Naming practice app on tablets and communication robots for people with aphasia

Abstract

Aphasia is a language disorder that negatively affects a person's ability to understand and generate language. Although it has been said that patients in the chronic phase are not likely to recover their ability, a number of recent studies report that highly frequent and continuous training enables recovery. Therefore, we have started a project that aims to improve the environment in which people with aphasia can continue language learning at home. In this presentation, we demonstrate naming practice apps, using speech recognition technology for people with aphasia. They can check whether their utterances are accurate, through the use of speech recognition and they can listen to the correct pronunciation of words through the use of speech synthesis. Field trials using the app for tablets have been conducted since Dec. 2014, and for the communication robot, Pepper, since Dec. 2015. Although the average of speech recognition accuracy was 61 % (false acceptance: 2%, false rejection: 37%), the participants accepted the poor robustness of the speech recognition, and tried to speak clearly. Some participants felt as if the robot was somewhat similar to a child, and others understood its inflexibility, and so in consequence they both accepted its low speech recognition ability.

English spoken stress recognition based on natural language processing and endpoint detection algorithm

“…The ultimate goal of speech recognition is to realize that the information exchange between machines and humans can be as convenient as the conversation between humans and realize the freedom of humancomputer dialogue. [4][5][6] Traditional oral English learning in the classroom is basically the way the teacher leads the students to follow the reading, but this method has many drawbacks, such as the teacher's oral English pronunciation is not accurate, the students have weak memory and easy to forget, and the learning after class cannot be confirmed. It is difficult to judge whether one's pronunciation is correct or not, lack of real scenes to practice, etc., which lead to students' reluctance to read English and a fear of oral English learning.…”