Architecture of an automated therapy tool for childhood apraxia of speech

Abstract

We present a multi-tier 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. Namely, the system allows a speech therapist to remotely assign speech production exercises to each child through a web interface, and the child to practice these exercises 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 therapist 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 validated the system through a pilot study with children diagnosed with apraxia of speech, and their parents and speech therapists. Here we describe the overall client-server architecture, middleware tools used to build the system, the speech-analysis tools for automatic scoring of recorded utterances, and results from the pilot 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.

Tabby Talks: An automated tool for the assessment of childhood apraxia of speech

“…The system (1) prompts the child to complete predetermined exercises on the tablet; (2) records speech productions and uploads them into the server; (3) applies speech analysis algorithms to identify production errors; (4) provides feedback to the child and reports to the therapist detailing the child's progress, and (5) allows the therapist to remotely create or modify exercises individually based on each child's performance. Details of the system implementation have been published elsewhere (Parnandi et al, 2013); in this paper we focus on the speech analysis engine.…”

“…In previous work (Parnandi et al, 2013) we described the system architecture of an automated therapy tool for CAS. The proposed system, "Tabby Talks," consists of (1) a clinician interface where the therapist can create and assign exercises to different children and monitor each child's progress, (2) a tablet-based mobile application which prompts the child with the assigned exercises and records the child speech; and (3) a speech recognition engine running on a server that receives the recorded speech, analyzes it and provides the assessment results to the clinician.…”

Cutting-edge communication and learning assistive technologies for disabled children: An artificial intelligence perspective

“…Technology in general, and AI and ML in particular, help in enabling children with challenges to receive satisfactory treatment in their home, which makes it a time- and cost-effective solution. One such solution is shown in a study by Parnandi et al ( 2013 ), where a child's progress is assessed through the therapist assigning speech exercises to the child, which then are analyzed using AI algorithms and an assessment is given back to the therapist. In a similar study, further details show how the AI automatically identifies three types of anomalous patterns that are associated with CAS: delays in sound production, incorrect pronunciation of phonemes, and inconsistent lexical stress (Shahin et al, 2015 ).…”

A Game Application to assist Speech Language Pathologists in the Assessment of Children with Speech Disorders

“…It is a complete treatment package which includes assessment and therapy procedures and a vast source of pictorial materials to provide pedagogy for treatment of children. Avinash Parnandi et al [2] developed a mobile application based on Nuffield Dyspraxia Program. This application has a multi-tier clientserver architecture and provides remote administration of speech therapy.…”