Voice Intonation Research Articles

Atypical Association of Japanese Encephalitis with Sixth and Seventh Cranial Nerve Palsy during Outbreaks : Does it Require a Second Thought? A Case Report

Last year in the month of August and September there had been an increased incidence of Japanese Encephalitis being reported all over West Bengal, India. Keeping this public and medical interest in the backdrop, the authors are reporting a 28 years old female patient admitted to the medical ward with acute onset flaccid paralysis of both lower limbs, diplopia, nasal intonation of voice, difficulty in swallowing and features suggesting facial nerve palsy. The intensivist was called for management of gradually worsening respiratory failure and the patient was put on mechanical ventilator after being shifted to Intensive Therapy Unit. On neurological examination, power of lower limb was diminished with sixth and seventh cranial nerve palsy. The patient was diagnosed to have Japanese Encephalitis infection by a four-fold rise in virus-specific antibody detected in paired acute and convalescent sera by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. In nerve conduction velocity test she had bilateral symmetrical demyelinating sensory>>motor polyradiculoneuropathy suggestive of Sural nerve sparing acute inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy. Cerebrospinal fluid study revealed albumino-cytological dissociation. She was off the ventilator after 3 days of full course of plasmapheresis and she gradually regained her motor power with physiotherapy and nursing care. Japanese Encephalitis patients are mainly admitted with feature of central nervous system insults and have poor prognosis. Syndromic association of Japanese Encephalitis with sixth/seventh cranial nerve palsy having Guillain-Barre Syndrome without any features of meningo-encephalitis is a rare phenomenon and there are very few case reports in literature regarding this topic. This case report highlights the successful management of such rare experience.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ELECTROMYOGRAPHY SIGNAL OF NECK MUSCLE AND HUMAN VOICE SIGNAL FOR CONTROLLING LOUDNESS OF ELECTROLARYNX

Human voice intonation is affected by pitch and loudness. Pitch is related to the frequency of human voice, while loudness is related to the magnitude of human voice. Someone who does not have vocal cords, has no ability to produce voice. This problem is suffered by laryngectomy patients. Over half of all laryngectomy patients worldwide use electrolarynx for the rehabilitation of their speech ability. Unfortunately, the electrolarynx voice produces monotonic and flat intonation. Small changes in pitch and loudness of electrolarynx will give a better expression in laryngectomy patients. However, previous researches have focused on utilization of electromyography (EMG) signal of neck muscle for only pitch control. In this research, the relationship between human voice intonation (i.e. frequency and magnitude) and EMG signals of neck muscles was studied by looking for their correlation and their mutual information. Human voice signal and EMG signal of neck muscle were recorded simultaneously while subjects were saying "A" with varying intonation. The EMG signal of neck muscle was processed using amplifying, filtering, rectifying and "moving average" process. On the other hand, the human voice was processed by FFT Algorithm to obtain magnitude and fundamental frequency. The result shows that the correlation coefficient between human voice magnitudes and EMG signal of neck muscle is 0.93, while the correlation coefficient between human voice frequency and EMG signal of neck muscle is 0.88. Moreover, the mutual information between human voice magnitudes and EMG signal of neck muscle is 1.07, while the mutual information between human voice frequency and EMG signal of neck muscle is 0.65. These results show that the relationship between human voice magnitudes and EMG signal of neck muscle is stronger than the relationship between human voice frequencies and EMG signal of neck muscle. Therefore, it is more appropriate to use the EMG signal of neck muscle for controlling loudness of electrolarynx than that of the pitch of electrolarynx.

Origin of symbol-using systems: speech, but not sign, without the semantic urge.

Natural language—spoken and signed—is a multichannel phenomenon, involving facial and body expression, and voice and visual intonation that is often used in the service of a social urge to communicate meaning. Given that iconicity seems easier and less abstract than making arbitrary connections between sound and meaning, iconicity and gesture have often been invoked in the origin of language alongside the urge to convey meaning. To get a fresh perspective, we critically distinguish the origin of a system capable of evolution from the subsequent evolution that system becomes capable of. Human language arose on a substrate of a system already capable of Darwinian evolution; the genetically supported uniquely human ability to learn a language reflects a key contact point between Darwinian evolution and language. Though implemented in brains generated by DNA symbols coding for protein meaning, the second higher-level symbol-using system of language now operates in a world mostly decoupled from Darwinian evolutionary constraints. Examination of Darwinian evolution of vocal learning in other animals suggests that the initial fixation of a key prerequisite to language into the human genome may actually have required initially side-stepping not only iconicity, but the urge to mean itself. If sign languages came later, they would not have faced this constraint.

Estimation of the User's Emotional State by Keystroke Dynamics

play a significant role in human computer interaction (HCI). Up to the present, different methods for emotion measurement have been developed like facial expression analysis, voice intonation analysis, thermal imaging etc. Our approach in this paper is to identify users' emotional state based on using standard keyboard. According to the proposed scenarios, emotional states investigated within this research include, but are not limited to, the following ones: confidence, sadness, happiness, tiredness, nervousness, anger.

An experimental test of the relationship between voice intonation and persuasion in the domain of health

Objective: In the process of behaviour change, intonation of speech is an important aspect that may influence persuasion when auditory messages are used. In two experiments, we tested to what extent different levels of intonation are related to persuasion and whether for some recipients the threat posed by the message information might become too strong to face.Design: In Study 1, 130 respondents listened to a health message with either a low, moderate or high level of intonation. In Study 2 (N = 143), the same manipulations of intonation were applied but half of the respondents were affirmed before they listened to the persuasive message. Intention to increase fruit and vegetable intake was used as a dependent variable.Results: Both studies showed that high intonation led to a significant drop in intention among respondents who perceived their own health as good. After self-affirmation, persuasion was increased.Conclusion: A high level of intonation seems to induce self-regulatory defences in people who do not see the necessity to change their health behaviour, whereas people with poor perceived health might perceive potential to change. The use of a normal level of intonation in auditory health messages is recommended.

Perception of the prosody and content of sentences in an unfamiliar language in children with autism spectrum disorders

Prior research suggests that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show atypical patterns of attention to the prosody (intonation and emotional tone of voice) and content (words) of spoken sentences. Using a discrimination-choice procedure embedded in a custom-made videogame, we examined attention to these features of sentences in 15 children with ASD (ages 5 years, 5 months–18 years) and 15 age-matched typical controls (TYP). Using an unfamiliar language (German) to remove semantics, we assessed the role of meaning in promoting attention to content over prosody. As in a previous study with English sentences, TYP children attended to content to a greater extent than children with ASD while maintaining equivalent levels of discrimination based on prosody. However, in contrast to previous results, TYP children did not show a preference for enthusiastic over grouchy tone of voice, which suggests that the unfamiliar language rendered affective valence less salient. The results confirm intact perception of prosody in children with ASD, and a more selective pattern of attention to content in TYP children.

Modular prosthesis of the Larynx: Current Stage - Analysing the Information from the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve

In previous publications we outlined the feasibility of a modular prosthesis of the larynx for patients suffering from laryngeal carcinoma. The larynx is located between the trachea and the pharynx with its main functions being phonation, protection and regulation of the air ways. Patients suffer severely from the diagnosis of a laryngeal carcinoma of the stages pT3 and pT4. In most cases this diagnosis will lead to a total laryngectomy, which usually leads to a dissatisfying postoperative rehabilitation. The postoperative consequences include the loss of the voice, the regular air ways via mouth and nose, the sense of smell, and the inability to build up an abdominal pressure. This paper deals with the basic research on the nervus laryngeus recurrens for the development of a modular prosthesis of the larynx which eventually will enable the laryngectomee to talk with his native voice, to breathe via the regular air ways, and to build up abdominal pressure. The voice reproduction will be performed by a vocoder. Vocoders are electronic devices which emulate the human vocal tract by using adequate filter settings on discrete filter units thus consisting of both variable and permanent filter settings. The signal pattern in the nervus laryngeus recurrens will affect the variable filter settings of the vocoder according to the current voice intonation whereas the vocal range of the patient's voice gives the limit of the permanent filter settings. In this work we put emphasis on the recording and analysis of the signal pattern in the nervus laryngeus recurrens. Therefore we tried to record the nerve potentials of this nerve first in a non-invasive approach by using skin electrodes along the anatomic course of the nerve. A sophisticated amplifier (Intan ® Technologies RHA2000-Series Amplifier and RHA2116 Amplifier Board) was used to amplify the weak nerve potentials, but we had to cope with a poor SNR and strong signal distortions mostly due to muscle potentials from large muscles like the sternocleidomastoid muscle eventually delivering us only microphone potentials of the voiced parts of the speech generated by the muscle potentials of the laryngeal and pharyngeal muscles and not representing action potentials on the nerve thus rendering them useless for our needs. Further basic research in this field therefore is necessary, even taking an invasive approach into account.

High School String Players’ Perception of Violin, Trumpet, and Voice Intonation

We studied young string players’ perception of intonation in accompanied solo performances of trumpet, voice, and violin. We were interested in whether pitch deviations of equal magnitude in the three solo performances would be judged as equivalent in intonation. Listeners were 71 middle and high school string players who heard trumpet, voice, and violin performances of “Ave Maria” (Bach/Gounod) accompanied by piano. Pitch levels of the soloists were in-tune or became progressively more sharp or flat (by 10, 20, and 30 cents) relative to the accompaniment. Intonation changes in the sharp direction were judged as more out-of-tune for the violin than equivalent alterations of voice and trumpet. In flat direction changes, violin was also heard as slightly more out-of-tune than the other soloists for deviations of 30 cents, but was judged similar to the other two for deviations of 10 and 20 cents. Additional research is necessary to investigate whether this outcome was a result of these string players’ heightened sensitivity to string intonation.

Public Speaking in Social Phobia: A Pilot Study of Self-Ratings and Observers' Ratings of Social Skills

The aim of this pilot study was to investigate whether patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) differ from controls in the quality of skill-related behaviors displayed during a speech and in overall behavioral adequacy as perceived by observers and by the patients themselves. A total of 18 SAD patients and 18 controls were screened by a diagnostic interview and took part in a 3-minute speech of their own choosing. For each videotaped speech, observers rated the adequacy of the skill-related behaviors and overall performance adequacy. After the experiment, participants were asked to rate their own overall performance adequacy. The results showed that SAD patients exhibited significantly worse voice intonation and fluency of the speech, however no differences were found in global self-ratings. Moreover, the performance evaluations of the SAD group were consistent with the observers, while the controls evaluated their performance lower than the observers. The results are inconsistent with the cognitive model, because patients with SAD did not underestimate their performance. Compared with spontaneous interactions, the clear rules established for such social situations as speeches may result in less cognitive distortion for SAD patients.

Prosodic assessment in Egyptian children with specific language impairment

EnAbstract Background Prosody is the aspect of language that conveys emotion by changes in tone, rhythm, and emphasis during speech. Prosody includes aspects such as intonation and tone of voice. Specific language impairment (SLI) is a developmental disorder in which language development is below the chronological age despite normal nonverbal intelligence and no obvious neurological or physiological impairments or emotional and/or social difficulties that could impact language use. Most of these children experience considerable difficulty in language comprehension and/or production and experience specific problems in learning syntactic rules. In the speech stream, boundaries of major syntactic constituents are reliably marked by prosodic cues. Although deficits in related aspects of prosody have been hypothesized to underlie SLI, prosody has been little studied in Egyptian children having SLIs. Objective The objective of this work was to assess prosody in Egyptian children with an SLI in order to correlate the results with the clinical profile of the patients so as to choose the proper rehabilitation training program. Participants and method This study included 30 Egyptian children with SLIs and 30 normal children as a control group; their ages ranged between 4 and 6 years. Assessment included language assessment using the Arabic language test and prosodic assessment using the protocol of prosodic assessment, which was especially designed to assess prosodic abilities in Arabic-speaking children. Results Results revealed a significant difference in most of the individual and total subjective scores of prosodic skills between the control group and children with SLIs. Although the difference in the average of the total objective scores of prosodic assessment, which included pitch and energy, was highly significant, the average of total sentence duration was insignificant. There was significant correlation between the total language age and all subjective scores and an insignificant correlation with the total objective scores of prosodic assessment skills in SLI children. Conclusion SLI children have defective receptive, expressive, subjective, and objective scores of prosodic assessment skills that should be considered during the rehabilitation program for language stimulation for these children.

A Centurion's "Confession": A Performance-Critical Analysis of Mark 15:39

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) In many respects, Mark 15:39 is deceptively simple. Immediately after Jesus dies and temple curtain is torn from top to bottom, centurion standing opposite crucifixion scene speaks seven uncomplicated words: .... The lexical meaning of these individual terms is not doubt, and christological significance of utterance, at this juncture Mark's story, is widely recognized. At issue, and what complicates an otherwise straightforward verse, is intended force of utterance. At level of story, what precisely did centurion mean when speaking these words? Is so-called confession a genuine expression of faith and devotion, a final, derogatory statement of mockery meant to belittle Jesus and his followers, or an ambiguous pronouncement whose cannot be determined?1 While various grammatical and historical issues weigh on interpretation of this statement, verse hinges on elements that are not readily obvious textual remains of Mark's story. Taken isolation and stripped from printed page, response might be construed a variety of ways. Most germane to problem is how Mark and/or early storytellers dramatized statement, since it makes a profound difference whether words were spoken with heartfelt sincerity or a condemnatory scowl. These paralinguistic and extralinguistic features- intonation of storyteller's voice, gestures, facial expression, and so on-are inherent all communication and, as Whitney Taylor Shiner has shown, used with skill and passion by early performers of Gospels.2 Unfortunately for modern reader, these additional conveyors of meaning have not been recorded our written artifacts. It has often been assumed that distinction between oral and written media is largely irrelevant, but a number of scholars have begun fruitful exploration of performance criticism, further demonstrating that meaning is intrinsically bound to particular mode of communication.3 Accordingly, objective of this essay is to situate Mark 15:39 within its oral context, recognizing that the medium is message.4 The is not to postulate about what, if anything, centurion actually said but to understand force of centurion's statement as reflected Markan passion narrative. Though it is impossible to revert to a pre-literate mind-set and our only remains are written documents, we can and must do a better job of attempting to reconstruct likely performance scenarios that are based on social realities of first century. I. ILLOCUTIONARY FORCE IN MARK A growing number of scholars have begun to assert that centurion's postcrucifixion remarks are not an expression of belief but a form of sarcasm intended to mock Jesus. While nothing statement inextricably leads to this conclusion, Donald H. Juel argues that derision is in accord with rest of taunts account of Jesus' trial and death.5 Likewise, Stephen D. Moore questions genuineness of response but focuses on consistent misunderstanding surrounding identity of Jesus and unlikelihood that a Gentile soldier succeeds where Jesus' elite hand-picked disciples have so singularly failed.6 Whatever objections might be raised, these interpretations expose one of more vexing problems biblical interpretation. That Gospels are derived from oral stories and influenced by dynamics of oral storytelling practices has been discussed at length, and need not be rehearsed here.7 The question raised by Mark 15:39 is how one interprets potential loss of meaning generated by gap between different communication media. Though all translation results communication loss, impact is even more pronounced transition from one media type to another. If, as Richard Watts suggests, it is difficult to detect ironic intent literature, then discerning force of centurion's remark is even more problematic since confession is situated a piece of orally derived literature that potentially obscures aim of original statement. …

Assessing Diverse Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Assessing Diverse Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Attention to gaze and emotion in schizophrenia.

Individuals with schizophrenia have difficulty interpreting social and emotional cues such as facial expression, gaze direction, body position, and voice intonation. Nonverbal cues are powerful social signals but are often processed implicitly, outside the focus of attention. The aim of this research was to assess implicit processing of social cues in individuals with schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and matched controls performed a primary task of word classification with social cues in the background. Participants were asked to classify target words (LEFT/RIGHT) by pressing a key that corresponded to the word, in the context of facial expressions with eye gaze averted to the left or right. Although facial expression and gaze direction were irrelevant to the task, these facial cues influenced word classification performance. Participants were slower to classify target words (e.g., LEFT) that were incongruent to gaze direction (e.g., eyes averted to the right) compared to target words (e.g., LEFT) that were congruent to gaze direction (e.g., eyes averted to the left), but this only occurred for expressions of fear. This pattern did not differ for patients and controls. The results showed that threat-related signals capture the attention of individuals with schizophrenia. These data suggest that implicit processing of eye gaze and fearful expressions is intact in schizophrenia.

The Killing

The Killing G. S. Phillian (bio) All we know is that there are dead feelings, dead ideas and cold beliefs, and there are hot and alive ones; and when one grows hot and alive within us, everything has to re-crystallize about it. And our explanations then get so vague and general that one realizes all the more the intense individuality of the whole phenomenon. —William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience The summer Georgie turned twelve, his Uncle Alex drove east from California and parked a ten-year-old '53 Chevy Deluxe in the middle of the Zarelians' front yard. Although Uncle Alex drove straight through, the interstates weren't yet complete and it took him a full week—seven days—to reach New Jersey from L.A. After the phone call that announced he was coming (Uncle Alex had moved to L.A. just after the war, a few years before Georgie was born), there were seven days of increasing tension in the Zarelian household on Conner Street in Little Falls. Georgie's round mother buzzed through the house like a bee trapped in a jar—Where will he sleep? What will he eat? He's a vegetarian, for the love of God. How do you cook for a vegetarian? And Georgie's father, a thick, muscular man whom Georgie believed could kick anyone's ass, got increasingly somber as those seven days of waiting wore on, like a man preparing to ship off again to war. When Uncle Alex finally pulled into the neighborhood in the glare of a sunny Sunday afternoon (there had been one more phone call the night before, a final warning from the road, somewhere in Tennessee) and drove right up onto their grass, Georgie knew that his father, also named Alex, was not pleased. Georgie's father bit his lower lip when he was not pleased, a habit Georgie knew well, a precursor, a signal to beware the back of his father's hand, which only recently Georgie had begun to learn to duck. Uncle Alex, not intimidated by the bit lip, bounded from the car and embraced his shorter cousin in a full-body, old-world hug. He was older than Georgie's father and so was worthy of much respect—certainly [End Page 45] to his face—although Georgie later was quick to pick up on the whispers his parents would exchange whenever Uncle Alex left a room. The brief, hushed words in a stew of languages Georgie did not—would never—fully comprehend. Georgie was expert, though, at matching inflections, facial expressions, voice intonations, with whatever situations caused his mother and father to communicate secretly in their patchwork of Armenian, Turkish, and Arabic, spiced with enough English (Tennessee, telephone, turnpike) to offer ample clues. The visit of Uncle Alex caused enough of those furtive dialogues to make it all, for Georgie, that much more exciting. The day after Uncle Alex arrived, a hot July day in humid northern Jersey, before anyone on Conner Street had air conditioning, he strode into the kitchen from having slept on the living room couch, and bent and kissed Georgie's mother on the forehead with a cheerful Armenian greeting. He politely turned down a cup of Mrs. Zarelian's coffee with soft avuncular warmth, "Poison, my sweet cousin," but also a kind of knowingness that Georgie could see would piss off his father. "In California," said Uncle Alex, "we drink fresh-squeezed fruit juice. Or tea. Green tea." Uncle Alex stretched and strolled out into the front yard, where he lifted the hood of his Chevy. He studied the engine for a thoughtful moment, stripped to the waist, and soon was elbow-deep changing out the red Chevy's points and plugs in preparation for the return trip to L.A. He offered to do the same for Georgie's father's car (also a Chevy but solid black, not the finned, chromed Deluxe) parked squarely on the concrete drive. Georgie's father bit his lower lip and declined before backing his plain car out onto the street and roaring off to work. When Uncle Alex was through, sometime after noon, he wiped...

Teachers’ affective presentation of children’s books and young children’s display of affective engagement during classroom book reading

This study examines how teachers’ use of affective strategies (voice intonation, dramatization, personal involvement comments) during the reading and discussion of books influence young children’s affective reactions (dramatization, personal engagement, language play comments). Twenty kindergarten teachers read four books, two fiction and two information ones (narrative/expository text). We found significant differences in both teachers’ affective presentation and young children’s affective reactions between fiction and information books, between the two fiction books but not between the narrative and expository text. A strong bi-directional relationship was found between teachers’ affective presentation of stories and young children’s affective reactions. In particular, teachers’ personal involvement comments prompted children’s personal engagement reactions, teachers’ reenactment was followed by children’s imitations of such reenactments and teachers’ voice intonation elicited children’s personal engagement comments. On the other hand, children’s use of paralinguistic cues and personal engagement comments reinforced teachers’ use of voice intonation and personal involvement comments. Finally, text features, such as rhyming, were followed by children’s language play.

Development of a hands-free electrolarynx for persons whose larynx have been removed

An electrolarynx is a useful speech-substitute device for patients who have lost laryngeal function. Unfortunately, the voices produced by a conventional electrolarynx are completely flat, unlike a human voice. For that reason, we developed a pitch-controlled electrolarynx that allows patients to control a voice intonation using their exhalation [N. Uemi and T. Ifukube, ‘‘Design of a new electrolarynx having a pitch control function,’’ IEEE RO-MAN’94, 198–203 (1994)]. This pitch-controlled electrolarynx has been manufactured and more than 3000 patients have used the device since 1998. However, many patients have strongly requested that we design a hands-free electrolarynx so that they can perform daily life functions and work in their office without their hands occupied by the electrolarynx control during use. In response to that request, we designed some models of a hands-free electrolarynx that is attachable to the patient’s neck. Furthermore, by comparing the models based on evaluation tests regarding its sound quality and usability, a thermo-plastic brace was found to be the best for attachment to the neck. Although our hands-free electrolarynx has not yet been equipped with the pitch-control function, it was ascertained that it is useful for taking notes while talking on the phone, and so on.

Aligning the Cultures of Teaching and Learning Science in Urban High Schools

This paper analyzes teaching and learning in urban science classrooms in which most of the students are African American and from low-income homes. Their teachers are also racial minorities and yet they struggle to teach successfully across cultural boundaries. The first set of case studies involves a male teacher who taught in a high-energy way that produced structures for students to get involved in the doing of science. His verbal fluency and expressive individualism, involving emphatic gestures, rhythmic use of his body, and voice intonation maintained student participation. A second case study examines successful interactions among the students, involving an argument over competing models for chemical valence. Whereas the students interacted successfully, the teacher was frequently out of synchrony in terms of amplitude, pitch, and non-verbal actions. The key implication is the necessity for teachers and students to learn how to interact successfully in ways that produce positive emotional energy, a sense of belonging to the class, and a commitment to shared responsibility for one another's participation. Aligning the cultures of teaching and learning offers a possibility that fluent interactions will occur, afford success, and facilitate the learning of science.

Teaching persons with severe mental disabilities to be their own case managers.

Teaching persons with severe mental disabilities to be their own case managers.

Audio Effects Based on Biorthogonal Time-Varying Frequency Warping

We illustrate the mathematical background and musical use of a class of audio effects based on frequency warping. These effects alter the frequency content of a signal via spectral mapping. They can be implemented in dispersive tapped delay lines based on a chain of all-pass filters. In a homogeneous line with first-order all-pass sections, the signal formed by the output samples at a given time is related to the input via the Laguerre transform. However, most musical signals require a time-varying frequency modification in order to be properly processed. Vibrato in musical instruments or voice intonation in the case of vocal sounds may be modeled as small and slow pitch variations. Simulation of these effects requires techniques for time-varying pitch and/or brightness modification that are very useful for sound processing. The basis for time-varying frequency warping is a time-varying version of the Laguerre transformation. The corresponding implementation structure is obtained as a dispersive tapped delay line, where each of the frequency dependent delay element has its own phase response. Thus, time-varying warping results in a space-varying, inhomogeneous, propagation structure. We show that time-varying frequency warping is associated to an expansion over biorthogonal sets generalizing the discrete Laguerre basis. Slow time-varying characteristics lead to slowly varying parameter sequences. The corresponding sound transformation does not suffer from discontinuities typical of delay lines based on unit delays.

Perceptual specificity of auditory priming: Implicit memory for voice intonation and fundamental frequency.

Perceptual specificity of auditory priming: Implicit memory for voice intonation and fundamental frequency.