Development of a support system for pronunciation instruction in special education classes for language-disabled children

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K00496
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Learning support system
• Research Institution: Kindai University
• Principal Investigator: Katsuse Ikuyo 近畿大学, 産業理工学部, 准教授 (20373540)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 平島 ユイ子 国際医療福祉大学, 福岡保健医療学部, 准教授 (10637812)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 言語通級指導教室 / 発音練習 / 教育支援 / 遠隔システム / 構音検査 / 深層学習 / 発音評価

Outline of Final Research Achievements

(1) The study of phoneme identification learning by deep learning and its presentation to children, (2) The development and evaluation of a video communication system between the school and external experts.
For (1), a multi-layered perceptron was trained using spectral and source features of speech as input and phoneme or distinctive feature labels as teacher data. The dimensionality reduction was performed for the network characteristics as an input-dependent linear system and then the result was visualized. We quantitatively evaluated the discriminatory performance of phonemes and syllables in terms of place/manner, and showed that the structure was sufficient to discriminate them.
As for (2), we developed a remote articulation test system and conducted experiments to evaluate its performance, and confirmed that it has the same or better diagnostic performance than face-to-face test.

Free Research Field

音声情報処理

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究成果と、過去の科学研究費（基盤研究(C)25350692)の成果物である「発音練習のためのアプリケーションシステム」を組み合わせることにより、言語通級指導教室で発音指導を受けている児童が、個々の児童の発達や障害、学習段階に合わせた練習内容に従って、家庭で発音の反復練習をできるようになり、かつ、発音誤りと調音の関係を自分で確認できるようになる。また、外部専門家が遠隔から定期的に児童の発音の状態を確認し、言語通級指導教室の教員や保護者の教育相談に対応するなど、言語通級指導教室と外部専門家間の効率的な連携を実現できる。