Listeners have been shown to distinguish text read aloud from spontaneous speech, with a range of prosodic features suggested as cues to speech style. However, significant variation is seen across studies, both in speech elicitation methods and in the nature of listeners’ orientation to prosodic cues. We asked whether listeners could distinguish spontaneous ‘map task’ speech from lexically iden...

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether the use of the think-aloud method with propositional analysis could be helpful in the design of a Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) providing guideline recommendations about long-term follow-up of childhood cancer survivors. MATERIALS AND METHODS The think-aloud method was used to gain insight into healthcare professionals' information processing while r...

Lexical retrieval and reading aloud are often viewed as two separate processes. However, they are not completely separate-they share components. This study assessed the effect of an impairment in a shared component, the phonological output lexicon, on lexical retrieval and on reading aloud. Because the phonological output lexicon is part of the lexical route for reading, individuals with an imp...

In this paper, we discuss the methods used to assess non-native Mandarin speakers’ tone automatically. A context-dependent syllable-level tone modeling method for tone assessment is proposed. A direct comparison between a speaker’s contours and ideal contours in energy and pitch using a syllable-level normalization technique provides a strong prediction of the speaker’s tone as rated by humans....

A coupled-oscillators-model-based method for measuring speech rhythm is presented. This model explains crosslinguistic differences in rhythm as deriving from varying degrees of coupling strength between a syllable oscillator and a phrase stress oscillator. The method was applied to three texts read aloud in French, in Brazilian and European Portuguese by seven speakers. The results reproduce th...

We discuss pros and cons of several ways to evaluate ASR accuracy in automated tutors that listen to students read aloud. Whether ASR is accurate enough for a particular reading tutor function depends on what ASR-based judgment it requires, the visibility of that judgment to students and teachers, and the amount of input speech on which it is based. How to tell depends on the purpose, criterion...

This paper discusses the effects of oral repetition and practice in improving speech fluency for adult second language acquisition. The experiment examined the impact of practice on fluency in learning Japanese as a second language. The measures included read-aloud time and speech production time during sentence rehearsal. The results indicated gradual improvement of speech fluency as the numbe...

In two short stories three text characteristics have been implemented independent of each other: information status, content type, and boundary strength. Thus, each characteristic could be assessed for its unique effect on prosody. Both stories were read aloud by ten speakers. No effects were found for pitch range and articulation rate, but pause duration did vary systematically with each of th...

This paper describes our effort to mark and annotate read Cantonese speech for both citation pronunciation and reading aloud sentences/phrases. Four signals are recorded simultaneously to assist marking and annotation: acoustic, laryngograph, nasal and air burst signals. A coarse match between voiced segments of speech and voiced segments of the phonetic spelling of the utterance is executed by...