Patricia Dowden

The Vocal Joystick: A Voice-Based Human-Computer Interface for Individuals with Motor Impairments

We present a novel voice-based human-computer interface designed to enable individuals with motor impairments to use vocal parameters for continuous control tasks. Since discrete spoken commands are ill-suited to such tasks, our interface exploits a large set of continuous acoustic-phonetic parameters like pitch, loudness, vowel quality, etc. Their selection is optimized with respect to automatic recognizability, communication bandwidth, learnability, suitability, and ease of use. Parameters are extracted in real time, transformed via adaptation and acceleration, and converted into continuous control signals. This paper describes the basic engine, prototype applications (in particular, voice-based web browsing and a controlled trajectory-following task), and initial user studies confirming the feasibility of this technology.

A Comparison of Standard and User Vocabulary Lists

Appropriate vocabulary selection is a critical aspect of the development of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) approaches. Many sources of vocabulary lists are found in the literature. The general purpose of this investigation is to compare and contrast a number of vocabulary lists in an effort to assess the usefulness of these lists as a source of vocabulary items for adolescent and adult AAC users. Results of a comparison of eleven standard vocabulary lists from various fields of investigation and nine user vocabulary lists from a group of nonspeaking adults indicated that all were small in comparison to the range of possible words and all contained relatively simple words. These vocabulary lists differed from one another in that the majority of words were unique to a single list and that there was not extensive overlap between various pairs of vocabulary lists. When standard vocabulary lists were compared with user lists, results indicated that nearly one-third of the words in user vocabu...

Serving nonspeaking patients in acute care settings: An intervention approach

This is the first of two papers based on a 2-year study of nonspeaking patients served in acute care settings of University of Washington Hospitals. This paper describes one approach to evaluating and selecting augmentative communication systems for this special population. The screening protocols place particular emphasis on a hierarchy of assessment tasks designed to allow rapid decision making and minimal efforts in the acutely ill patient. In addition, this approach emphasizes a thorough assessment of communication needs related to communication partners, environment, and messages.

Serving nonspeaking patients in acute care settings: Intervention outcomes

This is the second of two papers concerning a 2-year study of nonspeaking patients in acute care settings of University of Washington Hospitals. The first paper described the assessment protocols. This paper details the results of those assessments and our intervention with 50 patients between September 1982 and September 1984. The findings suggest that rapidly changing capabilities of these patients often necessitate a series of evaluations and a complicated intervention profile, comprised of a progression through multiple communication systems. The outcome of intervention with these patients was measured in terms of the percentage of communication needs which were met by the augmentative systems recommended. The types of intervention conducted included the following categories: oral approaches, fine motor approaches, limited switch approaches, oral and fine motor approaches, and oral approaches coupled with limited switch approaches. The average percentage of communication needs met in these categories ...

Vocabulary selection: a case report

In this article, the process of vocabulary selection is described for a nonreading, severely physically disabled adult for whom an initial expressive communication approach was being developed. The process included use of environmental inventories, communication diaries, and review of standard vocabulary lists as a means of message selection. A comparison of this users vocabulary list with 11 standard vocabulary lists indicated that even the largest of these vocabulary lists do not contain all the words considered important by the user. Thus, review of standard vocabulary lists may be considered a necessary but not sufficient aspect of vocabulary selection.

Discovering indices of contingency awareness in adults with multiple profound disabilities

We conducted two studies to examine parameters of social attention in contingency awareness training using switch activation with individuals who had multiple profound disabilities. In Study 1 we compared leisure devices and social attention as reinforcing stimuli with 5 individuals. Results indicated the reinforcing qualities of social attention over leisure devices with 2 individuals and documented the importance of session length in training. In Study 2 we investigated idiosyncratic behaviors as indicators of responsiveness with 3 of the 5 original participants as they activated switches. Behavior changes during switch activation versus nonactivation times in the leisure device and social attention conditions suggested volitional movement supporting contingency awareness and preference. Implications for clinical practice are discussed.

Triadic Gaze Intervention for Young Children With Physical Disabilities

PURPOSE This randomized controlled study investigated whether a supplemental treatment designed to teach triadic gaze (TG) as a signal of coordinated joint attention would yield a significantly greater increase in TG in the experimental versus control group. METHOD Eighteen 10- to 24-month-old children with severe motor impairments were randomly assigned to an experimental ( n = 9) or control group ( n = 9). For approximately 29 sessions over 17 weeks, experimental participants received TG treatment twice weekly with a speech-language pathologist in addition to standard practice. Control participants received only standard practice from birth-to-three therapists. Coders who were masked to group assignment coded TG productions with an unfamiliar speech-language pathologist at baseline, every 3 weeks during the experimental phase, and at the final measurement session. RESULTS TG increased across groups from baseline to final measurement, with the experimental group showing slightly greater change. Performance trends were examined using experimental phase moving averages. Comparisons revealed significant differences between groups at 2 time points (at 12 weeks, r = .30, a medium effect, and at the end of the phase, r = .50, a large effect). CONCLUSION The results suggest the promise of a short-term, focused treatment to teach TG as a behavioral manifestation of coordinated joint attention to children with severe physical disabilities.

Design goals for a system for enhancing AAC with personalized video

Enabling end-users of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) systems to add personalized video content at runtime holds promise for improving communication, but the requirements for such systems are as yet unclear. To explore this issue, we present Vid2Speech, a prototype AAC system for children with complex communication needs (CCN) that uses personalized video to enhance representations of action words. We describe three design goals that guided the integration of personalized video to enhance AAC in our early-stage prototype: 1) Providing social-temporal navigation; 2) Enhancing comprehension; and 3) Enabling customization in real time. Our system concept represents one approach to realizing these goals, however, we contribute the goals and the system as a starting point for future innovations in personalized video-based AAC.