Harriet Fell, Joel MacAuslan, Cynthia J. Cress, Cara Stoll, Kara Medeiros, Jennifer Rosacker, Emily Kurz, Jenna Beckman
Children with difficulty producing speech sounds can practice sounds in play, even prelinguistically. visiBabble is a prototype computer-based program that responds with customized animations to targeted types of infant vocalizations. The program automatically recognizes acoustic-phonetic characteristics of the vocalizations and can selectively respond to utterances with varying levels of complexity (e.g. multisyllable utterances).
This poster reports syllable production changes of three children with physical and speech impairments, ages 1-4, in response to visiBabble reinforcement. Results include immediate effects of visiBabble reinforcement on infant vocalizations as well as longer-term effects of home visiBabble practice on spontaneous sound production.