Speech Research Lab

H. Timothy Bunnell,
Ph.D. Laboratory Head

Major Research Interests

Currently work in the Speech Research Laboratory focuses upon three main areas of investigation. The first investigation is focused towards speech genetics, while other work is centered on computer-based solutions for children with speech and language disorders and for the clinicians who care for them, as well as the study of computerized speech processing and training. Our current efforts are directed principally towards the speech genetics project called "Phenotypes and familiality in speech disorders".

Throughout the last 20 years, several important advances in speech recognition and analysis have occured, but very few of these advances have made impact on speech disorder research or clinical practices. The speech genetic study currently underway will address this divide between experimental achievements and clinical methods. By adapting current, popular speech recognition technologies (based on Hidden Markov Modeling) for use in analyzing speech delay of unknown origin in children, much can be learned about the effectiveness of these newer, breakthrough techniques. The research project will concentrate genetic investigation on specific regions of chromosome 3 that have previously been implicated in speech disorders, thereby increasing the potential for meaningful discoveries.

The second area of investigation presently underway in the Speech Research Lab seeks to evaluate and refine a speech synthesizer developed in the laboratory over the past several years. The synthesizer, called ModelTalker, is a state-of-the-art, "corpus-based" speech synthesizer capable of capturing personalized voices and producing speech that can range in quality from that of recorded natural speech to high-quality synthetic speech. ModelTalker may be used, for example, by children with neuromuscular disorders, such as cerebral palsy, that render them unable to speak intelligibly. A voice can be customized with an appropriate age, gender, and regional dialect for each individual child. Significant components of this work will optimize and evaluate the procedure used to create the individualized voices. The laboratory will also evaluate satisfaction of end users, clinicians, and families to ensure continuous improvement of the ModelTalker software.

The laboratories third area of investigation is the study of computer speech processing and speech recognition to support clinical speech assessment and speech training. This work has grown out of earlier studies of a specific type of speech disorder (dysarthria) and now encompasses the speech of children with a variety of other, often curable, speech disorders. In collaboration with clinical staff, the laboratory has developed the Speech Training, Assessment, and Remediation (STAR) project, an interactive computer-based program that provides rigorous speech measurement and assessment along with effective training procedures to help children quickly improve their articulation skills. This is an ambitious research project that will leverage existing speech processing and speech recognition software in our laboratory, but it will also require research into new speech processing and artificial intelligence technologies to achieve the project goals.

Current Projects

• Phenotypes and familiality in speech disorders
• Speech Training, Assessment, and Remediation (STAR)
• ModelTalker Personalized Synthetic Speech

Current Research Group

• H. Timothy Bunnell, PhD.
  
• James Polikoff, MS
  
• Kyoko Nagao, PhD
  
• Allegra Cornaglia, BA

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