Self-paced speech rehabilitation among children with down syndrome using malay automatic voice recognition (AVR)

• Main Author: Lau, Kum Hoe
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: T Technology (General); TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
• Online Access: http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/18353/1/Self-Paced%20Speech%20Rehabilitation%20Among%20Children%20With%20Down%20Syndrome%20Using%20Malay%20Automatic%20Voice%20Recognition%20%28AVR%29.pdf; http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/18353/2/Self-paced%20speech%20rehabilitation%20among%20children%20with%20down%20syndrome%20using%20Malay%20automatic%20voice%20recognition%20%28AVR%29.pdf; http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/18353/; https://plh.utem.edu.my/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=100144

The speech and language learning of children with Down syndrome (DS) are often delayed or impaired. Therefore, children with DS often take a longer time in learning to speak and in certain cases; some of them might not be able to speak properly throughout their lifetime.Learning how to convey verbally is crucial as it underpins the development of other skills like expressing and socializing which helps an individual to communicate with others in the society. Therefore, improving the speaking and language skills of children with DS is essential in promoting an independent living for these children. The Automatic Voice Recognition (AVR) could unfold potentials in promoting the speech rehabilitation among children with DS. Nevertheless, many existing AVR applications were developed based on European regions and the users of these applications were not originally targeted for children with DS. These applications are not applicable to the children with DS in Malaysia. This thesis addresses the feasibility of Malay AVR as an assistive tool in promoting the self-paced speech rehabilitation among children with DS. Three studies were conducted in order to tackle this issue, and all these studies were conducted in the Kiwanis Down Syndrome Foundation (KDSF) centre – a legitimate association that provides speech rehabilitation programs for the children with DS in Malaysia. The first study aims to investigate the current limitations that prevent speech rehabilitation among children with DS in Malaysia. The second study involved the children with DS from the KDSF centres and would help to validate the usability study for the proposed Malay AVR application known asMyCard. The third study involved three children with DS who participated in the usability testing with MyCard, which aimed to verify the feasibility of MyCard as an assistive tool in promoting the self-paced speech rehabilitationfor these children. The feasibility of MyCard in promoting self-paced speech rehabilitation was sought based on its interactivity, user’s experience and its efficiency. Based on these three criterions, the resultsshowed that MyCard is feasible for the children with DS who participated in this study. There are evidences showed that these children could understand and interact with the user interfaces’ components of MyCard which indicated that these children could interact with MyCard. The DS children in this study also showed proper responses when they saw the feedback displayed by MyCard, indicating that the feedbacks are intuitive to these children.Importantly, the teachers who were monitoring their children during this study also indicated that MyCard can be adopted as a supportive tool in their speech therapy routine. Grounded on these, the researcher of this study concluded that Malay AVR can be potentially served children with DS as a self-paced speech rehabilitation tool.