RI Core: Medium: Structured variability in vocal tract articulation dynamics in speech

人类生产和使用语言来彼此交流和互动，以各种各样的方式传达他们的思想和表达他们的情感。一个人产生丰富的语音涉及到发声器官的复杂运动和协调，如舌头和下巴，以一种灵活和适应互动环境的方式。然而，这种灵活性是如何实现的细节还不完全清楚。言语产生也会受到各种个人环境的影响，包括疾病和紊乱。该项目将通过直接观察和模拟语音过程中的发音，为了解人类语音随时间变化的科学基础，无论是在人际互动中还是在人际互动中--几小时、几天、几周、几个月和几年。这些知识既是发展语音科学的基础，也是设计稳健的交互语音技术的基础。语音研究的一个长期目标是理解和解决语音产生中丰富而普遍的变异性，无论是在个人内部还是跨个体，以及在不同的互动语境中。我们的研究调查了仅通过语音声学无法接近的问题。直接访问声道发音的动态信息，辅之以技术和分析的进步，使我们能够检查与语音产生可变性相关的复杂行为-即其随任务和时间的灵活性和稳定性。该项目将使用先进的实时磁共振成像(RtMRI)和语音产生过程中人类声道运动的计算建模，以了解跨时间尺度的口语交流的结构和控制，无论是在个人体验中还是跨人际互动，这将提供一个前所未有的机会来观察人类如何在以前不可能的时空细节上相互协作地计划和产生语音。该项目的创新包括对在两个地点同时和同步交谈的发言者的声道进行成像，以了解对话期间的言语产生行为，绘制单个人的言语产出如何自然变化，通常是在几小时、几天、几个月和几年的时间，以及个人在言语灵活性方面的差异如何预测发言者的稳定性。该研究计划利用丰富、定量和动态的发音rtMRI数据，通过实证工作将语音科学与工程相结合，并将广泛共享独特的数据、工具和模型。除了语音技术，该项目还具有重要的应用意义，因为标准发音及其变异性的知识可以通过帮助为从自闭症到痴呆症的各种临床情况得出强有力的基于语音的生物标记物来影响语言障碍的评估和治疗。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Humans produce and use speech to communicate and interact with one another, to convey their thoughts and to their express emotions, in a vast variety of ways. The production of the rich sounds of speech by an individual involves intricate movement and coordination of the vocal organs, such as the tongue and jaw, in a manner that is flexible and adaptive to the context of the interaction. Yet, the details of how this flexibility is achieved are not known completely. Speech production can also be affected by a variety of personal circumstances including illness and disorder. The project will create a scientific foundation for understanding how human speech varies across time, both within and across interpersonal interactions––over hours, days, weeks, months and years––by directly observing and modeling articulation during speech. Such knowledge is fundamental to both advancing speech science and to the design of robust interactive speech technologies. A longstanding goal in speech research is to understand and address the rich and pervasive variability in its production, both within and across individuals and for varied interactional contexts. Our research investigates questions not approachable via speech acoustics alone. Direct access to dynamic information on vocal tract articulation, complemented by technology and analysis advances, allow us to examine complex behavior associated with speech production variability—namely, its flexibility and stability over task and over time. The project will use advanced real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rtMRI) and computational modeling of the human vocal tract motion during speech production to understand the structure and control of spoken language communication across timescales, both within individual experience and across interpersonal interactions, offering an unprecedented opportunity to observe how humans plan and produce speech collaboratively with one another at a spatiotemporal detail not possible before. The project innovations include imaging the vocal tracts of conversing speakers simultaneously and synchronously at two sites to understand speech production behavior during a dialog, mapping how a single individual’s production speech production varies naturally and typically over hours, days, months and years, and how individual differences in speech flexibility are predictive of speaker stability. The research program integrates speech science and engineering through empirical work leveraging rich, quantitative, and dynamic articulatory rtMRI data, and will broadly share the unique data, tools and models. The project also has critical applied significance beyond speech technology, as knowledge of normative articulation and its variability can impact the assessment and remediation of speech disorders by helping derive robust speech-based biomarkers for a variety of clinical conditions across the life span from Autism to dementia.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.