A product-oriented teaching and training system for speech handicapped children

A product-oriented teaching and training system has been developed for speech handicapped persons which helps to control their speech production by visual feedback. This method helps teachers to obtain better and quicker results. Futhermore, this interactive feedback system has a game-like strategy, which gives the patients a new motivation to practice alone. This speech therapy method is built up in four different steps: (1) sound preparation, (2) sound development, (3) practice in words, (4) practice in sentences (automation).

The method is mainly useful for patients who are hard of hearing or deaf, but serves for dyslalic cases too. With the help of a special processor the speech is analysed by an auditory model and visualizes it in an illustrative and playful way. The therapy program has been developed for use in several different cases of aetiological background (such as hearing problems, cleft palate, disorders of auditory perception, etc.), and for various languages. There is a set of modules in it for building dictionaries according to the language and/or the kind of the defective pronunciations. This paper presents both the general methodological steps and the results of the correction of sygmatism.