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<b> <big>ACM
Transactions on Speech and Language
Processing</big></b><br>
<big><b><br>
Special Issue on</b></big><br>
<b> <big> </big></b><br>
<big><b><big>Speech and Language
Processing of Children's Speech</big></b><br>
<big><b> for Child-machine
Interaction Applications</b></big></big>
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<b>
<big>Call for Papers</big></b><br>
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The state-of the-art in automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology
is suitable for a broad range of interactive applications. Although<br>
children represent an important user segment for speech processing
technologies, the acoustic and linguistic variability present in<br>
children's speech poses additional challenges for designing successful
interactive systems for children.<br>
<br>
Acoustic and linguistic characteristics of children's speech are
widely different from those of adults and voice interaction of<br>
children with computers opens challenging research issues on how to
develop effective acoustic, language and pronunciation models for<br>
reliable recognition of children's speech. Furthermore, the behavior
of children interacting with a computer is also different from the<br>
behavior of adults. When using a conversational interface for example,
children have a different language strategy for initiating and guiding<br>
conversational exchanges, and may adopt different linguistic registers
than adults.<br>
<br>
In order to develop reliable voice-interactive systems further studies
are needed to better understand the characteristics of children's<br>
speech and the different aspects of speech-based interaction including
the role of speech in multimodal interfaces. The development of pilot<br>
systems for a broad range of applications is also important to provide
experimental evidence of the degree of progress in ASR technologies<br>
and to focus research on application-specific problems emerging by
using systems in realistic operating environments.<br>
<br>
We invite prospective authors to submit papers describing original and
previously unpublished work in the following broad research areas:<br>
analysis of children's speech, core technologies for ASR of children's
speech, conversational interfaces, multimodal child-machine<br>
interaction and computer instructional systems for children. Specific
topics of interest include, but are not limited to:<br>
<ul>
<li>Acoustic and linguistic analysis of children's speech </li>
<li>Discourse analysis of spoken language in child-machine interaction</li>
<li>Intra- and inter-speaker variability in children's speech</li>
<li>Age-dependent characteristics of spoken language</li>
<li>Acoustic, language and pronunciation modeling in ASR for children</li>
<li>Spoken dialogue systems</li>
<li>Multimodal speech-based child-machine interaction </li>
<li>Computer assisted language acquisition and language learning</li>
<li>Tools for children with special needs (speech disorders,
autism, dyslexia, etc) </li>
</ul>
<br>
Papers should have a major focus on analysis and/or acoustic and
linguistic processing of children's speech. Analysis studies should<br>
be clearly related to technology development issues and implications
should be extensively discussed in the papers. Manuscripts will be<br>
peer reviewed according to the standard ACM TSLP process.<br>
<br>
<b>Submission Procedure</b><br>
Authors should follow the ACM TSLP manuscript preparation guidelines
described on the journal web site <a href="http://tslp.acm.org">http://tslp.acm.org</a>
and submit an<br>
electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal
manuscript submission site <a
href="http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/acm/tslp">http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/acm/tslp</a>.<br>
Authors are required to specify that their submission is intended for
this Special Issue by including on the first page of the manuscript<br>
and in the field "Author's Cover Letter" the note "Submitted for the
Special Issue on Speech and Language Processing of Children's Speech<br>
for Child-machine Interaction Applications". Without this indication,
your submission cannot be considered for this Special Issue.<br>
<br>
<b>Schedule</b><br>
Submission deadline: May 12, 2010<br>
Notification of acceptance: November 1, 2010<br>
Final manuscript due: December 15, 2010<br>
<br>
<b>Guest Editors</b><br>
Alexandros Potamianos, Technical University of Crete, Greece <br>
Diego Giuliani, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy <br>
Shrikanth Narayanan, University of Southern California, USA <br>
Kay Berkling, Inline Internet Online GmbH, Karlsruhe, Germany
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