This project will develop sound recognition software to provide real-time visual reinforcement of vocalizations produced by infants or preschool children. This program is intended for children who are delayed in the frequency and variety of pre-speech vocalizations they produce and, hence, are at risk for being non-speaking. This will provide an automated training system to maintain and develop children?s motor plans necessary for continued vocal development and expand the child?s repertoire of voluntary communicative behaviors that can be interpreted by partners in functional and social interaction. The system will encourage infants to practice vocalizing and to explore a larger repertoire of phonetic patterns. Particularly, it will reinforce the production of syllabic utterances that are associated with later language and cognitive development. Phase I will develop software to respond in real-time to the frequency, amplitude, and acoustic landmarks in infant vocalizations. The system will be tested on two typically developing and three at-risk children. Phase II will extend both the acoustic repertoire and the reinforcement component of the software. Phase II will also include a longer-term study with more children.
VisiBabble targets pre-linguistic children. It might be uded by clinicians in hospitals and early intervention centers and by parents in the home. The system could be software used on the family PC, a stand-alone system that operates through the family TV, or a self-contained device about the size of a current notebook computer. It could be used for children delayed in pre-speech vocalization to encourage them to generate speech sounds that they otherwise produce infrequently.
