NSF Award Abstract - #0208835| NSF Award Abstract - #0208835 |
AWSFL008-DS3 |
| NSF Org | IIS |
| Latest Amendment Date | March 17, 2004 |
| Award Number | 0208835 |
| Award Instrument | Continuing grant |
| Program Manager |
Ephraim P. Glinert IIS DIV OF INFORMATION & INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS CSE DIRECT FOR COMPUTER & INFO SCIE & ENGINR |
| Start Date | September 15, 2002 |
| Expires | August 31, 2005 (Estimated) |
| Expected Total Amount | $649754 (Estimated) |
| Investigator |
Maxine Eskenazi max@cs.cmu.edu (Principal Investigator current) Alan Black (Co-Principal Investigator current) Rita Singh (Co-Principal Investigator current) |
| Sponsor |
Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 152133890 412/268-8746 |
| NSF Program | 6846 UNIVERSAL ACCESS |
| Field Application |
0116000 Human Subjects 0104000 Information Systems |
| Program Reference Code | ,9218,HPCC, |
This project investigates spoken language systems for the elderly and non-native speakers of English. Existing systems have been constructed for the average user and thus perform poorly for these nontraditional populations. The elderly have little access at present to computerized information, yet they have telephones that would enable them to access computers easily if the information were presented in a way that they could readily understand. Non-native speakers have difficulty being understood by the same dialogue systems, which need to be adapted to their speech and aid them in finding the correct way to express themselves. In order to improve the understandability of spoken output, Let's Go will investigate differences in lexical, prosodic and spectral content to enable elderly and non-native listeners to better understand the message. In order to improve spoken input, the project will explore adaptation of the statistical models of the lexical and acoustic information of the incoming speech signal for the target populations. Let's Go will assess the pertinence of its findings by creating a spoken language demonstrator that allows elderly and non-native users to access Port Authority Transit Bus information over the telephone.
