Method and apparatus for determining emotional arousal by speech analysis
First Claim
1. A method for determining emotional arousal of a subject by speech analysis, comprising the steps of:
- obtaining a speech sample;
pre-processing the speech sample into silent and active speech segments and dividing the active speech segments into strings of equal length blocks;
said blocks having primary speech parameters including pitch and amplitude parameters;
deriving a plurality of selected secondary speech parameters indicative of characteristics of equal-pitch, rising-pitch and falling-pitch trends in said strings of blocks;
comparing said secondary speech parameters with predefined, subject independent values representing non-emotional speech to generate a processing result indicative of emotional arousal, and outputting said generated processed result to an output device, wherein said secondary speech parameters comprise;
(a) average length of short silences and number of short silences per unit of time;
(b) average length of equal pitch segments and number of equal pitch segments per unit of time;
(c) rising pitch segments length average and number of rising pitch segments per unit of time and falling pitch segments length average and number of falling pitch segments per unit of time; and
(d) average amplitude dispersion within equal pitch segments of speech.
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Abstract
An apparatus for determining emotional arousal of a subject by speech analysis, and an associated method. In the method, a speech sample is obtained, the speech sample is pre-processed into silent and active speech segments and the active speech segments are divided into strings of equal length blocks (the blocks having primary speech parameters including pitch and amplitude parameters), a plurality of selected secondary speech parameters indicative of characteristics of equal-pitch are derived, rising-pitch and falling-pitch trends in the strings of blocks, the secondary speech parameters are compared with predefined, subject independent values representing non-emotional speech to generate a processing result indicative of emotional arousal, and the generated processed result is outputted to an output device.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A method for determining emotional arousal of a subject by speech analysis, comprising the steps of:
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obtaining a speech sample; pre-processing the speech sample into silent and active speech segments and dividing the active speech segments into strings of equal length blocks;
said blocks having primary speech parameters including pitch and amplitude parameters;deriving a plurality of selected secondary speech parameters indicative of characteristics of equal-pitch, rising-pitch and falling-pitch trends in said strings of blocks; comparing said secondary speech parameters with predefined, subject independent values representing non-emotional speech to generate a processing result indicative of emotional arousal, and outputting said generated processed result to an output device, wherein said secondary speech parameters comprise; (a) average length of short silences and number of short silences per unit of time; (b) average length of equal pitch segments and number of equal pitch segments per unit of time; (c) rising pitch segments length average and number of rising pitch segments per unit of time and falling pitch segments length average and number of falling pitch segments per unit of time; and (d) average amplitude dispersion within equal pitch segments of speech. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification