Advertisement
Do you hear an echo? Probably, and it could be the answer for improving AI speech recognition
- Chinese scientists have discovered that humans are able to hear two separate sound streams – direct speech and echo
- They hope the new findings can now be used in AI to improve the way machines process recordings with echoes
Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
The human brain can understand speech with an echo because people are able to separate sounds into two streams – direct speech and echo – according to groundbreaking research by Chinese scientists.
The team from Zhejiang University said the discovery could pave the way for improving automatic speech recognition for machines to produce more accurate transcripts from recordings.
“An intense echo strongly distorts the speech envelope that contains critical cues for speech intelligibility, but human listeners can still reliably recognise echoic speech,” the team wrote in an article published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS Biology on Friday.
“The current study showed that the auditory system can effectively restore the low-frequency components of the speech envelope that are attenuated or eliminated by an echo, providing a plausible neural basis for reliable speech recognition,” the researchers wrote.
There can be echo anywhere – from online meetings to lectures in large auditoriums. And it can make it harder to understand what is being said.
To determine how humans still manage to make sense of such distorted speech, the scientists studied how the brain reacts when people listen to recordings underlaid with echo.
Advertisement