Hi,

I've  tried  the speech recognition utilities with English words (yellow, blue) and it works OK, but it goes nuts with a Spanish version (it is unable to understand how ·"amarillo" should sound). Microsoft does not have a Speech Recognition Software in Spanish for Windows XP, but I have understood that Dragon NaturallySpeaking has such a Spanish version. Does anybody know if INQUISIT can work with other speech recognition software? Any other foreign researchers who may have gone through the same problems?

Thank you

Luis

Hi Luis,

We haven't tried using Dragon yet, although it would probably be worth our while to do so. To get this to work, try the following:

1) Go to Windows Control Panel and select the Speech configuration applet
2) If you have Vista, select "Advanced speech options". It's probably something similar on XP.
3) In the Language dropdown on the Speech properties, see if  the Dragon option is listed - if so, select it.

Now, Inquisit should use the Dragon engine for all recognition functions.

Give this a try and let me know if it works.

-Sean

Hi,

I was just asking to know whether it could be worth buying Dragon, or perhaps it could be better to upgrade the operative system. I guess I'll buy Dragon and let you know how does it work.

Thanks

Luis

I have zero data to back that up, but I doubt that Inquisit will be able to interact with Dragon's recognition engine. I suspect that the engine integrates into the OS differently than the standard MS engine does. It's just a hunch, though. In any case, you might want to talk to Dragon support staff about this first and maybe see if there's a Dragon trial version available. I'd want to try this before spending actual money on a setup that might not work as intended.

Let us know what you find!

~Dave

I have a query into their SDK support about integrating their engine with Inquisit. I'll post what I learn when I hear back from them.

Windows does provide standard interfaces for speech recognition engines, and I'm betting that Dragon implements them. Otherwise, I don't see how you could use their products with any other Windows apps (e.g. Office) unless the app specifically targeted their engine. I could be wrong though.

-Sean

I don't think you're wrong. AFAIK, Dragon does adhere to the Windows Speech API (SAPI) specifications. However, on a technical note, the SAPI specification available in Windows XP (SAPI 5.1 if I remember correctly) is sketchy at best, lacking key features of later revisions implemented in Windows Vista and 7. Also, it's been a long time since I had any direct contact with Dragon software (back with DNS 8, I believe), and as far as I can remember, the recognition engine did not integrate with Windows XP's Speech control panel applet. Instead they used a client-server-app architecture, i.e. pretty heavy-weight Dragon helper apps had to be constantly running to feed input to the recognition engine server app in order for the recognition to work (in Office et al.). This may have changed in the meantime, but if not this is something that would probably not interact well with a timing sensitive reaction time measurement tool such as Inquisit. In any case, I'm curious about what Nuance staff have to say about this -- I'd love to see their engine being integrated with Inquisit.

~Dave

Hi Dave, Sean,

I finally had the opportunity to test Dragon and, as you suspected, it doesn't work at that level (at least with XP). In the control panel there is only one option (Microsoft English Recognizer v5.1), so it is not possible to tell the computer to do the recognition through the Dragon software. It ignores that Dragon is also working. When I run the Stroop demo, I can see that Dragon is working in parallel recognizing my speech, but Inquisit keeps working through the Microsoft recognizer...  I'll try if the Vista or 7 versions, which I think are equiped with Spanish versions of the Microsoft Recognizer.

Thank you. If you have some further news on speech recognition, I'll appreciate it.

Luis

Hi Luis,

just adding a few technical details for future reference. The problem with Dragon's recognition engine is that it still relies on SAPI 4. Inquisit however needs a SAPI 5 compliant engine to work with. Nuance have said they'd eventually switch to SAPI 5, but that announcement was made years ago and no further info or release dates have been made public.

Anyway, let us know what you find regarding the Spanish speech recognition features under Vista / 7.

~Dave