Exploring speech therapy games with children on the autism spectrum

Individuals on the autism spectrum often have difficulties producing intelligible speech with either high or low speech rate, and atypical pitch and/or amplitude affect. In this study, we present a novel intervention towards customizing speech enabled games to help them produce intelligible speech....

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Picard, Rosalind W., Lane, Joseph K., El Kaliouby, Rana, Goodwin, Matthew, Hoque, Mohammed Ehasanul
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: International Speech Communication Association 2010
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/56580
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5661-0022
Description
Summary:Individuals on the autism spectrum often have difficulties producing intelligible speech with either high or low speech rate, and atypical pitch and/or amplitude affect. In this study, we present a novel intervention towards customizing speech enabled games to help them produce intelligible speech. In this approach, we clinically and computationally identify the areas of speech production difficulties of our participants. We provide an interactive and customized interface for the participants to meaningfully manipulate the prosodic aspects of their speech. Over the course of 12 months, we have conducted several pilots to set up the experimental design, developed a suite of games and audio processing algorithms for prosodic analysis of speech. Preliminary results demonstrate our intervention being engaging and effective for our participants.