The goal of our work is to study the reflection of the emotional state in the characteristics of voice and speech of children with Down syndrome (DS). Participants of the study were 20 children aged 8-12 years: 10 children with DS and 10 typically developing (TD) children. Three types of experimental methods of speech analysis were performed: perceptual (by listeners, n = 350), spectrographic, and linguistic. The results of perceptual experiment showed that the listeners better recognized the emotional state of children with DS than TD children, the state of discomfort in children with DS than the neutral and comfort state. Acoustic features reflecting emotional states are more expressed in speech of children with DS vs. speech of TD children. The state of discomfort in the speech of children with DS is described by a large number of acoustic features that differs significantly from the corresponding characteristics reflecting neutral and comfort states. We presented the first data on the emotional speech of children with DS on the material of the Russian language. These data may be in further used for creating human-computer interfaces for informants with atypical development.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2019 10th International Conference on Speech Technology and Human-Computer Dialogue, SpeD 2019
EditorsCorneliu Burileanu, Horia-Nicolai Teodorescu
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781728109848
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019
Event10th International Conference on Speech Technology and Human-Computer Dialogue, SpeD 2019 - Timisoara, Romania
Duration: 10 Oct 201912 Oct 2019

Publication series

Name2019 10th International Conference on Speech Technology and Human-Computer Dialogue, SpeD 2019

Conference

Conference10th International Conference on Speech Technology and Human-Computer Dialogue, SpeD 2019
Country/TerritoryRomania
CityTimisoara
Period10/10/1912/10/19

    Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Signal Processing
  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality
  • Communication

    Research areas

  • Acoustic features, Children, Down syndrome, Emotional state recognition, Perception experiment

ID: 53469500