Good Speech Research Articles

Cochlear implants – An Overview. Are CIs world’s most successful sensory prostheses?

Cochlear implants (CIs) have greatly improved over the last 2 decades and now are the world’s most successful sensory prostheses, that restored hearing to more than 800,000 deaf people. CIs are small electronic devices that consists of an external portion that is located behind the ear and a second portion that is surgically fixed under the skin, they replace the function of the inner hair cells in the cochlea by direct electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve. Although cochlear implantation has been used for almost 50 years, the indications for this procedure are subject to constant modifications but the main indication is the inability to achieve sufficient speech understanding. Properly implanted, fitted, and rehabilitated hearing prostheses allow to achieve open speech understanding in 70-80% of post-lingual deafness patients and very good speech development results in children. These days cochlear implantation has become the treatment of choice for people with significant hearing loss and are constantly being developed intensively.

Strategi Guru Dalam Menanamkan Sikap Sosial Siswa Kelas V SDIT Al-Hidayah Pekanbaru

The purpose of this study was to find out how the teacher's strategy in instilling social attitudes in class V SDIT Al- Hidayah Pekanbaru. This type of research is a qualitative research using a qualitative descriptive method which takes place at SDIT Al-Hidayah Pekanbaru. The sample in this study were fifth grade students at SDIT Al-Hidayah Pekanbaru. The data collection instruments used in this study consisted of interviews, observations and documentation which were then analyzed with reference to the Miles and Huberman method. The results of this study are the teacher's strategy in instilling students' social attitudes through four ways, namely habituation patterns, pilot patterns, spontaneous activities and admonishing or advising. The pattern of habituation is carried out by accustoming students to religious activities, accustoming students to obeying the rules, and habituating students to behave and say good things. The pilot pattern is carried out by the teacher by exemplifying students obeying the rules and exemplifying good behavior and speech. Spontaneous activities are carried out by the teacher to reprimand directly when students commit wrong actions and give praise when students successfully complete assignments properly. Reprimanding and advising teachers do when students violate class and school rules.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WATCHING STRUCTURED CARTOON FILM WITH TODDLER CHILDREN'S SPEECH ABILITY AT RT. 003 RW. 001 CIBITUNG SUB-DISTRICT, WANASARI SUB-DISTRICT YEAR 2023

Background: Age 1-3 years, children at this age have several characteristics in common with the previous period. Physically the child is still experiencing rapid growth. Speech and language skills in early childhood are very important because they are not only a means of communication but also for the growth and development of children. children who since childhood are trained and guided to speak well. Watching structured cartoon films can affect children's speech development. So from watching movies that are structured with sufficient time limits, children will quickly grasp the language in cartoons because these cartoons are interesting spectacles for children. Research Objectives: Knowing the Relationship between Watching Structured Cartoon Films and Speaking Ability of Toddlers in Rt 003 Rw 001 Cibitung District, Wanasari Village Research Methods: The research method used is quantitative, with a research design that is observational analytic and uses a cross sectional approach. The population in this study were toddlers who had good speech skills in Rt 003 Rw 001, Cibitung District, Wanasari Village with a total of 80 children. The data collection technique uses simple random sampling. Research Results: It was found that with a significant level of 95% or an α value of 5% (0.05) the results of the Ci Square test obtained a p value (0.000) <α value (0.05). This shows that H0 is rejected. Conclusion: There is a relationship between watching structured cartoon films and the speaking ability of toddlers in RT 003 RW 001, Cibitung District, Wanasari Village. Keywords: Watching Structured Cartoon Movies, Speaking Ability

A new speech enhancement method based on Swin-UNet model

U-shaped Network (UNet) has shown excellent performance in a variety of speech enhancement tasks. However, because of the intrinsic limitation of convolutional operation, traditional UNet built with convolutional neural network (CNN) cannot learn global and long-term information well. In this work, we propose a new Swin-UNet-based speech enhancement method. Unlike the traditional UNet model, the CNN blocks are all replaced with Swin-Transformer blocks to explore more multi-scale contextual information. The Swin-UNet model employs shifted window mechanism which not only overcomes the defect of high computational complexity of the Transformer but also enhances global information interaction by utilizing the powerful global modeling capability of the Transformer. Through hierarchical Swin-Transformer blocks, global and local speech features can be fully leveraged to improve speech reconstruction ability. Experimental results confirm that the proposed method can eliminate more background noise while maintaining good objective speech quality.

Long-term longitudinal follow-up of individuals with UCLP after Gothenburg twostage palate closure: surgical and speech outcomes.

Delayed hard palate closure in unilateral cleft lip and palate (UCLP) patients show on a safe surgical method and good speech outcome, however, occurrence of orally retracted articulation before hard palate closure at 8 years. The aim of this study was to describe surgical and speech outcome in UCLP patients closing the hard palate at 3 years. A consecutive of 28 participants were operated with Gothenburg two-stage method including soft palate closure at 6 months and hard palate at 3 years. Surgical and speech outcome were evaluated. Recordings of sentences and spontaneous speech at 5, 10, 16, and 19 years were analyzed blindly and independently by three speech-language pathologists. Compensatory articulation, hypernasality, hyponasality, weak pressure consonants, and nasal air leakage were evaluated on ordinal four-point and intelligibility and perceived velopharyngeal function on three-point scales. Long-term follow-up revealed a safe surgical method. Articulation disorders were present in 25-30% at 5-year but largely not later. About 20% had incompetent velopharyngeal function at 5 years but none at 19 years. Most participants were well intelligible after 5 years. Hard palate closure at 3 years indicated less occurrence of orally retracted articulation compared with a cohort who had hard palate closure at 8.2 years. Long-term, follow-up of individuals with UCLP after Gothenburg two-stage palate closure including closure of the soft palate closure at 6 months and hard palate at 3 years of age shows a safe surgical method and indicates less retracted oral articulation compared with hard palate closure at 8 years.

Cortical responses correlate with speech performance in pre-lingually deaf cochlear implant children.

Cochlear implantation is currently the most successful intervention for severe-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss, particularly in deaf infants and children. Nonetheless, there remains a significant degree of variability in the outcomes of CI post-implantation. The purpose of this study was to understand the cortical correlates of the variability in speech outcomes with a cochlear implant in pre-lingually deaf children using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), an emerging brain-imaging technique. In this experiment, cortical activities when processing visual speech and two levels of auditory speech, including auditory speech in quiet and in noise with signal-to-noise ratios of 10 dB, were examined in 38 CI recipients with pre-lingual deafness and 36 normally hearing children whose age and sex matched CI users. The HOPE corpus (a corpus of Mandarin sentences) was used to generate speech stimuli. The regions of interest (ROIs) for the fNIRS measurements were fronto-temporal-parietal networks involved in language processing, including bilateral superior temporal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus, and bilateral inferior parietal lobes. The fNIRS results confirmed and extended findings previously reported in the neuroimaging literature. Firstly, cortical responses of superior temporal gyrus to both auditory and visual speech in CI users were directly correlated to auditory speech perception scores, with the strongest positive association between the levels of cross-modal reorganization and CI outcome. Secondly, compared to NH controls, CI users, particularly those with good speech perception, showed larger cortical activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus in response to all speech stimuli used in the experiment. In conclusion, cross-modal activation to visual speech in the auditory cortex of pre-lingually deaf CI children may be at least one of the neural bases of highly variable CI performance due to its beneficial effects for speech understanding, thus supporting the prediction and assessment of CI outcomes in clinic. Additionally, cortical activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus may be a cortical marker for effortful listening.

Techniques for Assessing Disciplined Attitudes of Santri in Arabic Subjects at Al-Irsyad Tengaran 7, Batu City

This research intended to find out: 1) indicators of disciplinary attitude assessment, 2) assessment techniques discipline attitude at Al-Irsyad Tengaran Islamic Boarding School 7 Batu City, 3) efforts in instilling the values of discipline to the students at Al-Irsyad Tengaran Islamic Boarding School 7 Batu City. This study uses a qualitative approach with descriptive qualitative research methods. The data sources used by researchers in this study were school principals, heads of curriculum sections, Arabic subject teachers and students at Al-Irsyad Tengaran Islamic Boarding School 7 Batu City. The research results are: 1). There are 10 indicators for discipline attitudes assessment, 2) the assessment technique is carried out by the teacher for each subject in each note, but based on predetermined indicators. 3) inculcating the value of discipline including; a) the teacher and the pesantren always invite and guide the students to be on time, b) the teacher and the pesantren always invite the students to always maintain good and polite speech, c) the teacher and the pesantren also always appeal to all the students to can maintain neatness, especially in dressing, d) teachers in class has an obligation to the students to provide motivation and advice related to the importance of instilling discipline in carrying out activities

Nasalance scores of Thai cleft palate children using the Thai Simplified Nasometric Assessment Procedures Test (Thai SNAP Test)

Background: Nasometry in children with cleft lip and/ or palate (CLP) aged 4-6 years is necessary for diagnosis and planning treatments to promote decreasing velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) or resonance disorders that affect good speech intelligibility, prevent compensatory errors and other speech and language problems. Most Thai nasometric speech stimuli are passages suitable for literate patients. Using nasometric passages in young children who cannot read takes a long time to complete and gives unreliable nasalance scores. Due to the limitations, The Thai Simplified Nasometric Assessment Procedures Test (the Thai SNAP Test) was developed and assessed for validity and reliability, revealing that the Thai SNAP Test is proper for evaluating the speech resonance of illiterate patients. However, there is no study on nasometry in children with repaired cleft lip and/ or palate (RCLP) using the Thai SNAP Test. Objectives: To study nasalance scores between the control (non-cleft) group and the RCLP group assessed by the Thai SNAP Test and to describe the influential factors that affected nasalance scores. Materials and methods: The subjects were Thai children aged 4-7. The two groups of children were the RCLP and the control groups, and 36 children in each group. Nasalance scores were measured by a Nasometer II (model 6450). The child was asked to repeat 25 speech stimuli from the Thai SNAP Test, and then the scores were computed using a t-test or Mann-Whitney U test, depend on data distribution. The mean difference in nasalance scores between the two groups and the 95% Confident Interval (95% CI) were analyzed by the two-sample t-test with equal variances and the bootstrap confidence interval method, respectively. Results: The nasalance scores of the RCLP group were significantly higher than the control group (p<0.05) when using high-pressure oral speech stimuli. However, using nasal speech stimuli, the RCLP group’s nasalance scores were significantly lower than the control group (p<0.05), except for nasal syllable repetition (/na/ and /ni/), which did not find a significant difference (p≥0.05). This study emphasized that influential factors for the difference in the nasalance scores between the two groups were abnormal structures and functions articulators, especially the velopharyngeal port that was affected by the CLP, which caused resonance disorders, misarticulations, voice disorders, obstruction in the vocal tract, and hearing impairment. However, the phonological features used in the speech stimulus caused the difference in the mean nasalance scores of the same group. Conclusion: The trends in nasalance scores suggested that the Thai SNAP Test could identify speech resonance disorders in Thai children aged 4-7. The speech and language pathologist (SLP) or evaluator should consider factors influencing the nasalance scores. For accurately diagnosing or evaluating the progression of treatments, nasalance scores from Nasometer should be applied together with other information from various methods or instruments.

Introducing Children to Allah: Developing Religious Spirit in Elementary School Through Teaching Tawheed at Home

This article discusses how to introduce children to Allah and how to develop their religious spirit during their childhood, specifically during their time in primary school. The author emphasizes the importance of educating children about Allah and building their faith early on. This research is a literature review study on teaching children about tawheed (oneness of God) within the family setting. The method used in this research is content analysis. The analysis is conducted on several aspects: the command to educate children about tawheed, the primary role of parents in education, and the method of teaching tawheed to children. Parents should explain to their children that everything in the universe exists because Allah created it and provide simple analogies to help children understand the concept. Additionally, parents should strive to develop their children's religious spirit by creating an Islamic atmosphere in the household, teaching them good speech, taking them to the mosque, and using school holidays to participate in religious activities. The author highlights that these efforts should be ongoing and consistent throughout the child's upbringing.

Assessment of speech intelligibility during different teaching activities in classrooms with and without acoustic treatment

There is limited data for assessing speech intelligibility in real classrooms with realistic occupied noise levels and teacher’s and students’ speech levels for different teaching activities in Turkish secondary school classrooms. This study investigates the effect of reverberation time (RT), occupied noise levels and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on speech transmission index (STI) in real classrooms for instruction and group work. Noise levels were measured and STI values were calculated in two secondary school classrooms with RT of 0.88 s and 2.73 s. During instruction situation, calculated mean STI values were 0.63 (classroom with acoustic treatment) and 0.29 (classroom without acoustic treatment) for normal voice effort and 0.65 (classroom with acoustic treatment) and 0.39 (classroom without acoustic treatment) for raised voice effort. During group work, STI values ranged from 0.50 to 0.74 in classroom with acoustic treatment and from 0.01 to 0.34 in classroom without any acoustic treatment. SNR of 15 dBA is only approached in classroom with acoustic treatment during instruction situation. The effect of increasing SNR on STI is prominent in the classroom without acoustic treatment which already has low SNR values. The present results show that the classroom with acoustic treatment will have good speech intelligibility for instruction with normal vocal effort and for group work with raised vocal effort at 3 m distance. However, the classroom with no acoustic treatment will have STI values in the range of bad and poor intelligibility. The present results confirm the impact of SNR and RT on speech intelligibility and shows that RT value of minimum 0.8 s is optimal to have good speech intelligibility in a secondary school classroom of approximately 250 m3 with a capacity of 18 students.

Hybrid Palatoplasty: A Simplified DOZ (Double Opposing Z Plasty) with Palatal Myoplasty for Primary Palate Repair.

Introduction Surgical techniques for soft palate repair aiming for zero velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) are still not achieved. Straight line closure of the soft palate by various techniques of intravelar veloplasty (IVVP) leads to higher incidence of VPI due to scar contracture. Furlow's Z plasty has long, narrow, thin mucosal flaps and mucomuscular flaps with malaligned muscle closure. We present a technique of "hybrid palatoplasty" which borrows from and adds to the existing methods, is robust, is easy to replicate, and results in normal speech consistently. Aim (1) To design a technique of "hybrid palatoplasty"-combining double opposing Z (DOZ) plasty and IVVP, which is applicable to all types of cleft palate. (2) To evaluate the results of cleft palate children operated using the technique of "hybrid palatoplasty" from 2014 to 2015 in terms of surgical complications (fistulae and dehiscence) and incidence of VPI. Methods Our procedure combines aspects of both DOZ and IVVP. It is simplified with design of smaller Z plasties. On one side, from the oral Z plasty muscle is dissected off and sutured to the nasal mucomuscular flap of the opposite side to complete the palatal sling. Oral Z plasty is purely mucosal and reverse of the nasal side. A total of 123 cases, operated below 5 years of age were followed up. Speech was assessed by direct evaluation and tele-evaluation. Results A total of 123 cases, below 5 years of age, were operated between 2014 and 2016 with at least 5 years of follow-up. Note that 120 had normal speech, and 3 had VPI of which 2 were subsequently corrected and went on to develop normal speech. Conclusion This novel "hybrid palatoplasty" is a simple technique with good speech outcome as it combines the principles of Z plasty and direct muscle repair with palatal sling formation.

Stability and disruptive speech

Stability and disruptive speech

Cochlear Implant Adult Speech Perception Outcomes: Seniors Have Similar Good Outcomes.

The primary aim was to analyze the speech perception outcomes of patients with cochlear implants 65 years and older, compared with those younger than 65 years. The secondary aim was to analyze if preoperative hearing levels, severe compared with profound, had an effect on speech perception outcomes in senior citizens. Retrospective case review of 785 patients, between 2009 and 2016. A large cochlear implant program. Cochlear implant adult recipients younger than 65 years and 65 years and older at the time of surgery. Therapeutic-cochlear implant. Speech perception outcomes, using City University of New York (CUNY) sentences and Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant (CNC) words. Outcomes were measured preoperatively and postoperatively at 3, 6and 12 months for cohorts younger than 65 years and 65 years and older. Adult recipients younger than 65 years compared with those 65 years and older had comparable outcomes for CUNY sentence scores outcomes ( p = 0.11) and CNC word scores ( p = 0.69). The preoperative four-frequency average severe hearing loss (HL) cohort was significantly better compared with the profound HL cohort, for both the CUNY sentence scores ( p < 0.001) and CNC word scores ( p < 0.0001). The four-frequency average severe HL cohort had better outcomes irrespective of age. Senior citizens have similarly good speech perception outcomes as adults younger than 65 years. Those with preoperative severe HL have better outcomes than profound loss. These finds are reassuring and can be used when counseling older cochlear implant candidates.

Utilizing auditory emotion bio-markers, the underpinning of emotion perception improvement in cochlear implant users

Cochlear implants (CI) have had tremendous success restoring a sense of hearing in the deaf. However, even after months of intensive rehabilitation, many CI users struggle with appreciating emotive tones in speech and music despite good speech comprehension. Failure to perceive emotional expression can result in maladjusted social behaviour, leading to detrimental socio-economic consequences. Recent advances in automated pattern identification of neuroimaging data can bring empirical support to developing training programs for emotion perception rehabilitation in CI users. We used a machine-learning approach to identify emotion-processing bio-markers in high-density electroencephalograms collected from CI users (22) and matched normal-hearing controls (22). Participants’ brain responses elicited by short musical and vocal emotional (happy, sad, and neutral) stimuli were used to train an algorithm to help identify, in each group, the pattern of brain responses that can best predict the presented emotion. Using this approach, we were able to confirm the presence of emotion-specific patterns of brain activity in CI users despite their reported emotion perception deficit. Identifying these patterns brings forward support for implementing a rehabilitation program for emotion perception for this population; if an algorithm can differentiate aurally presented emotions, perhaps CI users can learn to discriminate emotions.

EAST JAVA LUDRUK: PRAGMATIC LEARNING PERSPECTIVE ORIENTED CHARACTER EDUCATION

The East Java Ludruk show contains many moral values, and one of which contained in the East Java Ludruk text is the value of character education as the character building of the nation. This research aims to reveal moral values as the character building of the nation contained in the East Java Ludruk text by paying attention to linguistic (verbal and nonverbal) and non-linguistic (social, cultural, political, and religious) aspects by applying pragmatic learning based on critical discourse analysis so that character students can easily understand moral values found in the text of the East Jawa Ludruk. In addition, this research also aims to reveal that pragmatic learning in East Java Ludruk texts is also very important and needs to be understood by language teachers because the pragmatics emphasized in this study reveal good speech acts according to pragmatic rules, how to speak according to whom, to whom, where, and how. The results of this study indicate that human values related to the formation of the nation's character are found in the Ludruk text of East Java. In addition, the role of pragmatic learning in East Java's Ludruk text is also very important to facilitate language teachers in expressing good speech acts according to pragmatic learning rules.

Symptoms: Dizziness and Deafness

Symptoms: Dizziness and Deafness

THE ROLE OF ISLAMIC EDUCATION TEACHERS AS A MODEL IN IMPROVING SOCIAL ATTITUDE OF STUDENTS AT SMP NEGERI 3 PAMBOANG MAJENE REGENCY

Exemplary has a very large influence in the formation of the good personality of learners, especially to raise the social attitudes of learners. Social attitudes are closely related to the formation of attitudes towards students in order to become figures who always do better things to human beings. The purpose of this research is to determine the role of Islamic Education Teachers as role models in improving Social Attitudes of Students at SMP Negeri 3 Pamboang, Majene Regency. The type of research used by the authors in this study is qualitative. Qualitative research which builds meaning based on field data. This qualitative research procedure produces descriptive data in the form of written or spoken form obtained by observable people. The data collection is carried out by having interview. The results showed that the role of Islamic Education Teachers as a model in improving the socialattitude of students at SMP Negeri 3 Pamboang, namely, islamic education teachers always show an attitude of care and respect of learners, apply good speech , Always take care of the feelings of the learners and give full attention to the learners. Therefore, the social cycle of students grows well, especially the attitude of cooperation, solidarity and tolerance.

The effect of SLC26A4 gene mutations on long-term rehabilitative outcomes in cochlear implant patients

Background SLC26A4 gene mutations related to hearing loss patients can obtain good hearing and speech rehabilitation effects after cochlear implantation (CI). Objective To explore the long-term rehabilitative outcomes of CI in patients with different SLC26A4 mutation groups. Material and Methods Clinical data of 71 patients with SLC26A4 gene mutations who received CI in the Second Hospital of Lanzhou University from 2012 to 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. According to the genetic test results, use One-way ANOVA analysis to compare the differences in auditory results, categories of auditory performance (CAP) and speech intelligibility rating (SIR) index questionnaire scores and speech recognition rates among different groups in 4-5 years after CI. Result Compared with other genotypes of SLC26A4, the patients with homozygous mutation of c.919-2A > G in SLC26A4 had better hearing aid threshold at 500 Hz and better recognition rates of Yangyang words than other monoallelic mutation groups after CI (p < .05). Conclusions and Significance The most common hot spot mutation of SLC26A4 gene is c.919-2A > G. The patients with homozygous mutation of c.919-2A > G in SLC26A4 gene had partly better hearing and speech rehabilitation than other monoallelic mutation groups after CI.

An Adaptive-Learning-Based Generative Adversarial Network for One-to-One Voice Conversion

Voice conversion (VC) emerged as a significant domain of research in the field of speech synthesis in recent years due to its emerging application in voice-assistive technologies, such as automated movie dubbing speech-to-singing conversion, to name a few. VC deals with the conversion of the vocal style of one speaker to another speaker while keeping the linguistic contents unchanged. Nowadays, generative adversarial network (GAN) models are widely used for speech feature mapping from the source speaker to the target speaker. In this article, we propose an adaptive-learning-based GAN model, called ALGAN-VC, to improve the one-to-one VC of speakers. Our ALGAN-VC framework consists of some approaches to improve the speech quality and voice similarity between the source and target speakers. We incorporate a dense residual network architecture into the generator network for efficient speech feature learning between source and target speakers. Our framework also includes an adaptive learning mechanism to compute the loss function for the proposed model. Moreover, a boosted learning rate approach is incorporated to enhance the learning capability of the proposed model. The proposed model is tested on Voice Conversion Challenge 2016, 2018, and 2020 datasets along with our self-prepared Indian regional-language-based speech dataset. In addition, an emotional speech dataset is also considered for evaluating the model’s performance. The objective and subjective evaluations of the generated speech samples indicated that the proposed model elegantly performed the voice conversion task by achieving high speaker similarity and good speech quality.

Improved Transformer-Based Dual-Path Network with Amplitude and Complex Domain Feature Fusion for Speech Enhancement.

Most previous speech enhancement methods only predict amplitude features, but more and more studies have proved that phase information is crucial for speech quality. Recently, there have also been some methods to choose complex features, but complex masks are difficult to estimate. Removing noise while maintaining good speech quality at low signal-to-noise ratios is still a problem. This study proposes a dual-path network structure for speech enhancement that can model complex spectra and amplitudes simultaneously, and introduces an attention-aware feature fusion module to fuse the two features to facilitate overall spectrum recovery. In addition, we improve a transformer-based feature extraction module that can efficiently extract local and global features. The proposed network achieves better performance than the baseline models in experiments on the Voice Bank + DEMAND dataset. We also conducted ablation experiments to verify the effectiveness of the dual-path structure, the improved transformer, and the fusion module, and investigated the effect of the input-mask multiplication strategy on the results.