arXiv AI By Bahman Mirheidari, Leslie Ing, Daniel Blackburn, Sharon Abrahams, Christopher McDermott, Heidi Christensen

Automatic estimation of verbal fluency index in people with Motor Neuron Disease using ASR alignment and pause modelling

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The study introduces an automated system for estimating the Verbal Fluency Index (VFI) in individuals with Motor Neuron Disease (MND) by combining ASR (WhisperX) and VAD (Silero) with precise timestamping. Using a unique MND dataset, the approach outperformed traditional acoustic and self‑supervised embedding methods, achieving high predictive accuracy (R² up to 0.9 for P‑words and 0.8 for S‑words). Clinically inspired features were consistently superior, demonstrating the feasibility of automated VFI estimation for monitoring cognitive impairment in MND.

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arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

Beyond Decodability: Do Acoustic Factors Drive Predictions in Speech-Based Alzheimer's Assessment?

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