This article reviews studies of computer-assisted reading programs, both with and without synthesized speech. It then describes a pilot study that used a reading program with computer-synthesized speech with 14 adolescent readers having severe reading disabilities. The study found no evidence that addition of synthesized speech improved word…

This study examines children's social responses to gender cues in synthesized speech in a computer-based instruction setting. Eighty 5th-grade elementary school children were randomly assigned to one of the conditions in a full-factorial 2 (participant gender) x 2 (voice gender) x 2 (content gender) experiment. Results show that children apply…

This final report contains a detailed description of six software systems designed to assist individuals with blindness and/or speech disorders in using inexpensive, off-the-shelf computers rather than expensive custom-made devices. The developed software is not written in the native machine language of any particular brand of computer, but in the…

A model of phoneme identification is proposed which describes the process by which continuous acoustic featural information about the place of articulation and the voicing of speech sounds is integrated during phoneme identification. (AM)

A serious drawback in introducing sound into computer programs for teaching foreign language speech has been the lack of an algorithm to turn off the cassette recorder immediately to keep screen text and audio in synchronization. This article describes a program which solves that problem. (SED)

Description of the Kurzweil Reading Machine, which uses a special camera and computer to transform printed matter into synthetic speech; includes reading and sound production, machine operation, adjusting to different typefaces, and limitations. Review of the portable reading aid for the partially sighted, Viewscan, discusses characteristics,…

A seven-year-old nonvocal blind child with cerebral palsy and possible mental retardation learned basic cause-and-effect tasks via a speech synthesizer and microcomputer. The author speculates on future communication development for the child. (CL)

Explains ...the automated reading of the printed page resulting in a sequence of character codes which can be further processed to make the information available to a blind person in the form of Grade II Braille, spelled speech, or synthesized speech." (Author)

Speech recognition by computers is discussed, including methods of recognizing isolated words and procedures for analyzing connected speech. Describes Bell Laboratories' speech recognition system which attempts to combine major elements of human communication into a single operating unit. (DS)

The intelligibility of three synthesized voices was evaluated by unfamiliar listeners (total n=120 secondary students) with or without listener training, using a 2 X 3 design. Results indicated that intelligibility for all three voices significantly improved following listener training. (Author/DB)

Paper presented at the Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (74th, Miami Beach, Florida, November 1967).

This report is one of a regular series about the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications. The 11 papers discuss the dissociation of spectral and temporal cues to the voicing distinction in initial stopped consonants; perceptual integration and selective attention in…

Presented is a report on the work of Cybernetics Research Institute (CRI) investigators on the development of deaf-blind communication and control systems (DEBLICOM). Described in Part One is one embodiment of DEBLICOM designed and built by CRI engineers. Reported in Part Two are experimental procedures and human factors considerations of…

This article explains how techniques of artificial intelligence are applied to expert systems for acoustic-phonetic decoding, phonological interpretation, and multi-knowledge sources for man-machine dialogue implementation. The basic ideas are illustrated with short examples. (Author/JDH)

Discussion of synthesized speech and voice recognition focuses on a forum that addressed the potential for speech technologies in libraries. Topics discussed by three contributors include possible library applications in technical processing, book receipt, circulation control, and database access; use by disabled and illiterate users; and problems…