Development of a Remote Therapy Tool for Childhood Apraxia of Speech Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We present a multitier system for the remote administration of speech therapy to children with apraxia of speech. The system uses a client-server architecture model and facilitates task-oriented remote therapeutic training in both in-home and clinical settings. The system allows a speech language pathologist (SLP) to remotely assign speech production exercises to each child through a web interface and the child to practice these exercises in the form of a game on a mobile device. The mobile app records the child's utterances and streams them to a back-end server for automated scoring by a speech-analysis engine. The SLP can then review the individual recordings and the automated scores through a web interface, provide feedback to the child, and adapt the training program as needed. We have validated the system through a pilot study with children diagnosed with apraxia of speech, their parents, and SLPs. Here, we describe the overall client-server architecture, middleware tools used to build the system, speech-analysis tools for automatic scoring of utterances, and present results from a clinical study. Our results support the feasibility of the system as a complement to traditional face-to-face therapy through the use of mobile tools and automated speech analysis algorithms.

published proceedings

  • ACM TRANSACTIONS ON ACCESSIBLE COMPUTING

author list (cited authors)

  • Parnandi, A., Karappa, V., Lan, T., Shahin, M., Mckechnie, J., Ballard, K., Ahmed, B., & Gutierrez-Osuna, R.

citation count

  • 21

complete list of authors

  • Parnandi, Avinash||Karappa, Virendra||Lan, Tian||Shahin, Mostafa||Mckechnie, Jacqueline||Ballard, Kirrie||Ahmed, Beena||Gutierrez-Osuna, Ricardo

publication date

  • November 2015