Researchers often find themselves in a position of “acting for” or “in the name of” individuals and communities whose voices have traditionally been muted or silenced. The passive nature of these muted or silenced voices prevents them from being heard, fully understood or appreciated. As true voices of participants emerge in research, so does a more representative view of individuals’ or commun...

Speech analysis tools within the Lingus system have been used on a large scale for adults and children learning Swedish as second language. Several thousands of students have had the opportunity to for instance compare their own pitch curves with those of native speakers. The attitudes and experience of students and teachers have been investigated, in a first stage through a number of interview...

In this paper we focus on improving the noise preprocessor (NPP) of the low-rate speech coder MELPe using information from the non-acoustic General Electromagnetic Motion Sensor (GEMS). A generalized linear model approach is proposed to improve the voice activity estimation both in the frame-level time domain and in the bin-level frequency domain with GEMS and context features. HMM based speech...

background: health?related quality of life (hrql) and voice handicap index (vhi) of laryngectomies seem to be relevant regarding voice rehabilitation. the aim of this study is to assess the impact on hrql and vhi of laryngectomies, following voice rehabilitation. materials and methods: a retrospective study done at the ear, nose, and throat department of the emergency county hospital. sixty?fiv...

    Background: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disorder and many PD patients experience some type of voice and speech disorders during the course of illness. In this study, the aim was to investigate the effect of Lee Silverman voice treatment (LSVT) on improving voice difficulties in patients with mild PD using voice handicap index (VHI).    Methods: This interventiona...

OBJECTIVES The objectives of this study are to evaluate the impact on voice of both duration and intensity level of 2 hours of continuous oral reading. Voice modifications accompanying changes in intensity level during prolonged reading tasks are analyzed. METHODS Fifty normophonic women undergo two sessions of voice loading in which the required intensity level of voice varied between 60-65 ...

In the mature adult brain, there are voice selective regions that are especially tuned to familiar voices. Yet, little is known about how the infant's brain treats such information. Here, we investigated, using electrophysiology and source analyses, how newborns process their mother's voice compared with that of a stranger. Results suggest that, shortly after birth, newborns distinctly process ...

Menopause effects a permanent change in certain body functions, including voice. If the voice is used continually as part of one's occupation, this may further impact on postmenopausal voice changes. The present study investigated individual and combined effects of menopause and professional voice use on voice. Ninety-two women were classified into reproductive (52) and postmenopausal (40) grou...