No abstract

This study examined the effects of a teacher-delivered intervention with online mathematics mini-games on special education students' multiplicative reasoning ability (multiplication and division). The games involved declarative, procedural, as well as conceptual knowledge of multiplicative relations, and were accompanied with teacherled lessons and class discussions. A pretest-posttest control-group design was employed, with 81 students from five schools for special primary education (three experimental schools and two control schools). The intervention consisted of two 10-week game periods in which a total of 16 mini-games were offered as part of the regular educational program for multiplicative reasoning. The control group students played nonmultiplicative mini-games; for multiplicative reasoning, they followed their regular educational program without mini-games. In both groups, students' multiplicative reasoning ability significantly increased. Regarding declarative knowledge of multiplication facts, learning outcomes were significantly higher in the experimental group as compared with the control group. This finding indicates the usefulness of mini-games for enhancing special education students' mathematics fact knowledge. Learning outcomes on a test measuring procedural and conceptual knowledge of multiplicative reasoning did not differ between experimental and control group. For these learning outcomes, then, the mini-games intervention did not have added value but can still be considered a "safe" alternative approach.

The majority of patients with neurological impairment like Parkinson's Disease (PD) or stroke are affected by dysarthria. Dysarthria is a motor speech impairment which negatively affects speech dimensions such as articulation and loudness. This leads to reduced intelligibility, often hindering daily life communication. Intensive and prolonged speech training can increase patients’ speech intelligibility. Unfortunately, interventions by speech therapists are generally provided only for a short period of time, while continuing practice is needed to maintain or improve intelligibility. eHealth applications might provide a solution. In our research, we explored whether it is possible to develop a game that is suitable for providing speech training in elderly patients with dysarthria due to PD or stroke. In the game, we developed, called Treasure Hunters, two players interact verbally to find the way to the treasure, while receiving automatic feedback on voice loudness and pitch. Participants played with our game in several sessions and generally appreciated it, hinting at our game's potential for speech training in elderly patients. In a within‐subjects experiment with five dysarthric patients, our game was compared to a non‐game computer‐based speech training system: e‐learning‐based Speech Therapy (EST). We focussed on three variables: speech intelligibility, user satisfaction and user preference. Substantial variability between participants was observed, in the outcomes of these three variables and their relations. We conclude that ”one size that fits all” does not apply to computer‐based speech training, but a personalised approach is needed.

Measuring the intelligibility of disordered speech is a common practice in both clinical and research contexts. Over the years various methods have been proposed and studied, including methods relying on subjective ratings by human judges, and objective methods based on speech technology. Many of these methods measure speech intelligibility at the speaker or utterance level. While this may be satisfactory for some purposes, more detailed evaluations might be required in other cases such as diagnosis and measuring or comparing the outcomes of different types of therapy (by humans or computer programs). In the current paper we investigate intelligibility ratings at three different levels of granularity: utterance, word, and subword level. In a web experiment 50 speech fragments produced by seven dysarthric speakers were rated by 36 listeners in three ways: a score per utterance on a Visual Analogue and a Likert scale, and an orthographic transcription. The latter was used to obtain word and subword (grapheme and phoneme) level ratings using automatic alignment and conversion methods. The implemented phoneme scoring method proved feasible, reliable, and provided a more sensitive and informative measure of intelligibility. Possible implications for clinical practice and research are discussed.