1,720,960 research outputs found
Machine learning assistive application for users with speech disorders
No full textThis paper investigates machine learning approaches toward the development of a speaker dependent keywords spotting system intended for users with speech disorders, in particular for those with dysarthria, i.e., a neuromotor speech impairment associated with severe physical disabilities. In the field of assistive technologies, nowadays automatic speech recognition (ASR) is an open challenge since standard voice recognition approaches and voice driven services are ineffective to recognize atypical speech. To address these issues, we focus our attention on keywords spotting task in presence of dysarthria and we exploit deep learning technology in conjunction with an existing convolutional neural network model to build a tailored ASR system for users with such speech disabilities. However, the usage of a machine learning approach requires enough data availability for the training of the model; to this aim, we introduce a mobile software (app) allowing those with speech disorders to collect their audio contribution in order to enrich the speech model. Considering Italian as main language, this approach allows us to build the first database containing speech samples from Italian native users with dysarthria. As discussed in the end of the article, early experiments show promising results and give us interesting perspectives for future research directions
Co-designing the integration of voice-based conversational AI and web augmentation to amplify web inclusivity
No full textThe Web has become an essential resource but is not yet accessible to everyone. Assistive technologies and innovative, intelligent frameworks, for example, those using conversational AI, help overcome some exclusions. However, some users still experience barriers. This paper shows how a human-centered approach can shed light on technology limitations and gaps. It reports on a three-step process (focus group, co-design, and preliminary validation) that we adopted to investigate how people with speech impairments, e.g., dysarthria, browse the Web and how barriers can be reduced. The methodology helped us identify challenges and create new solutions, i.e., patterns for Web browsing, by combining voice-based conversational AI, customized for impaired speech, with techniques for the visual augmentation of web pages. While current trends in AI research focus on more and more powerful large models, participants remarked how current conversational systems do not meet their needs, and how it is important to consider each one’s specificity for a technology to be called inclusive
Enabling Smart Home Voice Control for Italian People with Dysarthria: Preliminary Analysis of Frame Rate Effect on Speech Recognition
No full textWithin the field of automatic speech recognition, the processing of dysarthric speech is a challenge because standard approaches are ineffective in presence of dysarthria. This paper presents preliminary evidence that the performance of speaker-dependent speech recognition systems trained for speakers with dysarthria may be substantially improved by tuning the size and shift of the spectral analysis window used to compute the initial short-time Fourier transform used in many speech front ends. Evidence for this comes from a set of experiments performed on a small collection of Italian speech (isolated words) from five different speakers suffering from different degrees of dysarthria. The experimental framework used in the paper constructs speaker-dependent GMM-HMM speech recognition models using the triphone Kaldi recipe and varying choices of the spectral analysis window size and shift. Results show a variable improvement (31% to 81%), according to the selected user with dysarthria
Machine learning in assistive technology: A solution for people with dysarthria
No full textNowadays, dysarthric speech processing represents a challenge in assistive technology contexts. In this paper, we investigate the use of machine learning in conjunction with convolutional neural networks to implement a speaker dependent solution that is capable to detect just a few number of predefined keywords. The proposed system has been trained with utterances from Italian users with severe and mild dysarthria and it is configurable according to specific users' preferences
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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