Towards Standardizing Perceptual Voice Quality Measures

描述（由申请人提供）：对语音质量的判断极大地影响了患者对其语音的看法，以及临床医生开始和继续治疗的决定。质量判断也被用作验证声音的工具测量的标准。然而，由于可靠性和未经检验的有效性问题，这些语音质量的“主观”测量并不被高度视为临床或研究工具。我们假设，在语音质量测量的问题并不起源于听众，而是从用于测量听众听到的方法。拟议的研究从传统的评级量表方法出发，通过应用语音合成器的病理语音质量的语音质量的措施，研究有关的可靠性和有效性的基本问题，并确定感知的重要性的声学元素，语音质量感知的基础。在这种方法中，听众调整合成器参数以实现与原始语音的感知匹配。这种调整技术方法明确地将声学信号与语音质量联系起来。我们假设，这种连接在整个语音链增加了有效性，可靠性和实用性的感知反应，通过提供一个客观的工具（合成器）的听众量化他们听到的。本研究的重点是四个具体目标。首先，我们将扩展、改进和自动化我们的合成器，以增加功能、灵活性和易用性。其次，我们将应用合成器来研究病理声音的几个关键方面的感知重要性，包括源频谱的形状，周期加倍，以及声音源中谐波和非谐波（噪声）能量的感知相互作用。在每种情况下，我们将确定哪些声学特征在感知上是重要的，以及这些特征是否与其他特征相互作用，并且我们将估计参数的刚刚可察觉的差异，作为在该维度上具有临床意义的声学变化量的指标。第三，我们将评估临床医生的能力，应用合成器作为一种工具，在临床上测量语音质量。我们还将重新审视在评级协议中使用合成锚作为调整任务方法的替代方案。最后，我们将评估的外部有效性的合成技术，通过比较来自持续元音的感知措施，来自连续语音。通过增加功率和易用性的合成器的使用，检查听者的敏感性，重要的声学变量，并研究这种方法的推广，所提出的研究将使我们的目标，一个标准化的语音质量评估协议触手可及。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Judgments of voice quality contribute greatly to patients' opinions of their voice, and to a clinician's decision to initiate and continue treatment. Quality judgments are also used as a standard against which instrumental measures of voice are validated. Nevertheless, these "subjective" measures of voice quality are not highly regarded as either clinical or research tools, because of problems with reliability and untested validity. We hypothesize that problems in voice quality measurement do not originate within the listener, but rather derive from the methods used to measure what listeners hear. The proposed research departs from traditional rating scale methods by applying a speech synthesizer for pathological voice quality to study basic issues concerning reliability and validity of voice quality measures, and to determine the perceptual importance of the acoustic elements that underlie voice quality perception. In this approach, listeners adjust synthesizer parameters to achieve a perceptual match to the original voice. This method of adjustment technique explicitly links the acoustic signal to voice quality. We hypothesize that this linkage across the speech chain increases the validity, reliability, and utility of the resulting perceptual responses, by providing listeners with an objective tool (a synthesizer) for quantifying what they hear. The proposed research focuses on four specific aims. First, we will expand, refine, and automate our synthesizer, to increase power, flexibility, and ease of use. Secondly, we will apply the synthesizer to examine the perceptual importance of several key aspects of pathologic voices, including the shape of the source spectrum, period doubling, and the perceptual interactions of harmonic and inharmonic (noise) energy in the voice source. In each case, we will determine which acoustic features are perceptually important and whether these features interact with others, and we will estimate just-noticeable-differences for the parameter as an index of the amount of acoustic change that is clinically meaningful on that dimension. Thirdly, we will evaluate clinicians' ability to apply the synthesizer as a tool for measuring voice quality in the clinic. We will also revisit the use of synthetic anchors in rating protocols as an alternative to the method of adjustment task. Finally, we will evaluate the external validity of the synthesis technique by comparing perceptual measures derived from sustained vowels to those derived from continuous speech. By increasing the power and ease of the synthesizer's use, examining listener sensitivity to important acoustic variables, and studying the generalizability of this approach, the proposed research will bring our goal of a standardized voice quality evaluation protocol within reach.