Biomedical Engineering: Applications, Basis and Communications, Vol. --, No.

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DOI: ------------------------------------------

Computer-Aided Speech-Language Therapy Using Automatic Speech

Recognition Technique During The COVID-19 Pandemic

Hala S. Abuelmakarem*, Sahar Ali Fawzi†, Amal Quriba‡, Ahmed Elbialy§,

and Ahmed Hisham Kandil ¶

* Systems and Biomedical Engineering Department

The Higher Institute of Engineering, El-Shorouk Academy, El-Shorouk City, Cairo, Egypt
†
School of Information Technology and Computer Science,
Nile University- Sheikh Zayed District, 6th of October City, Giza, Egypt.
‡
Phoniatric unit, ENT department,
Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt.
§¶
Systems and Biomedical Engineering Department
Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt
*
h.saad@sha.edu.eg
†
sahar_fw@yahoo.com
‡
asq281@yahoo.com
§
abialy_86@yahoo.com
¶
ahkandil_1@yahoo.com

Accepted Day Month Year

Published Day Month Year

ABSTRACT
Objectives: This study aims to develop a computer-aided therapy (CAT) application to help children who suffer from delayed
language development (DLD) improve their language, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: The implemented system teaches the children four body parts using the Egyptian accent. Two datasets were collected
from healthy children (2800 words) and unhealthy children (236 words) who have DLD at the clinic. The model was
implemented using a speaker-independent isolated word recognizer based on a discrete-observation Hidden Markov Model
(DHMM) classifier. After the speech signal preprocessing step, K means algorithm generated a codebook to cluster the speech
segments. The task was completed using the MATLAB program. The graphical user interface was implemented successfully
under the C# umbrella to complete the CAT application task. The system was tested on healthy and DLD children. Also, in a
small clinical trial, five children who have DLD tested the program in an actual trial to monitor their pronunciation progress
during therapeutic sessions.
Results: The max recognition rate was 95.25 % for the healthy children dataset, while 93.82 % for the DLD dataset.
Conclusion: Discrete-observation HMM was implemented successfully using nine and five states based on different codebook
sizes (160,200). The implemented system achieved a high recognition rate using both datasets. The children enjoyed using the
application because it was interactive. Children who have DLD can use speech recognition applications.

Keywords: Speech Recognition, Isolated word recognition technique, Hidden Markov Model, Delayed language development
therapy
1. INTRODUCTION
Speech is the communication key. Children who have DLD
encounter communication difficulties, and subsequently, they
cannot practice everyday life such as playing and education. DLD
is a symptom of many disorders as mental retardation, hearing loss,
an expressive language disorder, psychosocial deprivation, autism,
and cerebral palsy1. Those children need a therapeutic plan to
develop their language. They attend periodic education sessions to
enhance their ability to speak and communicate. COVID-19
pandemic decreased the number of patients in the therapeutic
clinics, and it increased the need to develop new education
applications. So, computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and
home learning are keys for improving those children's progress.
They are considered suitable alternatives to the traditional learning
process (face-to-face interaction). Computer-aided pronunciation
learning (CAPL) received considerable attention as people moved
into the twenty-first century.

¶ Corresponding author: Hala S. Abuelmakarem, Systems and Biomedical Engineering Department, The Higher Institute of
Engineering, El-Shorouk Academy, El-Shorouk City, Cairo, Egypt.
E-mail: h.saad@sha.edu.eg
Hala S. Abuelmakarem et al
Computer-aided learning got great attention after the COVID-19
crisis. Recent research improved speech recognition systems using
various techniques based on statistical approaches such as the
Gaussian Mixture Models, Artificial Neural Networks, HMMs3. In
the last two decades, researchers have been interested in the HMMs
because of their success in countless real-world applications such
as automated speech recognition, gene prediction, and automatic
facial expression recognition4.
Lately, a previous review has ensured that HMM is the most
simplified and successful approach for speech recognition5. Recent
research improved speech recognition systems, especially in
second language teaching; Witt SM 6 developed a system to assess
phone pronunciation based on the automatic speech recognition
(ASR) technique. Hamid B7 evolved an education system to model
the speech attributes for foreign language training based on i-vector
modeling. Moreover, Mahdy S8 improved a recognition system to
teach Arabic speech via the ‘HAFSS’ application based on HMM.
Bezoui M9 improved a system using HMM to detect the Moroccan
dialect. Automatic speech recognition applications need an
essential training stage to prepare the word for the recognition
stage. In terms of segmentation, after speech signal processing, the
speech features extraction process is used to extract temporal
and/or spectral features of the speech signal information by
converting the input signal into a compact set of parameters.
Different speech features extraction approaches, such as linear
predictive coding (LPC) coefficients, Cepstral coefficients, Mel-
frequency Cepstral coefficients (MFCC) are commonly used as a
speech feature extractor10. The cepstral analysis is a particular case
of homomorphism signal processing.
A homomorphic system is nonlinear with a linear
superposition of the input signals under a nonlinear transformation.
Cepstral analysis has become popular in speech recognition since
its finding in the late 1960s due to its power in modeling human
speech production behind it11. Deller J. R defines the Mel-scale
conversion as the most popular derivation of cepstral analysis that
combines the cepstrum with a nonlinear frequency-warping12. In
amid of all speech feature extractors, MFCCs are the most efficient
feature extractors because they extract spectral information in the
frequency domain. Spectral analysis is more concise than
temporarily13because it mimics the human ear’s spectral
characteristics. The extracted features are introduced to the vector
quantization (VQ) and codebook generation. The VQ is a powerful
technique that converts a colossal set of vectors into groups
represented by its centroid vector using the K-means algorithm to
implement the codebook. It is introduced to the statistical model to
implement the recognition system4.
This research aims to develop a CAT application based on
automatic speech recognition technology to help children who
suffer from DLD improve their language. The application was
implemented using MFCCs and HMM with different codebook
generators. The code was developed under the MATLAB
environment, and the graphical user interface (GUI) was
implemented using C#. The children’s performance was monitored
in the clinic during therapeutic sessions to evaluate the program’s
validity. This application can be used at home under a parent
2
supervisor or in clinics to help DLD children in their treatment
trips.
2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
2.1. Dataset collection
Two datasets were collected from healthy children and children
who have DLD. The healthy dataset (2800 words) was collected
from Fourteen children (Ages range from 3 to 9 years). Each child
repeated each word 50 times (different pronunciation speed,
different places). This dataset was collected from children in the
home, nursery school; the dataset was divided between training
(2400 words) and testing (400 words). The unhealthy dataset,
which contained 236 words, was collected in the clinic (Phoniatric
unit, ENT department Zagazig, University hospital) from DLD
children. To test children's performance in the range of age from
four to nine years. All words uttered in Egyptian dialect (44.1 kHz
sampling frequency,16-bit resolution).
2.2. System Implementation
This CAT application aims to develop a speaker-independent
isolated word recognizer (IWR) from acoustic signals based on
DHMM. The IWR system was divided into two phases (training
phase, recognition phase). In both phases, the speech boundaries
were detected, and the speech features were extracted14. Then,
speech segments were allocated in their clusters using vector
quantization based on the k-means algorithm. In the training phase,
the codebook was generated from quantized observation sequences
of the speech segments based on the k means algorithm. In the
recognition phase, the output terms of the HMM training were
introduced to recognize the word of interest; Fig. 1 illustrates the
two phases of the IWR block diagram.
2.2.1. Speech preprocessing and word boundaries detection
Signal preprocessing, Endpoint detection (EPD) and speech
segments framing play an essential role in the recognition system
success4. A notch filter at a cut-off frequency (60 Hz) removes
equipment-related disturbances14 to improve the recognition rate.
2.2.1.1 Zero-crossing rate
Short-time energy (STE) and zero-crossing rate (ZCR) were
used to detect the word boundaries of each spoken word by
identifying the silence from the spoken segment. Equation (1)
describes the algorithm that determines the spoken word
boundaries based on STE and ZCR; this algorithm compares the
average frequency of the primary energy concentration in the
voiced speech signal to the unvoiced speech segment14 because the
most voiced speech energies have lower frequencies compared to
unvoiced signals.
𝒎
𝟏 𝐬𝐠𝐧𝒔(𝒏) − 𝐬𝐠𝐧𝒔(𝒏 − 𝟏)
𝒁𝑪𝑹 = ( ) ∑ 𝒘(𝒎 − 𝒏) (1)
𝑵 𝟐
𝒏=𝒎−𝑵+𝟏
The N-length frame interval ends at n=m; the multiplication by a
factor of 1/N takes the average value of the zero-crossing
measurements.
2.2.1.2 Framing and windowing for short-term analysis
 Computer Aided Speech-Language Therapy Using Automatic Speech Recognition Technique During The COVID-19 Pandemic
Speech is a dynamic and non-stationary process. Speech analysis
usually presumes that the non-stationary speech properties
changed relatively slowly over time15,16. Therefore, the speech
signals are divided into overlapped short frames to capture the
speech features17 in ranging from 10 ms to 40 ms to capture speech
features.
In mathematical terms, framing (windowing) means the
multiplication of a speech signal s(n) by a window w(n) to weight
samples by the shape and duration of the window. The hamming
window raised cosine with the particular coefficients as
represented in equation 2.
𝟐𝝅𝒏
𝒘(𝒏) = {𝟎. 𝟓𝟒 − 𝟎. 𝟒𝟔 𝒄𝒐𝒔 𝑵 − 𝟏 𝒏 = 𝟎, 𝟏, … . . 𝑵 − 𝟏
(2)
𝟎 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒆
This research uses the hamming window to avoid data loss and to
keep the frequency and temporal variations.
The current work applied notch to remove the tonal
distribution and ZCR approaches to detect the word boundaries.
The used notch filter was at a cut-off frequency (60Hz) to remove
equipment-related disturbances. This research divided the speech
signals into overlapping frames (length: 20 msec, overlapping:
50%) to capture temporal changes over a frame. Each one was
multiplied by a Hamming window function to minimize the
spectral distortion caused by the discontinuities of abrupt changes
at the window endpoints16.
2.2.2 Mel frequency cepstral coefficients feature extractor
Mel-scale conversion is used to mimic the human ear’s spectral
characteristics. The Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC)
feature extractor is a leading technique for speech feature
extraction because it improves speaker verification. In this study,
the Mel frequency cepstral coefficients technique was used to
extract the speech features for each frame; 12 MFCCs and 12 delta-
MFCCs with 24 triangular filters Mel-scale filter bank features
were selected to extract the speech features. Mel-scale conversion
is expressed as linear frequency spacing below 1 kHz and a
logarithmic spacing above 1 kHz to mimic the human ear’s spectral
characteristics. It maps an acoustic frequency to a perceptual
frequency scale as the following equation17.
FMel = 2595log10 (1 +
f ( Hz )
) (3)
700
MFCC computes the parameters of monosyllabic word recognition
as equation 4
m
  1 
MFCCn =  X k cos  n  k −   (4)
k =1   2  m
for n=0,1,2,……M
Where M is the number of MFCC coefficients,
k =1, 2,..,m, represents the kth filter’s log energy output.
2.2.3 Vector quantization and codebook generation
Vector quantization is a technique in which speech features vectors
are clustered around some centroid locations. This research
3
implemented the codebook using the k-means algorithm depending
on the centroid vectors.
The generation process is summarized simply as the following16:
In vector quantization, the vector x is mapped to another real-
valued; discrete-amplitude L-dimensional column vector y as
y = Q ( x) (5)
Typically, y takes on one of K distinct values such that
Y =  y (ji ) ,1  j  K  where y j represents a vector of the form
T
y j =  y (1) (1) (1) (1)

j , y j , y j ,....,...., y j  .
The set Y is the codebook, and each y j is a code vector.
The L-dimensional space SL of the speech feature vector x is
partitioned into K mutually regions or clusters C (1  j  k )
j
“k” is pre-selected, referring to the number of required clusters. A
code vector y j is associated with each cluster. The vector
quantizer assigns the code vector y j to the feature vector xi ,
which is in the cluster C j .
Q ( X ) = y j if x  c j
(6)
In this study, the code vectors computation of the training set starts
with an arbitrary random initial estimate of the code vectors and
applies the nearest neighbor condition and the centroid condition
iteratively until a termination criterion is satisfied. This research
implemented two codebooks using two cluster sizes (160, 200) to
obtain the optimal recognition rate.
2.2.4. Discrete-symbol Hidden Markov Model
DHMM is a statistical approach; in which the system is modeled in
unobserved (hidden) states. The DHMM works with a finite set of
integer symbols from a codebook. It represents unknown words to
observation sequences. Fig. 2 shows the isolated word recognition
technique based on DHMM. The system was implemented in the
following steps13:
First step: A separated HMM is built for each word of the
vocabularies using the same number of states. This step involves
the training phase to estimate the model parameters
(
 w = A, B,  ) (7)
A represents the probability of state transition.
𝑩 is the symbol probability distribution in a state 𝑠𝑗 .
𝝅 = {1 0 0 0 0} is the initial state probability distribution.
Second step: The trained HMMs identify the unknown word in the
testing dataset. The recognition phase involves computing the
likelihood for all possible models of the observation sequence
belonging to the designated unknown word.
The index of the model with the maximum likelihood is identified
as the designated word as13
W * = arg max P O
1 w N
( W ) (8)
Hala S. Abuelmakarem et al
In this research, the implemented system uses the Egyptian dialect
to teach the children four body parts (mouth, hand, leg, hair). Two
thousand four hundred spoken words were introduced to generate
two codebooks (160,200) and train the DHMM. A left-to-right
DHMM structure attempts to model the sequential pattern. The
DHMM was implemented using two different numbers of states (5,
9) to evaluate the optimal implementation sequence number of
states. Nine states were assumed to allot three states for each word
phoneme. Five states assumption is a suggested model size for
IWR16. The training sequences of quantized vectors were
introduced to train the DHMM model to calculate the model
parameters. In the testing step, the recognizer selects the model
which maximizes the probability data11 as the following equation
𝑂
𝑃(𝑂⁄𝑀) = 𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑖 𝑚𝑎𝑥 [𝑃( )] 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑖 = 1, … , … ,4.
𝑀𝑖
The code was implemented under the MATLAB environment. The
implemented system was tested by the datasets collected from
healthy and unhealthy children who have DLD at the clinic.
2.2.5 Interactive graphical user interface
This application teaches the children some of their body parts. The
first stage is the teaching stage; after the mouse is moved over the
body, the selected organ appears largely. The computer repeats the
utterance of the organ name until the children move into the
pronunciation stage. In the second stage, the children utter the
chosen words until successful pronunciation, and then the
computer appears a congratulation message in case of the correct
answer. Fig. 3 displays a screenshot of the interactive interface; this
task was completed using the C# programming language.
2.3 CLINICAL STUDY
This research evaluated the progress of children who have DLD
during their therapeutic session in the clinic; five cases joined the
study. They had a range of age from four to six years. The
children's response differs from one to another; some cases refused
to utter some words.
3. RESULTS
Children who have DLD encounter learning difficulties.
Physicians plan a completely therapeutic protocol to improve their
communication skills. This research aims to develop a CAT
application based on the automatic speech recognition (ASR)
technique to evaluate the validation of ASR in therapeutic DLD
children. The ASR system was implemented using DHMM13. The
experimental study was assayed in two stages. The first stage
evaluates the appropriate number of clusters (160,200) using
different numbers of states (5,9) to recognize the input spoken
word using the testing collected Dataset from healthy (400 words)
and DLD (236 words) children. In the second stage, DLD children
used the application in a small clinical study to evaluate the
possibility of dealing with those children.
3.1 System Evaluation
4
Table 1 shows the average recognition rate for healthy and DLD
children when the HMM was implemented using five and nine
states. Each state was tested by using 160 or 200 clusters.
3.2 Clinical study Assessment
In the clinical study, the implemented system taught the children
four body parts using mouth in Egyptian dialect (Mouth – Foot –
Hair – Hand). The DLD children trials are shown in table 2. After
several trials, the system remarked that the patient started to
pronounce well the selected words. Some of those children refused
to utter some words and complete the session.
4. DISCUSSION
DLD Children encounter everyday life difficulties. They undergo
a therapeutic protocol to improve their skills, including
conversation sessions to enhance their language. Home learning
and computer-aided pronunciation learning are necessary
nowadays. This research aims to develop a computer-aided
pronunciation therapy application based on the ASR technique to
evaluate the validation of ASR in therapeutic DLD children. Table
1 shows the children’s performance: the best average recognition
rate (95.25 %) was for the healthy children of the data were
quantized in 160 clusters and were placed in nine states. The DLD
recognition rate was 93.82 % when the DHMM was implemented
using nine states, and the speech features were quantized to 200
clusters. Overall, after a thorough analysis, the different number of
clusters did not cause a significant effect on the recognition rate for
the healthy children, but it caused a dramatic change in DLD
children results. Increasing the number of states to nine improves
the recognition rate because three states are assigned for each
syllable. On the other hand, in a small clinical evaluation, the
implemented recognition system evaluated the children's response
during teaching their body parts (Mouth – Foot – Hair – Hand)
using the Egyptian accent. As represented in table 2, after several
trials, the system remarked that the children pronounced the
selected words well. True and False terms used in Table 2 indicate
the maximum likelihood’s output as represented in equation 8. The
first case uttered two words (Foot –Mouth) and refused to utter
other words (Hair–Hand). The fifth case refused to utter word
(Hand). The remind cases uttered all words. The children’s
response differs according to age and delayed stage.
Fortunately, the interactive user interface led to thankful usage
from the children because it was friendly. They have enjoyed the
congratulation message. In general, it is not fair to compare the
implemented speech recognition systems results because of the
difference in the dataset and the difference in the classification
techniques. However, table 3 shows the previous Arabic speech
research; Sadeghian R18 implemented a recognition system based
on the MFCCs, HMM, and deep neural network (DNN); it achieves
different recognition rates according to the children's age. Moner
N. M. 19 implemented an Arabic speech recognition system using
the MFCCs feature extractor and the HMM and KMM classifier
based on the phonemes, and it attains 83.75% recognition accuracy.
Adults’ datasets implemented other Arabic speech recognition;
Mahfoudh A. S 20 improved a speech recognition system based on
 Computer Aided Speech-Language Therapy Using Automatic Speech Recognition Technique During The COVID-19 Pandemic
long short-term memory and MFCCs features, and they used HMM
and recurrent neural network (RNN); the accuracy rate was 94%.
When Zada B. 21 used MFCC as a feature extractor and the HMM
and CNN as a classifier, they achieved an 84.1% recognition rate.
Bourouba, H. 22 accomplished recognition rate 89.79% using KNN
algorithm and 87.48% using Support vector machines.
The presented study evaluated the automatic speech recognition
application as a part of a therapeutic plan for children who suffer
from DLD. Children enjoyed using the application. Consequently,
our application is a suitable candidate at clinics and homes to
improve the children’s pronunciation. Children’s speech
recognition implementation is a challenging task because dataset
collection is difficult; the wide age range causes a disparity in the
sound tone, leading to a slight decrease in the recognition rate. The
recognition rate does not affect using a neural network and the
HMM.
The future experiments system can be improved by using other
feature extraction techniques and other classification such as
machine and deep learning. Also, the system can be implemented
based on phenome recognition.
5. CONCLUSION
In this study, DHMM was implemented effectively using nine and
five states based on different codebook sizes (160,200) in the
MATLAB environment. The Graphical user interface was
implemented successfully under the C# umbrella to complete the
CAT application task. The difference in clustering number was
insignificant in the normal children’s Dataset despite its
significance when tested using DLD’s children dataset. A small
clinical study assessed the validation of dealing with the Automatic
speech recognition system in DLD’s children therapy to test the
system. Overall, the children joyously interacted with the GUI, and
their pronunciation was enhanced. The developed program is
suitable for clinics and homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Future explorations to improve the recognition system using other
implementation criteria are in progress.
Acknowledgment: The authors would like to acknowledge prof. Amal
Saeed Quriba, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, who allowed
testing children’s performance with language disabilities.
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Hidden Markov Model, Monterey,California: Naval,2006
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IEEE Press, 2000.
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Hala S. Abuelmakarem et al

Fig 1: Block Diagram for Isolated Word Recognition System.

Table 1. Recognition rate for Healthy Children and DLD children

States Clusters Healthy children (%) DLD Children (%)
5 160 94.5 74.92
200 94.5 80.92
9 160 95.25 79.25
200 94.92 93.82

Table 2. Children progress in the clinical study

Case Trial Mouth Foot Hair Hand
Number
Case 1 1 FALSE TRUE
Fig.2 Block diagram describes DHMM recognizer. 2 TRUE TRUE
Case 2 1 FALSE TRUE TRUE FALSE
2 TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE
3 TRUE TRUE TRUE FALSE
4 TRUE
Case 3 1 FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE
2 FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE
3 FALSE FALSE TRUE
4 FALSE TRUE TRUE
5 TRUE TRUE
Case 4 1 TRUE FALSE TRUE TRUE
2 FALSE TRUE
3 TRUE
Case 5 1 TRUE FALSE TRUE
2 TRUE TRUE
3 TRUE

Fig.3: Interactive graphical user interface appears to the children.

Table 3: Summary of previous work that are related to this study

Reference Feature Classification Dataset Age Accuracy
extraction Method

Children
Sadeghian R. MFCC HMM +DNN 206 children, each child spoke 5- 11 72.38% (age 10)
(2017) 18 100 words 68% (age 9)
65% (age 8)
Moner N. M.et al.(2018)19 MFCCs HMM+KNN 63 children, each child produces 28 5-11 83.75%
Arabic phonemes for 10 times.
Adults
Mahfoudh A. S. (2019) 20 MFCCs+ LSTM HMM+ 1040 samples of data (840 samples 94%
Recurrent neural for training & 200 samples for
network (RNN) testing)

Zada B., Ullah R. (2020)21 MFCC HMM + CNN 50 utterance digits from 0 to 9 84.1%

Bourouba, H.et al. 22 MFCC HMM + KNN 920 samples (92 speakers × 10 89.79% for KNN
log pitch of energy digits) 87.48% for SVM
92 participants (46 males and 46
females)