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Computer Activities for Those With Speech and Language Difficulties?
An anonymous reader writes "My girlfriend is training to be a speech and language therapist here in the UK (speech pathologist in the US). A number of clients are guys who enjoy playing computer games, and for a variety of reasons some have no incentive to try and improve their speech. The issue is, this can obviously inhibit options for jobs and/or other aspects of life. I was trying to think of fun computer-based activities for those with speech and language difficulties that encourage individuals to speak, and furthermore to speak with greater clarity. Or games/activities that might encourage them to do more speech work. The first options that sprang to mind were the online games with team-speak / team-talk for those with mild difficulties. The sampling / accent issue might force them to speak with greater clarity or wish to have that ability. Obviously, they can just type. Any thoughts?"
How significant a speech impairment are you talking about?
If it is only a speech issue (like a lisp) and they don't value the therapy, then I'm not sure what to say. I know a guy here who has quirky speech, but he's doing fine as an engineering student at a major university.
The reason we target speech in kids so heavily is that speech issues may (although not always) be a symptom of an underlying language problem that interferes with many other aspects of language. It's not just making kids talk better; it's more about giving kids who need it a redundant channel to learn phonology, morphology, and syntax.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Tom Clancy's Endwar. Have to speak clearly to control the RTS game, without the possible embarrassment of talking to real people in an online game.
I'm almost ready to teach myself multimedia programming -- i'd love to have a simple program that would show a picture of an object, say the name of the object ("Say 'snake'") and then record the child saying the word, then play it back for them to hear themselves saying it through headphones. Icing would be if it could somehow evaluate the word and maybe have them try a 2nd or third time if they didn't get it right.
Even more icing would be to make it fun on some level.
There's lots of stuff out there but it's way more expensive and/or complex then just the simple computer program described used to augment traditional speech therapy.
And it doesn't understand me, it usually just pisses me off, rather than cures my speech. :-/
Unless you want me to speak very loud and slow to everyone!
automated POS: "would you like to... say yes for option one"
me: "yes"
robot: "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that, please repeat"
me: "YES"
robot: " I'm sorry, I didn't understand that, please repeat... or press 1 for yes, 2 for no"
[furiously presses 1]
Sent from my PDP-11
I've just been discharged from a neuro-rehabilitation unit in the states to treat the aftermath of a 6 cm benign tumor resection in my right-frontal lobe. I didn't participate with the full program of offering, but I did have a very good Speech therapist who didn't focus just on language but also on things like deductive reasoning, scanning for words in blocks of text, and other interesting cognitive exercises. One of the things we did was work on what are sometimes called Quizzles, or logic puzzles. Where you are given a situation and a set of clues, and you are left to decide how to solve the puzzle, given that only one condition per subset could be true, resulting in the negation of the rest of the options. At first they were difficult because my brain was just tired (I was going through radiation treatments simultaneously), but after a time, they got easier as I was healing and the other therapies I was receiving was taking hold.
One of the programs she had also introduced me to was a program called "Brain Train" which had a whole subset of interesting ways of interpreting problems and coming up with a solution. One of those ended up being an interactive Towers of Hanoi puzzle. Since I'm able to write code, I had to go back into memory and remember the way that was solvable using recursion. I didn't tell her that though.
Another thing that I think worked for me was the "Brain Age" titles for Nintendo DS. There's lots of things that don't pertain to speech, but there are some things that are.
I am the son of an SLP here in the states and a patient of hers as well. This was a fortunate situation for me because I got good therapy and I had parents that were involved. No software will ever replace good therapy with a good therapist / pathologist.
That being said, there are video and board games to be used as therapy tools and they are all geared toward children from preschool through high school. I created a video game about a year ago for just this purpose. The games require the player to get a speech bubble which cues a visual and auditory stimulus, then the player should repeat the stimulus with their best effort. You can even use it with a microphone so that the game continues after you say the word. It does not, however, do any speech recognition, just merely detecting audio activity.
You can download a small demo (Flash projector, demo is Win only but the game is Win / Mac) at the website, http://www.2galsspeechproducts.com/
Feel free to contact me directly if needed. leetrout _at_ gmail _dot_ com
My son's autistic. Playing video games with him made him much, much more verbal, taught him how to solve problems, express directions, give orders, and more.
This is my sig.
As someone going through this sort of therapy, I can tell you that if an individual has no incentive or desire, there is absolutely no point in trying.
Game team talk type things might help, but only if they have issues with that kind of situation. There is no substitute for real life trials.
If they have no incentive to improve their speech, why are they clients of a speech pathologist? Whose money is being wasted? The person paying the pathologist should limit their computer use, and maybe talk to them more often.
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
No, we won't help you with your homework.
Sig: I stole this sig.
We had some guys with quirky speech in our engineering college too. We called them "International Students."
A number of clients are guys who enjoy playing computer games, and for a variety of reasons some have no incentive to try and improve their speech
I have every incentive. When you are split from the team, a boomer's just puked his bile over you, you're blind as a bat, and the zombie hoard is coming, you need to communicate quickly, concisely, and clearly to your team mates. Since I have started using a mic for gaming , I find myself, mumbling less(such as at work), and becoming very proactive in the quality of my voice communication!
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
star gazing & hand waving is back/bigger than ever. being kind to your neighbor is still wide open.
"some have no incentive to try and improve their speech."
If they have no incentive then don't bother with them. If someone isn't willing to work at something then there's no point helping them, they're still going to fail. If they have trouble getting employment, then that's an incentive right there. You don't need to create incentives for someone who doesn't want to try.
If there isn't an incentive then there usually isn't a problem. If they don't have trouble getting a job, don't have trouble working with people, don't want to talk to people online, then they're not likely to bother trying to improve their speech.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
for those of you lucky enough not to have experience in this area.
Just wondering...
Precisely what I was thinking. Putting people in bubbles aren't going to make them change. How about taking away their computer? Better yet, how about giving them a computer which only responds to speech? We aren't helpless creatures and our empathy for people sometimes end up producing negative results. People need real challenges, not a pad on their backs. Now I'm not saying people should be tortured, please don't misunderstand me here, I'm saying that there's a reason to why people who don't speak a language learn to order food or ask for directions first. If we really need to learn something we will try our hardest to learn it. Sometimes it might not be enough -- in which case a person should be aided, but until then the service would more often be a disservice. Fluffing the pillows of already privileged people is not the answer, and yes if you own a computer which you can play games on without worrying about food on your table and a roof above your head you are privileged. There are people far worse off who become far greater humans, because it was either pull your shit together or die. Though of course there were also many who didn't make it, still I think we can all agree that with regards to these people in topic it's long way until it reaches to that.
Disclaimer: I know nothing of artificial voice recognition.
If the voice-recognition software erroneously recognizes incorrect pronounciation/inflection/etc as correct, you might end up just training these people to produce speech that satisfies the internal rules used by the recognition software - which may differ from speech we'd classify as more normal. In a more machine-learning sense, the error surfaces between the software and human speech recognition share a minimum (normal human speech) - but, the software may have other minima into which the speech-impaired folks may inadvertently fall.
Whoever decided that they should be called 'speech pathologists' didn't really think of the patients. 'Speech pathologist' actually quite a difficult thing to say.
What about a MUD? For the uninitiated, it's a text-based multiplayer online RPG. There are hundreds to choose from, themed from Star Wars to Discworld to Pokemon, so hopefully there would be one that they'd be interested in. Clients and games are (almost all) free, so it's a good option for a low budget too.
It's text-based, sure, but you can't type the usual gibberish you would in an FPS chat for example. You have to write fully formed sentences, and generally as you get better at playing, your sentences become more fluent and detailed (especially in an RP MUD). I would say improved reading and writing would carry over to speech, but I'm not a therapist, so I couldn't say for sure.
My other thought would be, if there are a lot of these guys, why not set up a tournament in something like TF2? You might be able to disable text, but even if you can't it would still help. If there are only people with similar problems playing, then it should reduce nervousness about talking to each other, and playing a team game like that means that coordinating your actions and clearly describing situations and locations on the map to each other gives you a huge advantage over the other team.
A passle of good looking girls, a few beers, and these guys will have lots of incentive to hone their language skills.
It's like the old story of the kid who grew to be twelve years old without ever uttering a word. Doctors found nothing, psychologists found nothing, neurologists found nothing - there was no reason why he shouldn't talk.
One morning though he sat down at the kitchen table picked up his breakfast, and said "This porridge is cold!"
His startled Mother says "My God Tommy! You talked! What happened?"
Tommy looks at her and says "Until now everything was OK."
Three Squirrels
Perhaps do a little bit of study in the realm of non-verbal learning disorders, these can affect speech and language as well.
Timmeh!
TIMMEH!
It's not a "game" per se, but it might be interesting to the client to see a spectrogram of their actual speech. Then they could try to match the pattern to a model spectrogram of the therapist's speech.
Then you could make funny fart noises and see what those look like.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Feedback control is usually how they got people to stop stutter.
They put a microphone on them and feed what they're saying back into headphones with a slight delay.
I guess it's also good for other things.
Slashdot editor?
I have discovered a truly marvelous
Masturbation is a great one
Get 'em flight gear, set up a multiplayer env. where they have to do voice communication wtih air traffic control
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Note that the poster was in the UK - so does the speech recognition understand English or just American? I remember an incredibly frustrating phonecall using the United Airlines speech "recognition" system they used a while ago to give out flight times. Being British the damn thing completely failed to understand what I was saying until I guessed that it wanted a US accent. Amazingly my fake American accent was enough to get some comprehension from the system. So, unless whatever speech recognition you use is designed for British accents and language, all you may end up doing is exchanging one speech impediment for another!
OK, this is a somewhat random idea. There are a few games that use speech input (some have already been mentioned), but they are usually very finicky for someone without any speech problems, so I would think they would be very frustrating for people who have trouble.
So let me try a semi-random idea: what about Rosetta Stone?
Everyone's pronunciation sucks when they start learning a new language. If you could find one they are interested in for whatever reason (French, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, whatever) they could learn that language. Not only would that be a useful skill, but they would have to work at the new pronunciations. As they get better at those, they will improve their ability to pronounce those same sounds in English. Actually, a language that sounds rather different from English may be better as everything they say, right or wrong, will sound "foreign" and thus be less likely to trigger embarrassment.
The more of the language they learn, the more useful it becomes to them as they could talk to other people, watch TV/movies from a country that speaks that language, etc.
I got quite a lot of reading practice from video games as a kid. If they are the kind that might be motivated to learn a new language, it could really work.
By the time they decide "this is stupid", perhaps their speech will have improved enough for them to see it's worth while.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Some of my computer-assisted language learning (CALL) ideas on http://sites.google.com/site/yaoziyuan/ideas can also benefit native speakers. For example:
Orthography-Enhanced English (OEE) - Sometimes spelling a word based on its pronunciation can be hard, even for native speakers. For example, is it Lawrence or Lawrance? We can slightly change a word's visual form to help recall its correct spelling. For example, when the computer displays a word that has the -ance suffix (e.g. instance), it can lower the letter a to some degree, just like Intel has a trademark "intel" with a lowered e. Such a new visual form can help people recall that the unclear letter in inst?nce is a because a is always lowered in -ance while e is never lowered in -ence.
We've been selling speech software since 1994 that seems to do what you are asking for. Basically we show a picture and say a word. phrase, sound, sentence, and an exaggerated version of the word. The student repeats the sounds and compares their version to ours. It's simple but it works. Most of our users are kids, but adults who have had strokes or head injuries use it too. Our website is at http://www.learningfundamentals.com/ You can check out the software, without the recording part, in the Exercises section.
Check out Kanji Crammer at:
http://www.crammersoft.org/kanjicrammer.html
Off the top of my head the best game I know of that encourages voice chat and has built in chat is Dungeons and Dragons online.
You can play it for free, it has built in chat, and its not so intense so people seem to be more friendly than they can be in other games.
Thank you -- you've provided a whole new avenue I can craft Google searches around, and the linked software is very interesting, too.
And thank you -- tools for language study is an angle i haven't explored yet.
hint: "Praat Language Lab was developed to help students and language teachers learn to use the Praat software to improve spoken English. Many colleges and universities use Praat to provide visual feedback to spoken sound."
apply google with hint
If the program is too complex, the problem may be complex.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
They develop software aimed at people with speech difficulties due to learning disability, hearing loss, or stroke.
http://www.learningfundamentals.com/
It is a small outfit run by a very reasonable guy named John Scarry.
"A number of clients are guys who enjoy playing computer games, and for a variety of reasons some have no incentive to try and improve their speech."
This is pretty vague. There are many types of speech difficulties and many ways of dealing with them. As another poster pointed out, minor impediments are one thing, but problems related to physiological problems are more difficult to deal with.
My wife has Athetoid Cerebral Palsy which carries a side effect of her having Tongue Thrust. No degree of traditional speech therapy is going to allow her to control her tongue well enough to speak, although some old-school (and clueless) SLP's tried during her childhood. An Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) device, specifically this, was the solution for her. There is a huge technology industry supporting people with severe speech problems, and similar tech is covered by most insurance carriers in the U.S., including Medicare.
"The issue is it can obviously inhibit options for jobs/other aspects of life etc."
It can and does but it doesn't have to, nor should it. There is a lot more tolerance of disabilities today. We know many people with moderate to severe speech-affected disabilities who manage to lead lives which are not so much affected by by their speech as they are by other aspects of their disabilities. The bigger problem for people with certain types of congenital speech problems, is not speech itself but language and communication deficits which come as a result certain areas of the individual's brain not being developed to the same degree as those who go through the normal speech-learning process as children. Modern SLP's will recognize when tradional therapy is not only the wrong approach, but actually counter-productive.
"I was trying to think of fun computer based activities for those with speech and language difficulties that encourage individuals to speak and furthermore to speak with greater clarity."
There is a lot of software out there which can be used by therapists, and an SLP-in-training should have already been made aware of its existence by those experienced in the field. I think much of it though is probably aimed at the very young. Unfortunately the controlling factors are mostly social, and especially with males, once the teen years are reached, the mold is set unless the individual is already very self-motivated. One has to look at the person's social environment, the severity of the deficit ("I always have an aide who understands me") and at the nature of his support group ("I can already communicate with everyone who is important to me") and his own personal goals.
It seems you've asked for a solution to a very complex problem but haven't defined the problem set enough to suggest a pat solution (of which there are none anyway - each case is different enough from any other that there are few to no general solutions).
They've learned it's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're a fool, rather than speak and prove it.
Also, if they have no incentive, why are they clients? They must have SOMETHING that's motivating them.
What you're describing is almost exactly how Rosetta Stone [as seen on TV] works.
How about letting them be? You know, as a kid I always hated artificial consequences, they don't work in the real world. In most cases they were totally pointless. For example, you come home late and so you get grounded. That doesn't happen in the real world. You come home late in the real world and you either get up for work the next morning and are a bit tired, you take a "sick" day or the day off and nothing more comes of it. In the real world if you have a speech problem in general nothing major is going to come of it if you are skilled in another area. Look at Stephen Hawking, due to ALS, he requires a voice synthesizer to speak yet he is one of the most brilliant men of our time. If you are good enough in other areas to not have to speak much, good for you. We should not place false artificial consequences, people in "the real world" are generally pretty accommodating if you don't tick them off. I have no doubts that someone who is mute or talks strange can accomplish great things, if they can live their life without needing to speak properly let them.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
A novice programmer like yourself could conceivably get the first part. Displaying images, recording and playing back sound samples are all readily available functions you can call on via C# and open source libraries.
However, adding the second feature would increase the complexity of the project a hundred to a thousand times. That's high end speech recognition, and you would need to put in probably months to years coding it up and would need advanced understanding of mathematics and of the algorithms used to do that.
why non-talk-able is a problem?
all computer guys can communicate without using the mouth......
and else......u don't know how to use a computer.......
so?........just like classifying mental patients?.........
actually many "problems" are defined by plain humans.......
but not the nature of this universe.......
if.....the society really really evolves into mouth-useless one....
maybe the days to "shut" the mouth will come.....
If all you're going to do is tell people you won't help them, why on Earth are you on AskSlashdot? Do you by any chance visit gaming forums and tell the members to stop wasting their lives? Perhaps go on Linux forums and smirk at how all those people are giving away code and help to ungrateful leeches?
I teach ESL at a K-5 elementary school. My school just started using Imagine Learning English - www.imaginelearning.com - which is really impressive and useful, though expensive. The program has
many activities which show videos of mouths making different sounds. Be aware though that the program does not allow you to designate the activities a student works on - it gives an hourlong assessment on first use, and then works on areas where the student is deficient. If you login as a teacher, you can do any activity, BUT it doesn't track your progress then...
Still, the program is awesome and anyone interested in Computer Assisted Language Learning should check it out.
So I got him Postal 2. The times when he's setting characters on fire and putting them out by peeing on them is by far the happiest he's ever been. It's fun to see him find fulfillment, but I've taken to locking the bedroom door at night.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Now, understanding the gobbledygook that comes with speech analysis to actually understand the libraries is what might take years.
Correcting a human's articulations is a really tough task for a machine.
Interesting research on the topic has already been made, and the most interesting that I've seen lately is coming from KTH, in Sweden.
ARTUR - the ARticulation TUtoR
http://www.speech.kth.se/multimodal/ARTUR/
I guess you could ask them about the availabitilty of their software, but you would need a lot of work to customize it for each of the participants.
Or they could maybe give you an alternative....
Here are some useful links for people with speech and language difficulties:
Twitter
MySpace
YouTube (comments section)
Text Messaging
How about letting them be? You know, as a kid I always hated artificial consequences, they don't work in the real world. In most cases they were totally pointless. For example, you come home late and so you get grounded. That doesn't happen in the real world. You come home late in the real world and you either get up for work the next morning and are a bit tired, you take a "sick" day or the day off and nothing more comes of it. In the real world if you have a speech problem in general nothing major is going to come of it if you are skilled in another area. Look at Stephen Hawking, due to ALS, he requires a voice synthesizer to speak yet he is one of the most brilliant men of our time. If you are good enough in other areas to not have to speak much, good for you. We should not place false artificial consequences, people in "the real world" are generally pretty accommodating if you don't tick them off. I have no doubts that someone who is mute or talks strange can accomplish great things, if they can live their life without needing to speak properly let them.
So you're more into the line of simply taking away their computers (unless they earned it themselves) until they learn to earn it themselves. That's exactly my point. While I do see your point about Hawking he's however an exceptional man, and I wouldn't expect such an outcome for a vast number of subjects going through the same scenario. In those cases where you're not dealing with a genius you are sometimes required to aid. Not aid as in wipe their asses, but to give them the roll of paper and challenge them to do it themselves while making sure that they aren't hurt during the process (weird analogy but I get my point across). If you however do have a problem with speech you're still better off than deaf people, who nowadays live and work just like any other person does. I don't see the issue here, really. I'm having problems learning my fourth language which I'm currently trying to learn, and being a resident in the country which speaks this language I can tell you that I first learned to order food and ask for directions, as my survival instincts motivated me to do. Unfortunately I have been too lazy to learn it more properly than I could have, but I'm feeling some real pressure now and this has caused me to start studying on my own during my spare time.
As you say the motivation needs to be real, no matter how harsh it might seem. Otherwise people won't change their ways, no matter if it's about learning to speak properly or going around it to become a larger human than you once were -- like Hawking did.
I am the lawn!
I realize this is slashdot not "soap opera storyline dot com", but still surprised no one noticed:
My girlfriend
A number of clients are guys
some have no incentive to try and improve their speech.
The boyfriend is always the last to know. Even if your girlfriend is doing absolutely nothing inappropriate with the guys at all, they might sign up solely to enjoy looking at her, or daydreaming or just purely platonic-ly bored/lonely.
(If its not obvious, nothing personal intended dude, just having some fun with how the story was written)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Hey, that's my job!
(Part of it, anyway. I work with kids with autism spectrum disorders and many, many of them have great difficulties with speech and language processing. They not only don't speak clearly (if at all) but they have trouble labeling objects both receptively (touch the couch!) and expressively (what is that? Couch!)). I'm really interested to see what people have to say about this. The best motivation I've found is to take away anything the kid really wants (food, drinks, toys, computer) and make them ask for it repeatedly during a session, modeling the appropriate way to ask (Picture Exchange Communication System, sign language, verbal cues, Dynavox, Dynawrite...) and then making sure that they are asking at the highest level they are able to reach. I won't take "waha" for "water" when I know they can say "wata". It can be frustrating for them but if you always reward with the item after they've made a few (good) attempts to ask, they'll very soon learn that it's worth speaking clearly so they don't have to go through "I didn't understand you - say it again!" six times. Once they know that communication is effective in fulfilling their desires you can work on shaping language to a clearer state. If they're not motivated you'll get nowhere. For some of them I'd honestly advocate putting them in a public setting with a list of questions they have to ask in order to find their way "home", standing back and watching. If they can't get passerby to understand them, and are capable of understanding -why- they aren't understood, they'll hopefully shape up their speech patterns as fast as they can at least to a level where most people can grasp what they're saying. Just don't do with the guys who are going to be easily frustrated or become violent (duh).
I can't play back a kid's voice without a tape recorder in hand, but I do a lot of modeling, overexaggerated lip movements and bouncing around to make it fun and I can react a lot better than a computer can to a kid's changing attention and level of motivation.
I am more than slightly aware of a violent form of prejudice being exercised against speech impaired children. Take a look at how your local school system handles kids with speech difficulties. The evil trick is that they assign several students at once for speech therapy that absolutely must be delivered one on one. Naturally the therapy is totally worthless and the children fail to progress. They are sent to the therapist for a couple of years and then the school board sends a letter to the parents that the child has received all possible therapy and fails to respond and therefore will remain handicapped. What this does is reduce expenses to the school system. Therapists in the system have informed their superiors that the therapy they are required to give can not have any chance of helping the children. If they push the point the will be dismissed.
Other students that receive a huge mistreatment often include mentally ill students. For example children from the state mental hospital are trans ported to the other extreme of Broward County Florida every day. That is through dense urban traffic in a huge county, Ninety minutes one way for very ill children is absurd. One child was so ill that after murdering both parents he was so violent that he has to have a personal, arms length orderly 24 hours a day. Because of state laws this kid was transported by buss across the county like all other mentally ill kids although he has no chance of ever being released and is an absolute threat to everyone around him including other kids.
I posted below... I've created exactly what you described without the speech recording / processing.
Check it out at http://www.2galsspeechproducts.com/
How hard is it to yell:
"HELP! I DON'T WANT TO DIE!"
Some choice expletives may be appropriate at this point as well.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I was about to mod you up, but I guess it's useful to reply instead.
I'm a stutterer and one of the problems that I've encountered is the lack of open source software for Delayed Auditory Feedback/Frequency Altered Feedback (DAF/FAF). DAF/FAF reduces stuttering to a certain degree.
There is a need for a free Linux (or even Windows mobile) DAF/FAF software. If such free software exists, stutterers can simply install it on their PDAs (Angstrom Linux, anyone?), and connect it to a headphone. PDAs are much cheaper and useful than DAF/FAF hardware.
The newest version of Rosetta Stone does this fairly well except that with single words it does not point out the problems in pronunciation. With multiple word phrases it will point out which words were not pronounced "correctly".
"for a variety of reasons some have no incentive to try and improve their speech."
Their problem isn't speech impairment (though they may have some), it's motivation. Don't coddle them with the games they like so much, it will only encourage them. As each of these problem children come to a session, present them with their discharge papers with a sticky note next to the signature line that says SIGN HERE, and a bag of dry dog food (kibbles to you folks in the UK) with a note that says "Get used to it, if you refuse to participate in therapy you lose your disability payments." Either they'll come around, or they'll free up the slot for someone else who'll try harder.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The mods are obvious fans of Dick Van Dyke's "cockerney" accent...
Good one. I'd recommend Odama if the speech recognition wasn't so awful.
That's why I play McCein instead ;-)
I'd wonder more about how he got modded insightful instead of funny. (I'm guessing his tone was intended to be tongue-in-cheek)
If they have trouble getting employment, then that's an incentive right there.
True. I have a disability, and I couldn't find a job until my state's vocational rehabilitation department referred me to an employment agency specializing in people with disabilities. But in a welfare state, the incentive becomes convincing patients why they would even need a job when they can live on the dole and/or leech off their parents as a parasite single.
*Disclaimer: I was a developer for this product*
Say-N-Play is a speech articulation practice game designed for children ages 4-9. It was developed in cooperation with Holly Strange, MS, CCC/SLP, a speech language pathologist and her team to provide a fun and engaging way for children to practice their speech, so they look forward to it each day.
We partnered with the Stanford Research Institute to create technology capable of analyzing and scoring independent phonemes within an utterance. You can just use free play for mild articulation problems, or play in lesson mode where you select the problem phonemes and a progression of difficulties is tested. It can ignore phonemes you have not set as targets if, for instance, the child cannot make R sounds but you are just trying to get them to practice B sounds. It begins with easier positions (eg: initial, final) and moves all the way up to blends and phrases.
The product was designed to be used either in the office along with the guidance of a speech language pathologist, or at home to supplement their lessons and direction. The vocal models are based on US English (child, adult male and adult female vocal models are provided), but the primary focus is on consonant phonemes.
First, teach them to understand Liverpuddlian.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.