Selection of OSA-specific pronunciations and assessment of disease severity assisted by machine learning.

Study Objectives: To screen all of the obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)-characteristic pronunciations, explore the pronunciations which provide a better OSA classification effect than those used previously, and further clarify the correlation between speech signals and OSA.

Methods: A total of 158 adult male Mandarin native speakers who completed polysomnography at the Sleep Medicine Center of Beijing Tongren Hospital from November 15, 2019, to January 19, 2020, were enrolled in this study. All Chinese syllables were collected from each participant in the sitting position.

The Commingled Division of Visual Attention.

Many critical activities require visual attention to be distributed simultaneously among distinct tasks where the attended foci are not spatially separated. In our two experiments, participants performed a large number of trials where both a primary task (enumeration of spots) and a secondary task (reporting the presence/absence or identity of a distinctive shape) required the division of visual attention. The spots and the shape were commingled spatially and the shape appeared unpredictably on a relatively small fraction of the trials.