Gamified discrimination tests for speech therapy applications

Abstract

The integrity of phonetic perception abilities is necessary for a normal functioning future speech development. Since the ability to discriminate linguistic sounds is typically associated to the correct acquisition and production of the same sounds, an alteration of this ability could contribute to the onset of speech and language disorders. Support for presenting discrimination tests to young children (5- and 6-years-old), however, is provided when gamified settings are put in place. Moreover, moving beyond static tests in favour of dynamically generated ones may help personalise the test. In this work, we propose an acoustic discrimination test as the first step for the creation of a renovated Italian Literacy Tutor. Presented results show promising indications concerning the application of the proposed approach both from the user experience and from the reporting point of view.