title: Evaluation of disfluent speech by means of automatic acoustic measurements.
abstract: An experiment was carried out to determine whether the level of the speech fluency disorder can be estimated by means of automatic acoustic measurements. These measures analyze, for example, the amount of silence in a recording or the number of abrupt spectral changes in a speech signal. All the measures were designed to take into account symptoms of stuttering. In the experiment, 118 audio recordings of read speech by Czech native speakers were employed. The results indicate that the human-made rating of the speech fluency disorder in read speech can be predicted on the basis of automatic measurements. The number of abrupt spectral changes in the speech segments turns out to be the most appropriate measure to describe the overall speech performance. The results also imply that there are measures with good results describing partial symptoms (especially fixed postures without audible airflow).
authors.affiliation: Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Department of Circuit Theory, Technicka 2, 166 27, Prague, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Tomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Lustyk
authors.affiliation: Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Department of Circuit Theory, Technicka 2, 166 27, Prague, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Petr
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bergl
authors.affiliation: Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Department of Circuit Theory, Technicka 2, 166 27, Prague, Czech Republic.
authors.forename: Roman
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cmejla
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000293:Adolescent; D000465:Algorithms; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013342:Stuttering / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D013997:Time Factors; D014833:Voice Quality; D055815:Young Adult