| Summary |
We have developed our game system that could record a short speech signal (like the vowel /a/) and calculated its volume (in decibel, dB) and fundamental frequency (in Hertz, Hz) immediately. These two parameters were used to control the animated character and provide
visual feedback for patients when they practiced. With appropriate level setting, speech therapists would not only assess the condition of treatment but also formulate rehabilitation schedule for the patients from their game performance. Based on each rehabilitation schedule, the patients might practice with the game system in their free time to achieve better efficacy of rehabilitation. |
| Scientific Breakthrough |
For traditional rehabilitation of speech disorder, speech therapists need to assess and treat patients with voice disorder individually. This individual therapy process leads to a long waiting for patients to have next rehabilitation. In addition, patients have to spend a lot of time practicing, and this practice would bore them and make the efficacy of treatment poor.
Therefore, there is a need to develop a rehabilitation program for voice disorder patients to achieve their goal of recovery. This product is a computer game system for voice disorder rehabilitation. By playing the game, we motivated the patients for speech rehabilitation. We have developed our game system that could record a short speech signal (like the vowel /a/) and calculated its volume (in decibel, dB) and fundamental frequency (in Hertz, Hz) immediately. These two parameters were used to control the ani-mated character and provide visual feedback for patients when they practiced. With appropriate level setting, speech therapists would not only assess the condition of treatment but also formulate rehabilitation schedule for the patients from their game performance. Based on each rehabilitation schedule, the patients might practice with the game system on the computer or notebook in their free time to achieve better efficacy of rehabilitation. Commercially available products are Games program, Model 5167 (Kay Elemetrics Corp., Lincoln Park, Chicago, USA, 2008) and Dr. Speech. However, these products are high costs either with non-Mandarin user interface or with shorter playing time. Their short-comings provide our product competiveness in the market. Our product is suitable for the market of speech and hearing disorder rehabilitation for patients with strokes, early developmental problems, and Parkinson’s disease. In practice, our product not only provides a good tool for speech therapists education and research, but also offers a good way to save rehabilitation cost for the family and society. |
