# Improved End-to-End Dysarthric Speech Recognition via Meta-learning Based Model Re-initialization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.01686 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01686/

## Key facts

- Cited by 17 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 3 Nov 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Speaker adaptation for Wav2vec2 based dysarthric ASR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00770/) (2022)
- [Speaker Adaptation Using Spectro-Temporal Deep Features for Dysarthric and Elderly Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.10290/) (2022)
- [Recent Progress in the CUHK Dysarthric Speech Recognition System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05845/) (2022)
- [Personalized Adversarial Data Augmentation for Dysarthric and Elderly Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.06445/) (2022)
- [Exploring Self-supervised Pre-trained ASR Models For Dysarthric and Elderly Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14564/) (2023)
- [Spectro-Temporal Deep Features for Disordered Speech Assessment and Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05554/) (2022)
- [Automatic Speech Recognition Datasets in Cantonese: A Survey and New Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.02419/) (2022)
- [Self-supervised ASR Models and Features For Dysarthric and Elderly Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13782/) (2024)
- [Use of Speech Impairment Severity for Dysarthric Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10659/) (2023)
- [On-the-Fly Feature Based Rapid Speaker Adaptation for Dysarthric and Elderly Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14593/) (2022)
- [Hyper-parameter Adaptation of Conformer ASR Systems for Elderly and Dysarthric Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15265/) (2023)
- [Enhancing Dysarthric Speech Recognition for Unseen Speakers via Prototype-Based Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18461/) (2024)
- [Homogeneous Speaker Features for On-the-Fly Dysarthric and Elderly Speaker Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06310/) (2024)
- [Towards Better Meta-Initialization with Task Augmentation for Kindergarten-aged Speech Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12326/) (2022)
- [Gammatonegram Representation for End-to-End Dysarthric Speech Processing Tasks: Speech Recognition, Speaker Identification, and Intelligibility Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03296/) (2023)
- [Idiosyncratic Versus Normative Modeling of Atypical Speech Recognition: Dysarthric Case Studies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16718/) (2025)
- [Arabic Dysarthric Speech Recognition Using Adversarial and Signal-Based Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04368/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Dysarthric speech recognition is a challenging task as dysarthric data is limited and its acoustics deviate significantly from normal speech. Model-based speaker adaptation is a promising method by using the limited dysarthric speech to fine-tune a base model that has been pre-trained from large amounts of normal speech to obtain speaker-dependent models. However, statistic distribution mismatches between the normal and dysarthric speech data limit the adaptation performance of the base model. To address this problem, we propose to re-initialize the base model via meta-learning to obtain a better model initialization. Specifically, we focus on end-to-end models and extend the model-agnostic meta learning (MAML) and Reptile algorithms to meta update the base model by repeatedly simulating adaptation to different dysarthric speakers. As a result, the re-initialized model acquires dysarthric speech knowledge and learns how to perform fast adaptation to unseen dysarthric speakers with improved performance. Experimental results on UASpeech dataset show that the best model with proposed methods achieves 54.2% and 7.6% relative word error rate reduction compared with the base model without finetuning and the model directly fine-tuned from the base model, respectively, and it is comparable with the state-of-the-art hybrid DNN-HMM model.