A robotic interface for the administration of language, literacy, and speech pathology assessments for children

Yeung, Gary; Bailey, Alison L.; Afshan, Amber; Tinkler, Morgan; Pérez, Marlen Q.; Martin, Alejandra; Pogossian, Anahit A.; Spaulding, Samuel; Park, Hae Won; Muco, Manushaqe; Alwan, Abeer; Breazeal, Cynthia

A robotic interface for the administration of language, literacy, and speech pathology assessments for children

Gary Yeung, Alison L. Bailey, Amber Afshan, Morgan Tinkler, Marlen Q. Pérez, Alejandra Martin, Anahit A. Pogossian, Samuel Spaulding, Hae Won Park, Manushaqe Muco, Abeer Alwan, Cynthia Breazeal

A preliminary implementation of a robotic interface for the administration of language, literacy, and speech pathology assessments for children is presented. This robot assessment protocol will be used for several ongoing studies to improve the performance of educational robots for children. The robot used is JIBO, a personal assistant-style robot capable of expressing itself with its poseable body. JIBO's implementation is intended for children as young as 4 years old. JIBO is designed to have friendly interactions with young children while administering assessments such as the evaluation of pronunciation, alphabetic knowledge, and explanatory discourse. Additionally, this implementation is currently being used to collect a speech database of such assessments being administered to children.