Chronset: An automated tool for detecting speech onset
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Date
2017Author
Roux, Frédéric
Armstrong, Blair C.
Carreiras, Manuel
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Roux, F., Armstrong, B.C. & Carreiras, M. Behav Res (2017) 49: 1864. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0830-1
Abstract
The analysis of speech onset times has a
longstanding tradition in experimental psychology as a measure
of how a stimulus influences a spoken response. Yet the
lack of accurate automatic methods to measure such effects
forces researchers to rely on time-intensive manual or semiautomatic
techniques. Here we present Chronset, a fully automated
tool that estimates speech onset on the basis of multiple
acoustic features extracted via multitaper spectral analysis.
Using statistical optimization techniques, we show that the
present approach generalizes across different languages and
speaker populations, and that it extracts speech onset latencies
that agree closely with those from human observations.
Finally, we show how the present approach can be integrated
with previous work (Jansen & Watter Behavior Research
Methods, 40:744–751, 2008) to further improve the precision
of onset detection. Chronset is publicly available online at
www.bcbl.eu/databases/chronset.