title: Automatic assessment of vowel space area.
abstract: Vowel space area (VSA) is an attractive metric for the study of speech production deficits and reductions in intelligibility, in addition to the traditional study of vowel distinctiveness. Traditional VSA estimates are not currently sufficiently sensitive to map to production deficits. The present report describes an automated algorithm using healthy, connected speech rather than single syllables and estimates the entire vowel working space rather than corner vowels. Analyses reveal a strong correlation between the traditional VSA and automated estimates. When the two methods diverge, the automated method seems to provide a more accurate area since it accounts for all vowels.
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Sensor, Signal & Information Processing Center, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287 spsandov@asu.edu.
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sandoval
authors.forename: Visar
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Berisha
authors.forename: Rene L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Utianski
authors.forename: Julie M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Liss
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Spanias
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001331:Automation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000379:methods*; D013997:Time Factors; D014833:Voice Quality