The study investigates whether acoustic factors encoded in pretrained self‑supervised learning (SSL) models can systematically influence predictions in speech‑based Alzheimer's disease (AD) assessment. Using the ADReSSo dataset and three large SSL backbones, the authors applied controlled noise and reverberation interventions to various audio segments and combined layer‑wise decoding, input‑ and representation‑space interventions, and geometric alignment analysis. The results demonstrate that such acoustic interventions alter AD predictions across all models, with noise producing the strongest effect, and that these effects are structured relative to the classifier’s decision direction and reproducible on a held‑out test set.
By Serli Kopar, Alkis Koudounas, Roshan P. Rane, Sam Gijsen, Paula A. Perez-Toro, Kerstin Ritter
The paper examines why speech‑based screening for Alzheimer’s disease fails to generalize across different languages, tasks, and recording protocols. Using a leave‑one‑corpus‑out evaluation on four datasets, it finds that 59 of 70 interpretable speech features show conflicting patterns between healthy controls and cognitive risk groups, with pause, silence, and speech rate being highly protocol‑sensitive. The authors propose a fusion method that combines XLM‑R text baseline scores with evidence anchors, improving mean speaker AUC to 0.785 and worst‑case AUC to 0.615, and emphasize the importance of auditing feature transferability and reporting worst‑case domain robustness.
By Zijian Lu, Sizhe Liu, Yin Zhang, Jixuan Deng, Xinrong Lin, Xinchen Yuan, Chicheng Jin, Yiping Zuo, Yuanchao Li
BenSparX introduces the first Bengali conversational speech dataset for Parkinson’s disease detection and pairs it with a robust, explainable machine learning framework. The framework uses diverse acoustic features, systematic feature selection, and advanced classifiers, achieving 95.67% accuracy, 95.62% F1, and 0.990 AUC. SHAP analysis is employed to explain feature contributions, and the model outperforms state‑of‑the‑art methods on other language datasets.
By Riad Hossain, Muhammad Ashad Kabir, Arat Ibne Golam Mowla, Animesh Chandra Roy, Ranjit Kumar Ghosh
The study examines how speech preprocessing—such as enhancement, sample selection, and demographic balancing—affects Alzheimer’s disease detection models that use the Pitt Corpus. Experiments reveal that while speech‑enhanced datasets boost in‑domain accuracy, they diminish cross‑dataset robustness and introduce class imbalance and prediction shifts, even when training and testing enhancements are matched. Large audio‑language models show similar sensitivity, indicating that cleaner speech does not guarantee better real‑world performance.
By Luqi Sun, Shreeram Suresh Chandra, Lin Zhang, You-Jin Li, Brian MacWhinney, Yu Tsao, Emily Mower Provost, Berrak Sisman
arXiv:2607. 10168v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: It is still hard to find Alzheimer's disease (AD) early, especially when neuroimaging is expensive or tools that depend on language are not available.
By Rashin Gholijani Farahani, Azam Bastanfard
Speech-based Alzheimer's disease (AD) detection increasingly relies on speech-enhanced and curated versions of the Pitt Corpus, where speech enhancement, sample selection, and demographic balancing ar...
arXiv:2502. 03484v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Dementia encompasses a group of syndromes that impair cognitive functions such as memory, reasoning, and the ability to perform daily activities.
By Marko Niemel\"a, Mikaela von Bonsdorff, Sami \"Ayr\"am\"o, Tommi K\"arkk\"ainen
arXiv:2606. 30675v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Early detection of dementia through speech analysis offers a non-invasive screening alternative, but capturing both acoustic and linguistic biomarkers remains challenging.
By Olivier Jiyoun Jung, Jonghyeon Park, Myungwoo Oh
The paper investigates the interpretability of Domain-Adapted Prompt-based Fine-tuning (DAPF) models for dementia detection from spoken language. Using probing and analysis techniques, the authors find that DAPF achieves strong overall performance (accuracy = 0.83, macro‑F1 = 0.83) and that the diagnosis is most recoverable from its [MASK] representation. However, token‑level explanations derived from DAPF are largely driven by language‑task vocabulary, discourse markers, and transcription artifacts, and perturbation tests reveal weak or negative effects, indicating that the masked‑token interface captures diagnosis information without providing faithful token‑level explanations.
By Pardis Ranjbar-Noiey, Natalie Parde
arXiv:2602.13047v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Conversational speech reveals early signs of cognitive decline, including dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). AI models show promise for...
By Madhurananda Pahar, Caitlin Illingworth, Dorota Braun, Bahman Mirheidari, Lise Sproson, Daniel Blackburn, Heidi Christensen
Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems exhibit unequal error rates across speaker groups, motivating interventions on their internal representations. We ask whether speaker-linked attributes that...
arXiv:2609.18533v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems exhibit unequal error rates across speaker groups, motivating interventions on their internal representation...
By Nicolas Bourrel, Abderrahmane Issam, Gerasimos Spanakis