AP-GRPO: Anchor-Gated Phonetic Alignment with Policy Optimization for Pathological Speech Reconstruction

The article presents the Anchor-gated Phonetic Group Relative Policy Optimization (AP-GRPO), a novel framework designed to enhance the reconstruction of pathological speech by leveraging audible anchors within distorted recordings. AP-GRPO introduces an anchor-gated reward system and an inter-anchor phonetic alignment mechanism, which together improve the accuracy of speech language models in reconstructing intended content across various neurodegenerative conditions. This approach not only enhances reconstruction fidelity but also provides interpretable insights into disease-specific speech profiles, making it a significant advancement for practitioners working on speech recovery technologies.