Acoustically-Driven Phoneme Removal that Preserves Vocal Affect Cues

C Noufi, J Berger, KJ Parker… - ICASSP 2023-2023 …, 2023 - ieeexplore.ieee.org
ICASSP 2023-2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics …, 2023ieeexplore.ieee.org
In this paper, we propose a method for removing linguistic information from speech for the
purpose of isolating paralinguistic indicators of affect. The immediate utility of this method
lies in clinical tests of sensitivity to vocal affect that are not confounded by language, which is
impaired in a variety of clinical populations. The method is based on simultaneous
recordings of speech audio and electroglotto-graphic (EGG) signals. The speech audio
signal is used to estimate the average vocal tract filter response and amplitude envelop. The …
In this paper, we propose a method for removing linguistic information from speech for the purpose of isolating paralinguistic indicators of affect. The immediate utility of this method lies in clinical tests of sensitivity to vocal affect that are not confounded by language, which is impaired in a variety of clinical populations. The method is based on simultaneous recordings of speech audio and electroglotto-graphic (EGG) signals. The speech audio signal is used to estimate the average vocal tract filter response and amplitude envelop. The EGG signal supplies a direct correlate of voice source activity that is mostly independent of phonetic articulation. The dynamic energy of the speech audio and the average vocal tract filter are applied to the EGG signal create a third signal designed to capture as much paralinguistic information from the vocal production system as possible— maximizing the retention of bioacoustic cues to affect—while eliminating phonetic cues to verbal meaning. To evaluate the success of this method, we studied the perception of corresponding speech audio and transformed EGG signals in an affect rating experiment with online listeners. The results show a high degree of similarity in the perceived affect of matched signals, indicating that our method is effective.
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