisy environment, those of the DBC showed statistically significances (<.01) than those of the AC and the BC. This study clarified that the DBC kept the articulation without changing it in extremely noisy environment.
Levels of prominence in Spanish infant-directed speech
Authors: Aly Ann M. , Jacobson Stephanie , Sundara Megha
Published: November 2016

Research on Spanish prosody in adult-directed speech (ADS) (Ortega-Llebaria & Prieto 2005, Ortega-Llebaria & Prieto 2011) shows evidence for three acoustic levels of prominence: stressed and focused, stressed and unfocused, and unstressed and unfocused. We tested whether Spanish infant-directed speech (IDS) contains the same levels of prosodic prominence as ADS. In order to test this hypothesis, 30-minute play sessions between adult Spanish-speaking females of Latin American origin (n = 12) and 12-month old infants were recorded. We extracted target words from the recordings containing stressed and unstressed /a/, /e/, /i/, and /o/ in non-final position. Voicesauce (Shue et al 2011) was then used to obtain acoustic correlates of stress in Spanish: pitch, duration, intensity. We also labeled pitch accents using SpToBI conventions (Estebas Vilaplana & Prieto 2009). Latent class analyses to be performed on the data will determine the number of distinct prominence levels present in Spanish IDS as realized by Latin American speakers.
Longitudinal profiling of speech development in bilingual infants at risk of autism
Authors: Ghai Shweta , Bailey Jhonelle
Published: November 2016

Bilingualism is common and increasingly prevalent worldwide, as are the autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, there is little information on the impact of bilingual exposure on the development of language and communication skills in children with ASD. In the literature, only a few cross-sectional studies have analyzed language skills in both monolingual and bilingual toddlers with ASD, and have reported similar language outcomes using qualitative assessment instruments. Although outcomes may appear to be similar, it is not yet known if both groups follow the same developmental trajectories during infancy. To resolve this issue, this longitudinal study tracks speech development in monolingual and bilingual infants at low and high risk of autism using day-long audio recordings collected in the home with LENA technology from birth to 24 months. The relation between quantitative measures of speech development (adult volubility, child volubility, and conversational turns) over this period and qualitative language outcomes at 24 months is evaluated. The results of this study will help to determine the pace and patterns of language growth in bilingual infants relative to monolinguals at risk of autism, and thus provide insight into what may be alternative bases for the language acquisition process in bilinguals with ASD.
Vowel final noise in child coda /s/
Authors: Hanson Helen M. , Shattuck-Hufnagel Stefanie , Doughty Jackson
Published: November 2016

Child speakers of American English in the age range 2;6-3;6 often produce vowel final noise (VFN), or preaspiration, for [-voice] labial and velar stops in coda position of monosyllabic words [e.g., Shattuck-Hufnagel, Hanson, and Zhao, “Feature-cue-based processing of speech: A developmental perspective,” in Proc. ICPhS 2015]. In contrast, the female caregivers of these children produce VFN less often than the children, with significantly shorter durations. The current work extends the earlier work by studying a fricative, /s/, in coda position. Data from the same nine child/adult pairs are used. While the coda stops were all preceded by the vowel /ʌ/, the corpus includes two words with coda /s/, Gus and goose, allowing the observation of possible vowel effects. Preliminary analysis of a subset of the data shows that, as for coda stops, children are more likely than adults to produce VFN, with longer durations. However, adults show a vowel effect, being much more likely to produce VFN when /s/ follows /ʌ/ than when it follows /u/. A vowel effect is not observed for the child subjects.
Acoustic variation among African American and European American children: Age, gender, and ethnicity
Authors: Salas Dalila , Simmons Emily , Marsh Nicole , Licata Julia , Trent-Brown Sonja
Published: November 2016

Previous research has shown vowels are acoustically specified based on their formant frequencies (Peterson & Barney, 1952). Hillenbrand et al. (1995) replicated and extended this study. While both studies included children, neither included variation across children’s gender or ethnicity. The present study explores variations in phonemic production for children across age, gender, and ethnicity. Children were presented with a list of /h-vowel-d/ words and sentences (“I hear the sound of /h-V-d/ some more”) containing 12 General American English vowels (/i,ɪ,e,ɛ,æ,ʌ,ɑ,ɔ,o,ʊ,u,ɝ/). Height and weight were also measured. We hypothesize that fundamental and formant frequencies will be higher for 8 to 9 year olds than for 10 to 12 year olds and higher for girls (by age 10). For ethnicity, we anticipate no significant differences in frequency measures between European-American and African-American children. This study contributes to our knowledge of developmental trajectories for specified acoustic parameters. As gender and ethnicity are vital cues for adult speakers, it is important to investigate how salient acoustic parameters are for child speakers and at what ages child parameters begin to approximate adult measures. Results will have implications for audiologists, speech language pathologists, developmental scientists, and others in the field of communication sciences and disorders.
Analysis of children’s high front vowel area function using three-dimensional ultrasound imaging
Authors: Yeung Gary , Lulich Steven M. , Toutios Asterios , Alwan Abeer , Afshan Amber
Published: November 2016

Understanding children’s speech production can follow from an analysis of children’s vocal tract area functions. While some studies have used imaging techniques on children to measure tongue contours, to our knowledge, no vocal tract area functions of children have been examined. We attempt to measure the oral cavity vocal tract area functions of children’s vowels using three-dimensional ultrasound imaging recordings of the tongue and palate. In this investigation, we model the oral cavity area function of the vowel [i] of children and compare it to that of an adult oral cavity area function measured using the same ultrasound technique. We show evidence that the tongue positioning and articulation of the vowel [i] is dramatically different for children and adults. Specifically, we focus on how the different tongue positioning of children and adults affects the vocal tract transfer function of [i]. Some theories of children’s speech, either mechanically or perceptually based, can be inferred from these findings and will be compared to previous studies. [Work supported in part by NSF Grant 1551113, NSF Grant 1551131, NSF Grant 1514544, and NIH Grant R01DC007124.]
The time course of top-down processing during speech perception by normal hearing and cochlear-implant users
Authors: Wagner Anita E.
Published: November 2016

Cochlear implant (CI) users need to rely on top-down processes, such as integration of semantic information, to facilitate perception of CI speech, degraded in acoustic-phonetic details. This paper investigates the time-course of semantic integration for normal-hearing (NH) listeners, when processing natural and CI-simulated speech, as well as for experienced CI users. In eye-tracking experiments, we recorded listeners’ gaze fixations—an online measure of lexical decision-making, and time-locked pupil dilation—a measure of the mental effort involved. Participants’ ocular responses were measured while listening to sentences and simultaneously performing a search among pictures that displayed objects referred to in the sentence. The stimuli contained a target word (baby) that was either preceded or followed by disambiguating context (crawl). The display showed next to the target also a phonological competitor (bay), a word that was semantically viable given the sentential context (worm), and an unrelated distractor. For natural speech, gaze fixations show a fast integration of sentential context, and pupil dilations reveal a release from mental effort when sematic information is integrated. Degraded signals delay semantic integration, and further constrain listeners’ ability to compensate for inaudible information. We will discuss sources of individual variation among CI users.
Comparison of the multiple maximum length sequences and multiple exponential sweeps method for parallel measurements of impulse responses
Authors: Kuroda Shoma , Uenohara Shingo , Nishijima Keisuke , Furuya Ken'ichi
Published: November 2016

The measurement of room impulse responses is a central problem in audio signal processing, particularly for spatial audio rendering and sound field reproduction applications. The calibration of modern rendering systems requires the knowledge of the room impulse responses between the loudspeakers and several possible listener positions, in order to compensate for the characteristics of the loudspeakers and the room. The parallel measurement of multiple loudspeakers can be efficiently performed using the multiple maximum length sequence (MMLS) or the multiple exponential sweep (MES) method. This study evaluates the MMLS and MES methods for performing parallel measurements of multi-channel acoustic systems. Moreover, we apply noise reduction to improve their measurement accuracies. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the accuracy, measurement duration, and computing time for the two methods. The results show that the MMLS method was as accurate as the MES method. Although the measurement duration was shorter for the MMLS method compared with the MES method, the computing time was longer.
Passive imaging of scatterers in an acoustic daylight imaging configuration
Authors: Li Jie , Gerstoft Peter , Gao Dazhi , Li Guofu , Wang Ning
Published: November 2016

The arrival-time structure of Green’s functions is extracted by crosscorrelating one-sided aeroacoustic surf noise in an acoustic daylight imaging configuration, where 14 microphones (separation 0.08-3.7 m) are located between the noise and a cylinder. The cylinder is a hollow PVC pipe (radius 20 cm, height 2 m) 2.5 m landside of a microphone array. The frequency band for computing the cross correlation function is 400-2000 Hz, and total averaging time is Tave = 3 min. Results show that arrivals corresponding to the scattered (travel-time for source-scatterer-receiver path) waves and the time-difference (travel-time difference between two scatterer-receiver paths) waves emerge in the crosscorrelation functions for an acoustic daylight imaging configuration. Only one microphone pair is needed to locate the scatterer passively with the scattered and time-difference traveltime. We show imaging of 20 crosscorrelation functions with clear time-difference and scattered waves. Each estimated location is along the seaside boundary of cylinder, and the average location is close to the origin of the seaside half circle of cylinder.
A method for real-time, multiple-source localization using spherical harmonic decomposition
Authors: Mathews Jonathan , Braasch Jonas
Published: November 2016

By taking advantage of the spherical harmonic transform, spherical microphone arrays are able to decompose three-dimensional sound fields into their basic components, which enables detailed analysis and efficient spatial filtering algorithms. In recent years, methods for determining relative source positions around an array have been studied. Weighting functions can be generated to create a steerable beam which attenuates a sound field except in a specific direction. This research describes a real-time framework for multiple-source detection, which can be implemented using these methods. By finding the energy-sum distribution across a matrix of weighted harmonic signals, directional information may be simultaneously and efficiently obtained for multiple sources over time.
Performance improvement of snore activity detection in a noisy environment
Authors: Nishijima Keisuke , Uenohara Shingo , Furuya Ken'ichi
Published: November 2016

Health promotion and maintenance is becoming increasingly important and depends on three elements: nutrition, exercise, and rest (sleep). In the present work, focusing on sleep, we develop a smartphone-based system based on snore activity detection to investigate day-to-day variations in the sleep state, which does not require dedicated hardware. Snore activity detection is performed by machine learning using a support vector machine (SVM) with a linear kernel; the SVM is trained by labeled acoustic features, and the trained SVM models are used to detect snore activity. As acoustic features, The sound pressure level and mel-frequency cepstrum coefficients are calculated from sleep sound data obtained using a smartphone. In this paper, we investigated the effects of adding sleep environment noise recorded before sleep to the training set in snore activity detection, and we considered ways to improve detection performance. Performance comparison among the conventional method of SVM and the proposed method was presented. The performance comparison was evaluated by the cross-validation. The detection performance was improved by adding sleep environment noise recorded before sleep to the training set.
Context recognition system for smartphone applications with acoustic data
Authors: Tateishi Miho
Published: November 2016

This paper aims to create an original context recognition system on smartphones by using acoustic data. In this paper, the context represents that how the smartphone users move or how their contiguous environment is. In current systems, the context refers to the place where they are. It means that it is difficult to recognize the context when they are in a new place for which the system does not have the data. Our system simply categorizes the situation: “Train” when the user on the train, “Quiet Work Place” when they in a place like a library, PC room, or laboratory, and so on. This system features sound because it would be containing a lot of information. From volume to spectrum, we analyze the data from a built-in microphone and abstract multiple feature values. In addition to this, accelerator and luminance data are also used as feature values. Then these feature values are classified into context categories. This situation based categorizing system realizes that wherever the user goes, the context can be understood. It would be a flexible platform for smartphone applications which need the context recognition system.
Feedforward and feedback frequency-dependent interactions in a large-scale laminar network of the primate cortex
Authors: Mejias Jorge F. , Murray John D. , Kennedy Henry , Wang Xiao-Jing
Published: November 2016

A large-scale laminar network model sheds light on frequency-dependent interactions in the primate cortex.