IPhone and IPod Touch for Speech Therapy

With all this technology entering into our lives, in entertainment and communication, why not take more advantage of this?

Many of us have had speech therapy at some point of our lives, and we are used to sitting in a cool relaxing room alone with a nice Speech Pathologist talking slowly to us and listening patiently to what we have to say. Such a nice and ideal situation is extremely rare in real life, so it is no wonder why almost all of us stutter far less in these sessions than in real life. I think this gives our therapists the wrong perception of our problem. Two of my past therapists used to make me meet new people, talk on the phone, take me out to the community to order drinks, or ask questions, or interview strangers to help with this. But it seems like those at HCRI have made something even better.

Hollins Communications Research Institute(HCRI) at Virginia, a leading Institute on the treatment of stuttering has developed a program that will allow the owner of an Apple IPhone or IPod Touch to use their wonderful little device with and additional small external microphone as a portable tool to greatly enhance speech therapy. Here is how it works:

This device, which you could take almost anywhere you go, records and evaluates your speech during outside situations, such as in a shopping mall, restaurant or business setting, fluency measurements for each utterance are displayed on the iPhone screen. This information is immediately transferred to their Therapy programs where speech practice can be made more efficient and results can be obtained faster. Information like this allows the institute's therapists to provide more detailed and precise training to clients, as they learn to apply new speech capabilities in everyday situations. This will also help people replace their flawed muscle contractions and learn how to reconstruct muscle actions that drive movements of the tongue, lips, jaw, vocal folds, and breathing mechanisms.

"Our clients now have a dynamic, easy-to-use tool that can be used in virtually any setting to evaluate how well they are using newly learned fluency skills," Dr. Webster said. "In addition, the device provides training feedback and performance data that were previously available only with our clinic-based computers."

According to HCRI and some clients, the tests have been highly successful so far. Of course, their website is filled with examples of success stories, but I have heard from some people that it is not worth it. The success can wear away, the data is not always accurate, you have to hold up the IPhone to record, which is very artificial, and background noise can interfere with proper recording. More on this

So there you have it. If you have the money you can decide for yourself if it is worth it and try it out. It doesn't seem like a bad idea at all but I remain doubtful of it's real use and lasting results. By the way, it is also a good show of partership between Apple and HCRI and for them to advertise and promote their companies. I feel like I have seen this before so I remain careful.