The Effect of Visual Information on Word Initial Consonant Perception of Dysarthric Speech.pdf

The Effect of Visual Information on Word Initial Consonant Perception of Dysarthric Speech Richard P. Schumeyer Kenneth E. Barner schumeye@asel.udel.edu barner@asel.udel.edu Applied Science and Engineering Laboratories University of Delaware/A.I. duPont Institute P.O. Box 269 1600 Rockland Road Wilmington, DE 19899 ABSTRACT have found that the addition of visual information to an automatic speech recognition system improves the recognition rates of nor- Disabled individuals will realize many benefits from automatic mal speakers, especially when the audio signal is degraded by noise speech recognition. To date, most automatic speech recognition [2, 11, 12]. research has focused on normal speech. However, many individ- uals with physical disabilities also exhibit speech disorders. While It is unknown whether lipreading information is reliable with limited research has been conducted focusing on dysarthric speech dysarthric speech. The purpose of this study is to determine whether recognition, the preliminary results indicate that additional study the addition of visual information improves perception of Cere- is necessary. Recently, increasing attention has been given to bral Palsy (CP) dysarthric speech. The results will help determine multimodal