Word Scores Research Articles

A Stochastic Approach to Identify POS in Iraqi National Song using N-Iterative HMM using Agile Approach

This research article conveys the use of an agile approach for building an N-iterative HMM model for POST (Part of Speech Tagging) analysis. The agile model is a phenomenon or approach which has vast application. The implementation of such an iterative model is discussed in this paper. Most effectively, the information is conveyed with the help of the exact word we use during the communication. The sentence may not be a complete sentence or grammatically correct sentence, but the purpose of communication is served without any hurdle. Ages witnessing the evolution of the language earlier medium was sign language that might not contain any language communication rules that can be completed. Now complete language with so many tools and API is available, but the way preferred for the processing is the same (logically). The designed iterations lead to improved quality validation by using the word by word score calculation. The experiment is conducted to complete Part of Speech Tagging (POST) for Iraqi National Song (data set of translated Iraqi national song), and the stochastic approach used for completing the tagging is Iterative Hidden Markov Model. The results of the experiments convey the positive impact of the iterative approach over accuracy.

Correlation between Speech Perception Outcomes after Cochlear Implantation and Postoperative Acoustic and Electric Hearing Thresholds.

The reliable prediction of cochlear implant (CI) speech perception outcomes is highly relevant and can facilitate the monitoring of postoperative hearing performance. To date, multiple audiometric, demographic, and surgical variables have shown some degree of correlation with CI speech perception outcomes. In the present study, postsurgical acoustic and electric hearing thresholds that are routinely assessed in clinical practice were compared to CI speech perception outcomes in order to reveal possible markers of postoperative cochlear health. A total of 237 CI recipients were included in this retrospective monocentric study. An analysis of the correlation of postoperative pure-tone averages (PTAs) and electric CI fitting thresholds (T-/C-levels) with speech perception scores for monosyllabic words in quiet was performed. Additionally, a correlation analysis was performed for postoperative acoustic thresholds in intracochlear electrocochleography (EcochG) and speech recognition scores in a smaller group (n = 14). The results show that neither postoperative acoustic hearing thresholds nor electric thresholds correlate with postoperative speech perception outcomes, and they do not serve as independent predictors of speech perception outcomes. By contrast, the postoperative intracochlear total EcochG response was significantly correlated with speech perception. Since the EcochG recordings were only performed in a small population, a large study is required to clarify the usefulness of this promising predictive parameter.

Evidence for automated scoring and shorter passages of CBM-R in early elementary school.

Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading fluency (CBM-R) is widely used across the United States as a strong indicator of comprehension and overall reading achievement, but has several limitations including errors in administration and large standard errors of measurement. The purpose of this study is to compare scoring methods and passage lengths of CBM-R in an effort to evaluate potential improvements upon traditional CBM-R limitations. For a sample of 902 students in Grades 2 through 4, who collectively read 13,766 passages, we used mixed-effect models to estimate differences in CBM-R scores and examine the effects of (a) scoring method (comparing a human scoring criterion vs. traditional human or automatic speech recognition [ASR] scoring), and (b) passage length (25, 50, or 85 words, and traditional CBM-R length). We also examined differences in word score (correct/incorrect) agreement rates between human-to-human scoring and human-to-ASR scoring. Our results indicated that ASR can be applied in schools to score CBM-R, and that scores for shorter passages are comparable to traditional passages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Correlation of subjective and objective assessment of hypernasality in children with repaired cleft lip and palate

Introduction: Correlational studies between subjective and objective evaluations in the area of cleft lip and palate might provide evidence on the reliability and validity of subjective evaluations. This will, in turn, help in deciding to use subjective evaluations in remote areas. Such correlational studies are scanty in Indian languages. Aims: The present study aimed at correlating the perceptual rating of hypernasality with its instrumental measure in Kannada speaking children with repaired cleft lip and palate (RCLP) across different stimuli. The study also discusses various aspects that affect nasality (the type of speech stimuli and age of first palatal surgery) which helps in better understanding of RCLP cases and their characteristics. Settings and Design: This study was based on correlational research designs. Subjects and Methods: Twenty-three Kannada speaking children with RCLP served as participants. Speech samples (vowels, oral words, nasal words, oral sentences, nasal sentences, and oronasal sentences) of children with RCLP were recorded using a sound level meter and were perceptually evaluated using Henningsson's rating scale by three experienced speech-language pathologists. Furthermore, nasalance values were objectively obtained using a nasometer. Statistical Analysis: This study was statistically analyzed using the Shapiro–Wilk test of normality and Spearman's correlation. Results: The results revealed a high positive correlation (0.78) between the subjective and objective assessment. The different degrees of perceptually rated hypernasality were in a positive correlation with nasometry scores of vowels (0.766), words (0.785), and sentences (0.819). Conclusions: A good correlation was obtained between the subjective and objective measurement of nasality indicating the high utility of perceptual evaluation in remote areas.

Delaying Cochlear Implantation Impacts Postoperative Speech Perception of Nontraditional Pediatric Candidates

Introduction: As pediatric cochlear implant (CI) candidacy expands, children with greater degrees of residual hearing are receiving CIs. These nontraditional candidates have audiometric thresholds that meet adult manufacturer labeling but are better than current pediatric guidelines allow. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of delayed cochlear implantation on speech perception in nontraditional pediatric CI recipients. Methods: Pediatric CI recipients with a history of progressive hearing loss and a preoperative 4-frequency pure-tone average of ≤75 dB HL at the time of implantation were considered for this retrospective study. Preoperative serial audiograms and word recognition scores were reviewed, and a method was created to establish a date when each individual ear 1st met nontraditional candidacy. The length of time between the date of candidacy and implantation was calculated and defined as the “delay time.” A multiple linear regression investigated delay time, age at surgery, surgery type (1st vs. 2nd side), and array type as predictive factors of maximum postoperative Consonant-Nucleus-Consonant (CNC) word scores. A one-way ANCOVA was performed comparing the postoperative CNC scores between subjects grouped by delay time. Results: A significant regression was found (F(4, 38) = 5.167, p = 0.002, R² = 0.353). Both age at implantation (p = 0.023) and delay time (p = 0.002) predicted CNC word scores. Longer delay time was associated with poorer word recognition scores, while older age at implantation correlated with higher CNC word scores in this progressive hearing loss group. A significant difference was noted between subjects implanted with <1 year of delay and those with 3 or more years of delay (p = 0.003). All ears implanted within a year of candidacy achieved word recognition abilities that are generally accepted as above average (M = 84.91). Conclusion: CI candidacy for adults has evolved to allow for greater degrees of residual hearing, while audiometric guidelines for children have not changed since 2000. Our findings suggest that delay of cochlear implantation, even for children with significant levels of residual hearing, leads to poorer outcomes. Modified candidacy guidelines for children should be established to expedite referral to multidisciplinary CI teams and minimize delays in this population.

Relationship Between Electrocochleography, Angular Insertion Depth, and Cochlear Implant Speech Perception Outcomes.

Electrocochleography (ECochG), obtained before the insertion of a cochlear implant (CI) array, provides a measure of residual cochlear function that accounts for a substantial portion of variability in postoperative speech perception outcomes in adults. It is postulated that subsequent surgical factors represent independent sources of variance in outcomes. Prior work has demonstrated a positive correlation between angular insertion depth (AID) of straight arrays and speech perception under the CI-alone condition, with an inverse relationship observed for precurved arrays. The purpose of the present study was to determine the combined effects of ECochG, AID, and array design on speech perception outcomes. Participants were 50 postlingually deafened adult CI recipients who received one of three straight arrays (MED-EL Flex24, MED-EL Flex28, and MED-EL Standard) and two precurved arrays (Cochlear Contour Advance and Advanced Bionics HiFocus Mid-Scala). Residual cochlear function was determined by the intraoperative ECochG total response (TR) measured before array insertion, which is the sum of magnitudes of spectral components in response to tones of different stimulus frequencies across the speech spectrum. The AID was then determined with postoperative imaging. Multiple linear regression was used to predict consonant-nucleus-consonant (CNC) word recognition in the CI-alone condition at 6 months postactivation based on AID, TR, and array design. Forty-one participants received a straight array and nine received a precurved array. The AID of the most apical electrode contact ranged from 341° to 696°. The TR measured by ECochG accounted for 43% of variance in speech perception outcomes (p < 0.001). A regression model predicting CNC word scores with the TR tended to underestimate the performance for precurved arrays and deeply inserted straight arrays, and to overestimate the performance for straight arrays with shallower insertions. When combined in a multivariate linear regression, the TR, AID, and array design accounted for 72% of variability in speech perception outcomes (p < 0.001). A model of speech perception outcomes that incorporates TR, AID, and array design represents an improvement over a model based on TR alone. The success of this model shows that peripheral factors including cochlear health and electrode placement may play a predominant role in speech perception with CIs.

Audiometric Profile of Cochlear Implant Recipients Demonstrates Need for Revising Insurance Coverage.

To describe the pre-implant audiometric profile of adult cochlear implant (CI) recipients to investigate whether current binaural candidacy requirements prevent access to patients who could benefit from CI. Retrospective case series. Retrospective review from 2016 to 2018 evaluating preoperative pure-tone thresholds and speech perception scores in the ipsilateral and contralateral ear. A total of 252 adult CI recipients undergoing 270 implants were identified. Median age at time of implantation was 70.5 years (IQR 61.3-78.3) for those undergoing unilateral implantation and 59.0 (IQR 48.0-72.3) for those undergoing bilateral implantation (P < .01). For unilateral implantation, median pre-implantation speech perception performance in the ear to be implanted was 8.0% (IQR 0%-26.0%) for CNC word scores, and 9.0% (IQR 0%-34.0%) for AzBio sentence scores in quiet. Median speech perception performance in the contralateral ear was 36.0% (IQR 14.0%-60.0%) on CNC word scores, and 48.5% (IQR 17.5%-76.0%) on AzBio sentence tests. Speech perception scores were significantly different between ears for word and sentence tests (P < .01). Patients older than age 65 were significantly less likely to undergo bilateral implantation (P = .03). Adult CI recipients exhibit substantially poorer pre-implant speech perception scores than the commonly utilized ipsilateral qualifying threshold of 50% on sentence testing. Yet, existing insurance paradigms limit patients by excessively stringent binaural best-aided requirements. This limitation likely leads to worse device performance as patients often wait years for their binaural hearing to qualify while their ear to be implanted potentially experiences an unnecessarily extended duration of deafness. Older patients also experience a unique delay in referral for cochlear implantation. 3- Retrospective review Laryngoscope, 131:E2007-E2012, 2021.

Factors That Influence Second-side Cochlear Implant Speech Recognition Outcomes.

Assess relationships between patient, hearing, and cochlear implant (CI)-related factors and second-side CI speech recognition outcomes in adults who are bilaterally implanted. Retrospective review of a prospectively maintained CI database. Tertiary academic center. One hundred two adults receiving bilateral sequential or simultaneous CIs. Postimplantation consonant-nucleus-consonant (CNC) word and AzBio sentence scores at ≥12 months. Of patient, hearing and CI-specific, factors examined only postimplantation speech recognition scores of the first CI were independently associated with speech recognition performance of the second CI on multivariable regression analysis (CNC: ß = 0.471[0.298, 0.644]; AzBio: ß = 0.602[0.417, 0.769]). First-side postoperative CNC scores explained 24.3% of variation in second CI postoperative CNC scores, while change in first CI AzBio scores explained 40.3% of variation in second CI AzBio scores. Based on established 95% confidence intervals, 75.2% (CNC) and 65.9% (AzBio) of patients score equivalent or better with their second CI compared to first CI performance. Age at implantation, duration of hearing loss, receiving simultaneous versus sequential CIs, and preoperative residual hearing (measured by pure-tone average and aided speech recognition scores) were not associated with 12 month speech recognition scores at 12 months. The degree of improvement in speech recognition from first CI may predict speech recognition with a second CI. This provides preliminary evidence-based expectations for patients considering a second CI. Counseling should be guarded given the remaining unexplained variability in outcomes. Nonetheless, these data may assist decision making when considering a second CI versus continued use of a hearing aid for an unimplanted ear. III.

A Sentiment Analysis Model for Terrorist Attacks Reviews on Twitter

Twitter is considered as one of the famous microblogs that attract politicians and individuals to express their views on political, economic and social issues. The phenomenon of terrorist operations is one of the largest security and economic problem facing the world in recent years. Twitter users' comments on terrorism issues are important to understand users' sentiment about terrorist events. Sentiment analysis is a field of research for understanding and extracting users’ views. In this paper, we propose a model for automatically classifying users’ reviews on Twitter after occurrence of a terrorist attack, the model is built using lexicon and machine learning approaches. Lexicon approach is used to create labelled training dataset while machine learning approach was used to build the model. Scores of some domain related words were neutralized to avoid their negative effect. Features were selected based on PoS. Majority voting between NB, SVM and LR machine learning classification algorithms was applied. The performance of classification algorithms was measured using accuracy and F1 scores. The results obtained are compared to identify the best classification algorithm for features selection. Result show that our model achieved 94.8% accuracy with 95.9% F1 score.

Audio‐visual speech perception is associated with cerebral tau deposition on [18F]flortaucipir PET

AbstractBackgroundSensory impairments are associated with dementia and biomarkers of pathology. In a preliminary study, we evaluated whether audio‐visual speech perception, which involves integration of complementary phonetic information from two sensory modalities (vision and hearing), is associated with AD neuropathology on imaging.Method14 individuals (2 cognitive normal (CN), 7 subjective cognitive decline (SCD), 4 MCI, and 1 AD) from the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center and Indiana Memory and Aging Study underwent auditory testing, MRI, amyloid PET with [18F]florbetaben, and tau PET with [18F]flortaucipir. The audiologic testing included a brief pure‐tone hearing screen, followed by CUNY Sentences [1], among other tests. CUNY Sentences are presented using auditory input only (Auditory condition (A)) or using both auditory and visual input (AV using video with sound of an individual saying sentences). Words and sentences correct are scored, as is the difference between word and sentence scores (ΔWdtoSent). Amyloid and tau PET were processed using standard techniques. Mean SUVR from the cortex (amyloid and tau) and lateral temporal lobe (LTL; tau) were extracted. MRI was processed with Freesurfer v6 to extract LTL thickness. Because the CUNY scores were skewed, Spearman correlations were used to assess relations of sentence scores and ΔWdtoSent for both the A and AV conditions with neuroimaging measures of AD pathology (cortical amyloid, LTL and cortical tau, and LTL thickness). Inclusion of age, sex, and ICV where appropriate did not alter the observed results.ResultsSignificant associations between AV speech perception for sentences and AV ΔWdtoSent and tau deposition in the LTL and cortex were observed (Figure 1). These results remained significant after the AD participant was removed. Only trend associations were observed for the A condition, which were less robust than in the AV condition. Finally, a trend for a significant association with LTL thickness was observed. No association with amyloid was observed.ConclusionIntegration of phonetic information from two sensory modalities (vision and hearing) may be a potential a biomarker for tau pathology in patients at risk for AD. Future studies with larger samples and longitudinal follow‐up are needed. Reference: [1] Boothroyd et al. (1988) Ear and Hearing.

쟁점 사안에 대한 핵심 어휘 판별 및 시각화를 통한 언론사별 논조 분석

Media outlets regularly publish articles on the same issue using various tones that are distinct to each media company. To discover how one company’s tone is different from those of other outlets is presented in news articles, we designed a text analytics framework based on the weight scores of words used in politics and editorial sections from four major domestic newspaper companies. In our experiment, we selected five controversial political issues and collected related newspaper articles reported within a specified period. Then, we preprocessed these articles, such as tokenizing and part-of-speech tagging, an open-source Korean morpheme analyzer. The weights of the words are computed on the basis of the frequency-based CRED TF-IDF and scaled F-score. In addition, we constructed a neural network classifier to categorize the publisher of each article correctly on the basis of an attention mechanism to find highly contributive words for publisher discrimination. Lastly, we analyzed the differences in tones by visualizing keywords to provide an intuitive understanding.

Cognitive Emotional Embedded Representations of Text to Predict Suicidal Ideation and Psychiatric Symptoms

Mathematical modeling of language in Artificial Intelligence is of the utmost importance for many research areas and technological applications. Over the last decade, research on text representation has been directed towards the investigation of dense vectors popularly known as word embeddings. In this paper, we propose a cognitive-emotional scoring and representation framework for text based on word embeddings. This representation framework aims to mathematically model the emotional content of words in short free-form text messages, produced by adults in follow-up due to any mental health condition in the outpatient facilities within the Psychiatry Department of Hospital Fundación Jiménez Díaz in Madrid, Spain. Our contribution is a geometrical-topological framework for Sentiment Analysis, that includes a hybrid method that uses a cognitively-based lexicon together with word embeddings to generate graded sentiment scores for words, and a new topological method for clustering dense vector representations in high-dimensional spaces, where points are very sparsely distributed. Our framework is useful in detecting word association topics, emotional scoring patterns, and embedded vectors’ geometrical behavior, which might be useful in understanding language use in this kind of texts. Our proposed scoring system and representation framework might be helpful in studying relations between language and behavior and their use might have a predictive potential to prevent suicide.

Automatic construction of domain-specific sentiment lexicon for unsupervised domain adaptation and sentiment classification

Sentiment analysis has long been suffering from inaccuracies using either machine learning methods that mostly benefit from text features or sentiment lexicon-based methods that are prone to domain-dependent problems. Furthermore, since labeling is a time-consuming and an expensive task, supervised machine learning methods suffer from the drawback of insufficient labeled samples. To tackle the mentioned issues, this paper proposes a novel approach with a hybrid of a neural network and a sentiment lexicon. This combination can simultaneously adapt word polarities to the target domain and leverage the polarity of whole document in order to alleviate the need for large labeled corpora in an unsupervised manner. In this respect, a sentiment lexicon is constructed from the source domain in the preprocessing phase using the labeled data. In the Next phase, having a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), the weights of the first hidden layer are set to the corresponding polarity of each word from the retrieved sentiment lexicon and the network is trained. Finally, a Domain-Independent Lexicon (DIL) is introduced which contains words (mostly adjectives) with static positive or negative scores independent from a specific domain. After feeding the target domain to the pre-trained model, the total accuracy of the framework is enhanced by estimating the sentiment polarity of each sentence using the summation of the scores of the constitutive domain independent words. The experiments on Amazon multi-domain sentiment dataset illustrate that our approach significantly outperforms several alternative previous approaches of unsupervised domain adaptation.

SentiDraw: Using star ratings of reviews to develop domain specific sentiment lexicon for polarity determination

Lexicon based methods use Sentiment Orientation (SO) scores of words contained in the text for polarity determination of documents. These SO scores are obtained from sentiment lexicons like MPQA and SentiWordNet which are built using methods such as Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI) to calculate the SO scores of the words. . The more popular PMI based methods for creating lexicons do not make use of the rich information that can be obtained from star ratings available for text documents such as reviews available for various product categories on online platforms like amazon, yelp.com or IMDB. Star ratings have only recently been used in some studies to calculate SO value of words in reviews for developing domain specific sentiment lexicons. This paper also makes use of star ratings but proposes a novel approach ‘SentiDraw’ where the probability distribution of words across reviews with different star ratings is used to calculate their SO scores. A comprehensive assessment of SentiDraw performance across multiple domains and datasets is also presented by comparing it with other methods that make use of star ratings of reviews for building lexicons. The results show that lexicons built with SentiDraw method delivers superior performance versus other lexicons in six out of nine cases. The accuracy score of sentiment classification using SentiDraw method ranges from 78.0% to 81.6% across domains and SentiDraw lexicon built using Hollywood dataset outperforms any other purely lexicon based method known to authors on the most experimented datasets like Cornell Movie Reviews Dataset (CMRD) and Large Movie Review Dataset (LMRD). Finally, a hybrid approach is also proposed that uses SentiDraw along with supervised methods to deliver state-of-art performance for polarity determination of reviews.

The association of blood mercury levels with interference control in 6 years old children

Background: Human bodies are constantly exposed to heavy metals like mercury due to industrialization and environmental pollution. The health effects of mercury have been a common concern. In particular, children need to be more careful because they are in the stage of growth and development. However, there is no firm consensus about the effects of mercury on neurodevelopment in children. Methods: We describe the association between blood mercury concentrations in 6 years old children (N = 574) and with the Stroop color and word test(SCWT) scores based on the Environment and Development of Children (EDC) study, a prospective cohort study. In the SCWT, the color word score represents the subject's ability to control cognitive interference. Univariate analysis and multivariate analysis consisting of three models were performed with different variables and stratification of gender was also conducted. Results: There was no statistically significant association between the log-transferred prenatal and postnatal blood mercury levels and the ability of interference control in 6 years old children (N = 396). However, when stratified by gender, girl's color-word test score in Model 1 showed a decrement by -3.71 points for each log-transferred blood mercury increment (p-value = 0.0765). This trend persisted in Model2 (Beta: -3.76, p-value = 0.0766) and Model3 (Beta: -4.06, p-value = 0.0547). Conclusions: The result suggests that mercury exposure may affect interference control especially in girls. The color-word score in the SCWT is a score obtained by suppressing the automated reaction to read letters under the condition that the color of word and letter do not match and reflecting the frontal lobe suppression process. The analysis showed that the ability to control cognitive interference may decrease with an increment of log blood mercury concentration.

Longitudinal outcomes of cochlear implantation and bimodal hearing in a large group of adults: A multicenter clinical study.

To evaluate speech understanding outcomes in a large adult cohort who demonstrated poor hearing performance with well fit hearing aids in the unilateral and bilateral or bimodal listening conditions at preimplant, 3-, 6- and 12-months. Post-linguistically deafened adults (N=100) with bilateral moderate-to-profound sensorineural hearing loss and limited functional benefit from well fit bilateral hearing aids. A multicenter, prospective, repeated-measures, within-subject controlled study was conducted. All subjects were implanted with a Slim Modiolar cochlear implant and were required to use bimodal stimulation (cochlear implant and hearing aid in contralateral ear) for 6-months postimplant and optionally to 12-months. Evaluations included: speech recognition for monosyllabic consonant-nucleus-consonant (CNC) words in quiet; AzBio sentences in coincident noise (at +5 and +10dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)), in implant ear and bimodal conditions. All speech tests were performed at preimplant and 6-months postimplant for primary endpoint outcomes, and a subset of speech tests at 3- and 12-months. In the implant ear only, at 3-, 6- and 12-months postimplant, 84%, 93% and 97% of subjects respectively, demonstrated significantly improved monosyllabic word scores in quiet compared to preimplant hearing aid scores (p<0.05). At 12-months, a mean gain of 51% points, for monosyllabic words and 32% points for sentences in noise was observed (p<0.001). In the bimodal condition, at 6-months postimplant, 87% of subjects demonstrated significantly improved monosyllabic word scores in quiet compared to preimplant bilateral hearing aid scores (p<0.05). At 6-months, a mean gain of 40% points, for monosyllabic words was observed (p<0.001). Speech scores for sentences in noise significantly improved for the bimodal condition at 6- and 12-months (p<0.001). In addition to speech scores for the implanted ear, bimodal condition scores demonstrated further increments, especially for sentences in noise at 6- and 12-months (p<0.001). Results support that bimodal hearing is superior to bilateral hearing aids in this cohort of bilateral moderate-to-profound adult hearing aid users. Our study cohort demonstrated significant improvements for speech scores for the cochlear implant (CI) ear only and bimodal conditions compared to the baseline preimplant unilateral and bilateral hearing aid conditions respectively. The greatest gain in performance was in the first three months of device use with incremental improvement through 12months. These findings indicate that when hearing aids fit to National Acoustics Laboratory (NAL-1) targets do not provide the necessary audibility needed for speech recognition, referral for CI-candidacy evaluation is strongly recommended. Clintrial.govNCT03007472. Registered 01/02/2017, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03007472?term=clinical+evaluation+of+the+nucleus+CI532&draw=2&rank=2.

Investigation of a temporal modulation based method on the intelligibility of speech in speech-spectrum shaped noise

Temporal modulation is frequently considered for improving the intelligibility of noisy speech owing to the importance of the envelope in conveying speech information. In this study, we evaluated the performance of temporal modulation on word scores obtained with speech-in-noise. We firstly divided the noisy speech into 16 contiguous subbands from 200 Hz to 6 kHz with bandwidth approximately 1.5xERB of an auditory filter. The temporal envelope was constructed for each subband from the absolute value. It was then low-pass filtered at 16 Hz and used as the instantaneous gain for the subband's noisy speech. We established a psychophysical test (Modified Rhyme Test) with different speech-in-noise SNR values of 0, −3, −6, and −9 dB. Eleven native speakers (age 29 ± 8) with normal hearing were recruited for the study. The signals were processed by MATLAB and presented over earphones to participants seated in an audiometric room. Comparing the processed and unprocessed noisy speech, the mean differences in word scores for SNRs of 0, −3, −6, and −9 dB were −0.4%, 1.5%, −10.5%, and 1.4%, respectively. Using ANOVA, we concluded that the temporal modulation-based algorithm does not produce a statistically significant improvement in speech intelligibility. [Work supported by NIOSH.]

Effect of envelope signal-to-noise ratio on the intelligibility of speech in speech-spectrum shaped noise

In attempts to improve speech intelligibility, the envelope of speech in noise is commonly processed in the time domain and used to amplitude modulate the corrupted speech. In this study the envelope was constructed from the noisy speech, but separately and independently of the SNR of the noisy speech. Envelopes corresponding to 0, −3, −6, and −9 dB SNR were applied to the noisy speech when the latter had an SNR of either −9, −6, −3, or 0 dB, to evaluate the benefit to intelligibility of improving the SNR in the modulation domain. Signals from 200 Hz to 6 kHz were processed by MATLAB into sixteen contiguous subbands with bandwidth approximately 1.5×ERB of an auditory filter. The subband envelopes were formed from the absolute value of the signals and low-pass filtered. Eleven subjects aged 29 ± 8 years (mean and range) with normal hearing underwent the Modified Rhyme Test to assess speech intelligibility. The stimuli were presented diotically over earphones with the subject seated in an audiometric room. Statistically significant increases in mean word score of up to 35% could be obtained by improving the envelope SNR, suggesting this processing may benefit speech intelligibility. [Work supported by NIOSH.]

Audiologic Outcomes of Cochlear Implantation in Cochlear Malformations: A Comparative Analysis of Lateral Wall and Perimodiolar Electrode Arrays.

Cochlear implantation in children with inner ear malformations has been shown to be beneficial. The aims of this study are to evaluate open set word recognition outcomes among children with cochlear implants who have cochlear malformations, and to further assess if either the lateral wall (LW) or perimodiolar (PM) electrode arrays confer any performance outcome advantages. Retrospective case series. Tertiary referral center. Pediatric cochlear implant recipients with cochlear malformations who were implanted at our institution within the last 10 years and had speech perception scores were eligible for inclusion in the study. Potential participants were excluded if they had less than 1 year of listening experience with the cochlear implant or suspected cochlear nerve deficiency. None. Most recent consonant-nucleus-consonant word score. ANOVA analysis demonstrated that the type of cochlear malformation was significantly associated with speech perception outcome (p = 0.006). Those with IP2 malformations had significantly better word recognition outcomes than the remaining cochlear malformations. Array type (LW or PM) was not associated with better word recognition outcomes in long-term follow-up of patients with IP2 malformations (p = 0.13). In children who have cochlear malformations, cochlear implantation results in varying word recognition outcomes based on the type of malformation. While the participants in this study demonstrated postoperative open set word recognition skills, those with IP2 malformations demonstrated the most benefit. Electrode type was not found to significantly impact outcomes in this cohort.

Effectiveness of yogic visual concentration (Trataka) on cognitive performance and anxiety among adolescents.

Background Cognition is the mental process of acquiring knowledge, understanding senses and synchronizing all the electrical activity that is constantly received and generated through the eye. Purpose of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of yogic visual concentration (Trataka) on cognitive performance and anxiety among adolescents studying in selected schools at Chennai. Methodology This study was designed to assess cognitive performance and anxiety among students using quantitative approach. True Experimental study design was used for this study. Pretest assessment of cognitive performance and anxiety was done by standardized tools (Stroop color word test, Hamilton anxiety scale) for Experimental and Control groups. Intervention of yogic visual concentration (Trataka) was experimented in one group. Control group were kept on routine activities. Post test assessment of cognitive performance and anxiety by standardized tools was performed on experimental and control groups. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The 0.05 level of significance was used. Results A significant difference in the mean difference of color word score, color score, word score and inference score between the study and control groups at the level of p<0.0001 was observed. Results indicate an association in the cognitive performance (word) with background variables such as, gender, father's occupation in the study group during the post test and no association in the control group. There were no associations between anxiety cognitive performance (color and word) and demographic variables in both groups. Conclusion The study concluded that there is a greater effect on Yogic visual concentration (Trataka) on cognitive performance and anxiety among adolescent students, therefore the study proved the hypothesis.