Page 72 - Spring 2015

TeCHnICAl CoMMITTee RePoRT
speech Communication
Phonetic Accommodation
It is well known that human speech provides a great deal of information about the speaker: gender, approximate age, approximate weight, social class, and so forth. A recently de- veloping research issue is the tendency of speakers in con- versation with each other to imitate spontaneously and un- consciously certain features of the person they are speaking with. For example, people in conversation may imitate the intonation, formant values, and timing patterns of speakers whose voice they admire. This new research question is at- tracting significant interest.
speech Acquisition
First Language Acquisition of Speech
Children typically begin to recognize their first words to- ward the end of their first year of life. By the middle of the second year, they will have an active vocabulary of around 50 words. But in the third year, it has been estimated that many children must learn 10-20 words every day. This re- markable achievement requires skills that are not yet under- stood. Many children face further challenges if more than one language is spoken in the home. Researchers in the ASA study the development of speech articulation, intonation patterns, and speech timing patterns in children.
Acquisition of a Second Language
The difficulties faced by anyone who has a well-established language already and attempts to acquire another language are very different from the challenges faced by young chil- dren. There is now a large and growing research program on second-language acquisition addressing these issues. One major issue is to understand the role of the phonetics of the first language in production and perception of the new lan- guage. The basic question is what causes a foreign accent? A major goal of this research is, of course, to develop more effective methods of second-language teaching.
Medical Aspects of speech and Hearing
There are many medical issues that influence the perception or production of speech. Among these is autism spectrum disorder and Down’s syndrome, which have consequences for speech production and understanding. But there is much more as well.
Cochlear Implants for the Deaf
Cochlear implants, artificial cochleas that provide a limited number of frequency channels for those who are completely deaf, have undergone rapid technological development over
the past 30 years, leading to many important questions for speech researchers (see article by Matthew Goupell in this is- sue of Acoustics Today). What speech-processing techniques will improve the intelligibility of speech produced by the limited acoustic capabilities provided by current implants? And what kind of training will improve the utility of the de- vice for everyday speech transmission? A small number of laboratories are working on these issues.
Training Methods for Hearing Aid Use
General hearing aids for the hearing impaired have turned out to be less useful than one would hope. Many users leave the aids in their dresser drawer because they find the bene- fits are not outweighed by the inconveniences. Work is being done to develop training methods to enable more effective use of the aid.
signal Processing and
speech Technology
Some of our members work on methods of speech coding and speech recognition by computer. This work requires ex- tracting information like formant frequencies and critical other aspects of the speech signal.
Conclusions
The Speech Communication TC of ASA enjoys a nationwide and, indeed, international sense of community that includes many European, South American, and East Asian partici- pants who convene at our meetings to present their latest research results and discuss progress in our areas of interest. An award is given at each meeting for the best poster done primarily by a student. There is also the Raymond Stetson Award given annually to promising graduate students in phonetics and speech science. A limited amount of fund- ing is also available to support student participation in our meetings. When attending our meetings, I personally enjoy not only the sessions on speech but also some of the animal acoustics and musical acoustics session. I have always found that our meetings are interesting and helpful to my research program. It should be mentioned that our group has many affiliations and has cosponsored special sessions with the Physiological and Psychological Acoustics TC, the hearing scientists. We always try to arrange our sessions to be physi- cally near each other at our meetings and to avoid conflicts in scheduling.
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