Assessment of Speech and Language Therapy Assisted with Social Robots and Virtual Reality: Phonetic and Linguistic Analysis of Speech
摘要
All professionals agree that evidence-based practice is the best approach for speech-language interventions. Integration of technology as new therapeutic approach has demonstrated a great promise for improving the effectiveness and delivery of therapeutic interventions. Combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches for evaluation of the innovative therapy methods offers a more comprehensive understanding of research. The acoustic measurements, phonetic and linguistic analyses are proved instruments for studying the disordered speech specificities, differentiating disordered and normal speech and even measuring therapy effectiveness. The current study describes a methodology that includes phonetic and linguistic assessment of disordered speech of children enrolled in social robots assisted and virtual reality speech and language therapy. A set of quantitative and qualitative measurements has been chosen such as speech activity duration, verbal reaction time, voice and speech parameters related to intelligibility, as intensity, pitch, speech rate, pausing are planned. Additionally, quality speech parameters are included such as precise articulation and mispronunciation as well as grammar competences including pragmatic ones considering that speech duration and speech intelligibility are not always correlating. The proposed methodology includes a detailed observation and phonetic-linguistic assessment of the speech and language of children enrolled in the therapy for evaluation the effectiveness of the applied innovative methods for speech therapy interventions.