We are developing a video game to aid young children undergoing speech therapy after cleft palate surgery. Children undergoing speech therapy must first unlearn their compensations and ommissions that they use to get around certain syllables they cannot do. Unlearning involves significant amounts of practice at home, and parents have extreme difficulty in motivating children to practice. Working directly with children who are undergoing speech therapy, we are designing a simple game using a novel speech recognition engine to help motivate them to perform their therapy exercises. We aim to accelerate the rate of recovery and give therapists more tools to use with children. We also intend to forward research in educational games.
Here is a video overview of our prototype game “Speech Adventure”:
Researchers: Zachary Rubin, Sri Kurniawan. In collaboration with UC Davis Medical Center.