scholarly journals Can older people remember medication reminders presented using synthetic speech?

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria K Wolters ◽  
Christine Johnson ◽  
Pauline E Campbell ◽  
Christine G DePlacido ◽  
Brian McKinstry

Abstract Reminders are often part of interventions to help older people adhere to complicated medication regimes. Computer-generated (synthetic) speech is ideal for tailoring reminders to different medication regimes. Since synthetic speech may be less intelligible than human speech, in particular under difficult listening conditions, we assessed how well older people can recall synthetic speech reminders for medications. 44 participants aged 50–80 with no cognitive impairment recalled reminders for one or four medications after a short distraction. We varied background noise, speech quality, and message design. Reminders were presented using a human voice and two synthetic voices. Data were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models. Reminder recall was satisfactory if reminders were restricted to one familiar medication, regardless of the voice used. Repeating medication names supported recall of lists of medications. We conclude that spoken reminders should build on familiar information and be integrated with other adherence support measures.

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Stratton ◽  
Win Tadd
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 1534-1548 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scotty D. Craig ◽  
Noah L. Schroeder

Technology advances quickly in today’s society. This is particularly true in regard to instructional multimedia. One increasingly important aspect of instructional multimedia design is determining the type of voice that will provide the narration; however, research in the area is dated and limited in scope. Using a randomized pretest–posttest design, we examined the efficacy of learning from an instructional animation where narration was provided by an older text-to-speech engine, a modern text-to-speech engine, or a recorded human voice. In most respects, those who learned from the modern text-to-speech engine were not statistically different in regard to their perceptions, learning outcomes, or cognitive efficiency measures compared with those who learned from the recorded human voice. Our results imply that software technologies may have reached a point where they can credibly and effectively deliver the narration for multimedia learning environments.


The aim of the project is to develop a wheel chair which can be controlled by voice of the person. It is based on the speech recognition model. The project is focused on controlling the wheel chair by human voice. The system is intended to control a wheel seat by utilizing the voice of individual. The structure of this framework will be particularly valuable to the crippled individual and furthermore to the older individuals. It is a booming technology which interfaces human with machine. Smart phone device is the interface. This will allow the challenging people to move freely without the assistant of others. They will get a moral support to live independently .The hardware used are Arduino kit, Microcontroller, Wheelchair and DC motors. DC motor helps for the movement of wheel chair. Ultra Sonic Sensor senses the obstacles between wheelchair and its way.


2021 ◽  
pp. 194084472110428
Author(s):  
Grace O' Grady

One year after beginning a large-scale research inquiry into how young people construct their identities I became ill and subsequently underwent abdominal surgery which triggered an early menopause. The process which was experienced as creatively bruising called to be written as “Artful Autoethnography” using visual images and poetry to tell a “vulnerable, evocative and therapeutic” story of illness, menopause, and their subject positions in intersecting relations of power. The process which was experienced as disempowering called to be performed as an act of resistance and activism. This performance ethnography is in line with the call for qualitative inquirers to move beyond strict methodological boundaries. In particular, the voice of activism in this performance is in the space between data (human voice and visual art pieces) and theory. To this end, and in resisting stratifying institutional/medical discourse, the performance attempts to create a space for a merger of ethnography and activism in public/private life.


2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 3043-3051
Author(s):  
Juliane Elis Both ◽  
Marinês Tambara Leite ◽  
Leila Mariza Hildebrandt ◽  
Margrid Beuter ◽  
Gustavo Eduardo Grosmann
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  

Objetivo: Analisar a percepção de idosos que frequentam grupos de convivência acerca da velhice. Metodologia: Estudo qualitativo, descritivo, do qual participaram 20 idosos, sendo que 11 frequentam um grupo de convivência da área rural e 09 integram o do meio urbano. Os dados foram coletados por meio da entrevista semiestruturada, gravada e transcrita na íntegra. A análise dos dados seguiu os preceitos da análise temática, em que houve a elaboração de um eixo temático. Resultados: A partir dos dados foi possível apreender a percepção de velhice na voz de idosos participantes de grupos de convivência. Conclusão: Identifica-se que os idosos percebem o envelhecimento como um processo natural, caracterizado pela fragilização corporal, impondo limites para o desenvolvimento de atividades cotidianas. Em relação à participação nos grupos, os idosos compreendem que estes se constituem em um espaço de construção e fortalecimento de amizades e de diversão para este estrato populacional.


Author(s):  
Sarah Creer ◽  
Phil Green ◽  
Stuart Cunningham ◽  
Junichi Yamagishi

For an individual with a speech impairment, it can be necessary for them to use a device to produce synthesized speech to assist their communication. To fully support all functions of human speech communication: communication of information, maintenance of social relationships and displaying identity, the voice must be intelligible and natural-sounding. Ideally, it must also be capable of conveying the speaker’s vocal identity. A new approach based on Hidden Markov models (HMMs) has been proposed as a way of capturing sufficient information about an individual’s speech to enable a personalized speech synthesizer to be developed. This approach adapts a statistical model of speech towards the vocal characteristics of an individual. This chapter describes this approach and how it can be implemented using the HTS toolkit. Results are reported from a study that built personalized synthetic voices for two individuals with dysarthria. An evaluation of the voices by the participants themselves suggests that this technique shows promise for building personalized voices for individuals with progressive dysarthria even when their speech has begun to deteriorate.


Author(s):  
Scotty D. Craig ◽  
Erin K. Chiou ◽  
Noah L. Schroeder

The current study investigates if a virtual human’s voice can impact the user’s trust in interacting with the virtual human in a learning setting. It was hypothesized that trust is a malleable factor impacted by the quality of the virtual human’s voice. A randomized alternative treatments design with a pretest placed participants in either a low-quality Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine female voice (Microsoft speech engine), a high-quality TTS engine female voice (Neospeech voice engine), or a human voice (native female English speaker) condition. All three treatments were paired with the same female virtual human. Assessments for the study included a self-report pretest on knowledge of meteorology, which occurred before viewing the instructional video, and a measure of system trust. The current study found that voice type impacts a user’s trust ratings, with the human voice resulting in higher ratings compared to the two synthetic voices.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (21) ◽  
pp. 11364-11367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim Pouw ◽  
Alexandra Paxton ◽  
Steven J. Harrison ◽  
James A. Dixon

We show that the human voice has complex acoustic qualities that are directly coupled to peripheral musculoskeletal tensioning of the body, such as subtle wrist movements. In this study, human vocalizers produced a steady-state vocalization while rhythmically moving the wrist or the arm at different tempos. Although listeners could only hear and not see the vocalizer, they were able to completely synchronize their own rhythmic wrist or arm movement with the movement of the vocalizer which they perceived in the voice acoustics. This study corroborates recent evidence suggesting that the human voice is constrained by bodily tensioning affecting the respiratory–vocal system. The current results show that the human voice contains a bodily imprint that is directly informative for the interpersonal perception of another’s dynamic physical states.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-146
Author(s):  
Weixia Zhang ◽  
Fang Liu ◽  
Linshu Zhou ◽  
Wanqi Wang ◽  
Hanyuan Jiang ◽  
...  

Timbre is an important factor that affects the perception of emotion in music. To date, little is known about the effects of timbre on neural responses to musical emotion. To address this issue, we used ERPs to investigate whether there are different neural responses to musical emotion when the same melodies are presented in different timbres. With a cross-modal affective priming paradigm, target faces were primed by affectively congruent or incongruent melodies without lyrics presented in the violin, flute, and voice. Results showed a larger P3 and a larger left anterior distributed LPC in response to affectively incongruent versus congruent trials in the voice version. For the flute version, however, only the LPC effect was found, which was distributed over centro-parietal electrodes. Unlike the voice and flute versions, an N400 effect was observed in the violin version. These findings revealed different patterns of neural responses to musical emotion when the same melodies were presented in different timbres, and provide evidence for the hypothesis that there are specialized neural responses to the human voice.


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