MyMedR

Displaying all 14 publications

Abstract:

Sort:

Consonant acquisition in the Malay language: a cross-sectional study of preschool aged Malay children

Phoon HS, Abdullah AC, Lee LW, Murugaiah P

Clin Linguist Phon, 2014 May;28(5):329-45.
PMID: 24446796 DOI: 10.3109/02699206.2013.868517

To date, there has been little research done on phonological acquisition in the Malay language of typically developing Malay-speaking children. This study serves to fill this gap by providing a systematic description of Malay consonant acquisition in a large cohort of preschool-aged children between 4- and 6-years-old. In the study, 326 Malay-dominant speaking children were assessed using a picture naming task that elicited 53 single words containing all the primary consonants in Malay. Two main analyses were conducted to study their consonant acquisition: (1) age of customary and mastery production of consonants; and (2) consonant accuracy. Results revealed that Malay children acquired all the syllable-initial and syllable-final consonants before 4;06-years-old, with the exception of syllable-final /s/, /h/ and /l/ which were acquired after 5;06-years-old. The development of Malay consonants increased gradually from 4- to 6 years old, with female children performing better than male children. The accuracy of consonants based on manner of articulation showed that glides, affricates, nasals, and stops were higher than fricatives and liquids. In general, syllable-initial consonants were more accurate than syllable-final consonants while consonants in monosyllabic and disyllabic words were more accurate than polysyllabic words. These findings will provide significant information for speech-language pathologists for assessing Malay-speaking children and designing treatment objectives that reflect the course of phonological development in Malay.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement/methods*; Speech Production Measurement/standards
Hypernasality in singing among children with cleft palate: a preliminary study

Peter S, Abdul Rahman ZA, Pillai S

Int J Oral Maxillofac Surg, 2019 Oct;48(10):1317-1322.
PMID: 31014926 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijom.2019.03.896

The aim of this study was to document differences in hypernasality during speaking and singing among children with cleft palate and to compare nasality score ratings of trained and untrained listeners. Twenty subjects with cleft palate aged between 7 and 12 years participated in this study. Audio recordings were made of the children reading a passage and singing a common local song, both in the Malay language. The degree of hypernasality was judged through perceptual assessment. Three trained listeners (a speech therapist, a classical singer, and a linguistic expert - all academicians) and two untrained listeners (a cleft volunteer worker and a national high school teacher) assessed the recordings using a visual analogue scale (VAS). Inter-rater and intra-rater reliability for hypernasality in both speaking and singing were verified using the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). A significant reduction in hypernasality was observed during singing as compared to speaking, indicating that hypernasality reduces when a child with cleft palate sings. The act of singing significantly reduces hypernasality. The outcome of this study suggests that children with cleft palate would benefit from singing exercises to ultimately reduce hypernasality. However, future research is needed to objectively measure nasality in singing compared to speaking.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement
Normative nasalance scores for the Malay language

Ibrahim HM, Reilly S, Kilpatrick N

Cleft Palate Craniofac J, 2012 Sep;49(5):e61-3.
PMID: 21787239 DOI: 10.1597/11-001

To establish normative nasalance scores for a set of newly developed stimuli in Malay.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement
Fulltext I feel you: the design and evaluation of a domotic affect-sensitive spoken conversational agent

Lutfi SL, Fernández-Martínez F, Lorenzo-Trueba J, Barra-Chicote R, Montero JM

Sensors (Basel), 2013;13(8):10519-38.
PMID: 23945740 DOI: 10.3390/s130810519

We describe the work on infusion of emotion into a limited-task autonomous spoken conversational agent situated in the domestic environment, using a need-inspired task-independent emotion model (NEMO). In order to demonstrate the generation of affect through the use of the model, we describe the work of integrating it with a natural-language mixed-initiative HiFi-control spoken conversational agent (SCA). NEMO and the host system communicate externally, removing the need for the Dialog Manager to be modified, as is done in most existing dialog systems, in order to be adaptive. The first part of the paper concerns the integration between NEMO and the host agent. The second part summarizes the work on automatic affect prediction, namely, frustration and contentment, from dialog features, a non-conventional source, in the attempt of moving towards a more user-centric approach. The final part reports the evaluation results obtained from a user study, in which both versions of the agent (non-adaptive and emotionally-adaptive) were compared. The results provide substantial evidences with respect to the benefits of adding emotion in a spoken conversational agent, especially in mitigating users' frustrations and, ultimately, improving their satisfaction.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement/methods*
The Lidcombe Program of early stuttering intervention for Malaysian families: Four case studies

Vong E, Wilson L, Lincoln M

J Fluency Disord, 2016 09;49:29-39.
PMID: 27638190 DOI: 10.1016/j.jfludis.2016.07.003

PURPOSE: This study investigated the outcomes of implementing the Lidcombe Program, an evidence-based early intervention for stuttering, with four preschool children in Malaysia. Early stuttering intervention is currently underdeveloped in Malaysia, where stuttering treatment is often more assertion-based than evidence-based. Therefore, introducing an evidence-based early stuttering intervention is an important milestone for Malaysian preschoolers who stutter.
METHOD: The participants ranged from 3 years 3 months to 4 years 9 months at the start of the study. Beyond-clinic speech samples were obtained at 1 month and 1 week pretreatment and immediately post-Stage 1, and at 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months post-Stage 1.
RESULTS: Two participants, who were bilingual, achieved near-zero levels of stuttering at 12 months posttreatment. Near zero levels of stuttering were also present in their untreated languages. One participant withdrew due to reasons not connected with the research or treatment. The remaining participant, who presented with severe stuttering, completed Stage 1 but had some relapse in Stage 2 and demonstrated mild stuttering 12 months post-Stage 1.
CONCLUSIONS: The outcomes were achieved without the need to significantly adapt Lidcombe Program procedures to Malaysian culture. Further research to continue evaluation of the Lidcombe Program with Malaysian families and to estimate proportion of those who will respond is warranted.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement/methods
Intra- and Inter-database Study for Arabic, English, and German Databases: Do Conventional Speech Features Detect Voice Pathology?

Ali Z, Alsulaiman M, Muhammad G, Elamvazuthi I, Al-Nasheri A, Mesallam TA, et al.

J Voice, 2017 May;31(3):386.e1-386.e8.
PMID: 27745756 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2016.09.009

A large population around the world has voice complications. Various approaches for subjective and objective evaluations have been suggested in the literature. The subjective approach strongly depends on the experience and area of expertise of a clinician, and human error cannot be neglected. On the other hand, the objective or automatic approach is noninvasive. Automatic developed systems can provide complementary information that may be helpful for a clinician in the early screening of a voice disorder. At the same time, automatic systems can be deployed in remote areas where a general practitioner can use them and may refer the patient to a specialist to avoid complications that may be life threatening. Many automatic systems for disorder detection have been developed by applying different types of conventional speech features such as the linear prediction coefficients, linear prediction cepstral coefficients, and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs). This study aims to ascertain whether conventional speech features detect voice pathology reliably, and whether they can be correlated with voice quality. To investigate this, an automatic detection system based on MFCC was developed, and three different voice disorder databases were used in this study. The experimental results suggest that the accuracy of the MFCC-based system varies from database to database. The detection rate for the intra-database ranges from 72% to 95%, and that for the inter-database is from 47% to 82%. The results conclude that conventional speech features are not correlated with voice, and hence are not reliable in pathology detection.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement/methods*
Assessing bilingual Chinese-English young children in Malaysia using language sample measures

Ooi CC, Wong AM

Int J Speech Lang Pathol, 2012 Dec;14(6):499-508.
PMID: 23039126 DOI: 10.3109/17549507.2012.712159

One reason why specific language impairment (SLI) is grossly under-identified in Malaysia is the absence of locally- developed norm-referenced language assessment tools for its multilingual and multicultural population. Spontaneous language samples provide quantitative information for language assessment, and useful descriptive information on child language development in complex language and cultural environments. This research consisted of two studies and investigated the use of measures obtained from English conversational samples among bilingual Chinese-English Malaysian preschoolers. The research found that the language sample measures were sensitive to developmental changes in this population and could identify SLI. The first study examined the relationship between age and mean length of utterance (MLU(w)), lexical diversity (D), and the index of productive syntax (IPSyn) among 52 typically-developing (TD) children aged between 3;4-6;9. Analyses showed a significant linear relationship between age and D (r = .450), the IPsyn (r = .441), and MLU(w) (r = .318). The second study compared the same measures obtained from 10 children with SLI, aged between 3;8-5;11, and their age-matched controls. The children with SLI had significantly shorter MLU(w) and lower IPSyn scores than the TD children. These findings suggest that utterance length and syntax production can be potential clinical markers of SLI in Chinese-English Malaysian children.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement*
Automatic Voice Pathology Detection With Running Speech by Using Estimation of Auditory Spectrum and Cepstral Coefficients Based on the All-Pole Model

Ali Z, Elamvazuthi I, Alsulaiman M, Muhammad G

J Voice, 2016 Nov;30(6):757.e7-757.e19.
PMID: 26522263 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2015.08.010

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Automatic voice pathology detection using sustained vowels has been widely explored. Because of the stationary nature of the speech waveform, pathology detection with a sustained vowel is a comparatively easier task than that using a running speech. Some disorder detection systems with running speech have also been developed, although most of them are based on a voice activity detection (VAD), that is, itself a challenging task. Pathology detection with running speech needs more investigation, and systems with good accuracy (ACC) are required. Furthermore, pathology classification systems with running speech have not received any attention from the research community. In this article, automatic pathology detection and classification systems are developed using text-dependent running speech without adding a VAD module.
METHOD: A set of three psychophysics conditions of hearing (critical band spectral estimation, equal loudness hearing curve, and the intensity loudness power law of hearing) is used to estimate the auditory spectrum. The auditory spectrum and all-pole models of the auditory spectrums are computed and analyzed and used in a Gaussian mixture model for an automatic decision.
RESULTS: In the experiments using the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary database, an ACC of 99.56% is obtained for pathology detection, and an ACC of 93.33% is obtained for the pathology classification system. The results of the proposed systems outperform the existing running-speech-based systems.
DISCUSSION: The developed system can effectively be used in voice pathology detection and classification systems, and the proposed features can visually differentiate between normal and pathological samples.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement/methods*
Formant frequencies of Malay vowels produced by Malay children aged between 7 and 12 years

Ting HN, Zourmand A, Chia SY, Yong BF, Abdul Hamid B

J Voice, 2012 Sep;26(5):664.e1-6.
PMID: 22285457 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2011.08.008

The formant frequencies of Malaysian Malay children have not been well studied. This article investigates the first four formant frequencies of sustained vowels in 360 Malay children aged between 7 and 12 years using acoustical analysis. Generally, Malay female children had higher formant frequencies than those of their male counterparts. However, no significant differences in all four formant frequencies were observed between the Malay male and female children in most of the vowels and age groups. Significant differences in all formant frequencies were found across the Malay vowels in both Malay male and female children for all age groups except for F4 in female children aged 12 years. Generally, the Malaysian Malay children showed a nonsystematic decrement in formant frequencies with age. Low levels of significant differences in formant frequencies were observed across the age groups in most of the vowels for F1, F3, and F4 in Malay male children and F1 and F4 in Malay female children.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement
Gender classification in children based on speech characteristics: using fundamental and formant frequencies of Malay vowels

Zourmand A, Ting HN, Mirhassani SM

J Voice, 2013 Mar;27(2):201-9.
PMID: 23473455 DOI: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2012.12.006

Speech is one of the prevalent communication mediums for humans. Identifying the gender of a child speaker based on his/her speech is crucial in telecommunication and speech therapy. This article investigates the use of fundamental and formant frequencies from sustained vowel phonation to distinguish the gender of Malay children aged between 7 and 12 years. The Euclidean minimum distance and multilayer perceptron were used to classify the gender of 360 Malay children based on different combinations of fundamental and formant frequencies (F0, F1, F2, and F3). The Euclidean minimum distance with normalized frequency data achieved a classification accuracy of 79.44%, which was higher than that of the nonnormalized frequency data. Age-dependent modeling was used to improve the accuracy of gender classification. The Euclidean distance method obtained 84.17% based on the optimal classification accuracy for all age groups. The accuracy was further increased to 99.81% using multilayer perceptron based on mel-frequency cepstral coefficients.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement
Acquisition of Consonant Clusters and Acceptable Variants in Chinese-Influenced Malaysian English-Speaking Children

Phoon HS, Maclagan M, Abdullah AC

Am J Speech Lang Pathol, 2015 Aug;24(3):517-32.
PMID: 26125520 DOI: 10.1044/2015_AJSLP-14-0037

This study investigated consonant cluster acquisition in Chinese-influenced Malaysian English (ChME)-speaking children.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement
The effect of dialect on the phonological analysis of Chinese-influenced Malaysian English speaking children

Phoon HS, Abdullah AC, Maclagan M

Int J Speech Lang Pathol, 2012 Dec;14(6):487-98.
PMID: 23039125 DOI: 10.3109/17549507.2012.719549

This study investigates the effect of dialect on phonological analyses in Chinese-influenced Malaysian English (ChME) speaking children. A total of 264 typically-developing ChME speaking children aged 3-7 years participated in this cross-sectional study. A single word naming task consisting of 195 words was used to elicit speech from the children. The samples obtained were transcribed phonetically and analysed descriptively and statistically. Phonological analyses were completed for speech sound accuracy, age of consonant acquisition, percentage of phonological process occurrence, and age of suppression for phonological processes. All these measurements differed based on whether or not ChME dialectal features were considered correct, with children gaining higher scores when ChME dialect features were considered correct. The findings of the present study provide guidelines for Malaysian speech-language pathologists and stress the need to appropriately consider ChME dialectal features in the phonological analysis of ChME speaking children. They also highlight the issues in accurate differential diagnosis of speech impairment for speech-language pathologists working with children from any linguistically diverse background.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement
Emotional speech acoustic model for Malay: iterative versus isolated unit training

Mustafa MB, Ainon RN

J Acoust Soc Am, 2013 Oct;134(4):3057-66.
PMID: 24116440 DOI: 10.1121/1.4818741

The ability of speech synthesis system to synthesize emotional speech enhances the user's experience when using this kind of system and its related applications. However, the development of an emotional speech synthesis system is a daunting task in view of the complexity of human emotional speech. The more recent state-of-the-art speech synthesis systems, such as the one based on hidden Markov models, can synthesize emotional speech with acceptable naturalness with the use of a good emotional speech acoustic model. However, building an emotional speech acoustic model requires adequate resources including segment-phonetic labels of emotional speech, which is a problem for many under-resourced languages, including Malay. This research shows how it is possible to build an emotional speech acoustic model for Malay with minimal resources. To achieve this objective, two forms of initialization methods were considered: iterative training using the deterministic annealing expectation maximization algorithm and the isolated unit training. The seed model for the automatic segmentation is a neutral speech acoustic model, which was transformed to target emotion using two transformation techniques: model adaptation and context-dependent boundary refinement. Two forms of evaluation have been performed: an objective evaluation measuring the prosody error and a listening evaluation to measure the naturalness of the synthesized emotional speech.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement
Polar-phase indices of perioral muscle reciprocity during syllable production in Parkinson's disease

Chu SY, Barlow SM, Lee J, Wang J

Int J Speech Lang Pathol, 2017 12;19(6):616-627.
PMID: 28425760 DOI: 10.1080/17549507.2016.1265587

PURPOSE: This research characterised perioral muscle reciprocity and amplitude ratio in lower lip during bilabial syllable production [pa] at three rates to understand the neuromotor dynamics and scaling of motor speech patterns in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD).
METHOD: Electromyographic (EMG) signals of the orbicularis oris superior [OOS], orbicularis oris inferior [OOI] and depressor labii inferioris [DLI] were recorded during syllable production and expressed as polar-phase notations.
RESULT: PD participants exhibited the general features of reciprocity between OOS, OOI and DLI muscles as reflected in the EMG during syllable production. The control group showed significantly higher integrated EMG amplitude ratio in the DLI:OOS muscle pairs than PD participants. No speech rate effects were found in EMG muscle reciprocity and amplitude magnitude across all muscle pairs.
CONCLUSION: Similar patterns of muscle reciprocity in PD and controls suggest that corticomotoneuronal output to the facial nucleus and respective perioral muscles is relatively well-preserved in our cohort of mild idiopathic PD participants. Reduction of EMG amplitude ratio among PD participants is consistent with the putative reduction in the thalamocortical activation characteristic of this disease which limits motor cortex drive from generating appropriate commands which contributes to bradykinesia and hypokinesia of the orofacial mechanism.

Matched MeSH terms: Speech Production Measurement

Filters

Please provide feedback to Administrator (afdal@afpm.org.my)

External Links