Flappy voice: an interactive game for childhood apraxia of speech therapy

Abstract

We present Flappy Voice, a mobile game to facilitate acquisition of speech timing and prosody skills for children with apraxia of speech. The game is adapted from the popular game Flappy Bird, and replaces touch interaction with voice control. Namely, we map the child's vocal loudness into the bird's position by means of a smoothing filter. In this way, children control the game via the duration and amplitude of their voice. Flappy Voice allows the therapist to create new exercises with different difficulty levels, including an assisted mode for children with limited skills, and a free mode for advanced players. Results from a pilot user study with children support the feasibility of the game as a speech training tool.