LAB 9: Techniques for Measuring Respiration during Speech

Labs: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

The main purpose of this laboratory is to:

  1. Provide an overview of some of the measurement techniques.
  2. Examine, in the laboratory setting, the calibration process for estimating lung volume from measures of ribcage and abdomen movement (using respiratory inductive plethysmography) during a set of calibration maneuvers.
  3. Verify the calibration results and examine some examples from read speech.
  4. Make some observations on airflow measures in connected speech.

Here are the resources that you will need:

Lab Handout (PDF)

Utterances

You will use a set of pre-recorded utterances that are stored in MATLAB® files in the labc account. These utterances are in the directory 6.542/Lab16_Respiration.

If you do not have access to the labc account, you can download the utterances for this lab.

The Tools

In this lab, you will use the following analysis tool:

  • MATLAB® (UNIX®/Linux®) - used to run scripts to estimate lung volume calculations and examine air flow in speech.

Reference Readings

Required Reading

Banzett, R. B., S. T. Mahan, D. M. Garner, A. Brughera, and S. H. Loring. "A simple and reliable method to calibrate respiratory magnetometers and Respitrace." Journal of Applied Physiology 79, no. 6 (1995): 2169-76.

Suggested Reading

Rothenberg, M. "Measurement of airflow in speech." Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 20 (1977): 146-154.