Novel Task-Based Unification and Adaptation (TUA) Transfer Learning Approach for Bilingual Emotional Speech Data

Abstract

Modern developments in machine learning methodology have produced effective approaches to speech emotion recognition. The field of data mining is widely employed in numerous situations where it is possible to predict future outcomes by using the input sequence from previous training data. Since the input feature space and data distribution are the same for both training and testing data in conventional machine learning approaches, they are drawn from the same pool. However, because so many applications require a difference in the distribution of training and testing data, the gathering of training data is becoming more and more expensive. High performance learners that have been trained using similar, already-existing data are needed in these situations. To increase a model’s capacity for learning, transfer learning involves transferring knowledge from one domain to another related domain. To address this scenario, we have extracted ten multi-dimensional features from speech signals using OpenSmile and a transfer learning method to classify the features of various datasets. In this paper, we emphasize the importance of a novel transfer learning system called Task-based Unification and Adaptation (TUA), which bridges the disparity between extensive upstream training and downstream customization. We take advantage of the two components of the TUA, task-challenging unification and task-specific adaptation. Our algorithm is studied using the following speech datasets: the Arabic Emirati-accented speech dataset (ESD), the English Speech Under Simulated and Actual Stress (SUSAS) dataset and the Ryerson Audio-Visual Database of Emotional Speech and Song dataset (RAVDESS). Using the multidimensional features and transfer learning method on the given datasets, we were able to achieve an average speech emotion recognition rate of 91.2% on the ESD, 84.7% on the RAVDESS and 88.5% on the SUSAS datasets, respectively.