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A proposal of a virtual robotic assistant and a rule-based expert system to carry out therapeutic exercises with children with Dyslalia

Abstract:

The Dyslalia is considered one of the most common communication disorders that present children with and without disabilities. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) claims that 5 percent of U.S. children ages 3-17 have a speech disorder that lasted for a week or longer during the past 12 months. This situation is very similar in other countries of Europe, Africa, and Latin America. For these reasons, in this paper, we present a proposal of a virtual robotic assistant aimed at providing therapy exercises for children with Dyslalia. The virtual assistant uses a rule-based expert system that determines the best alternatives of exercises that will be carried out with a child in the phonetic area. With the aim of developing the physical version of the virtual assistant, we performed a study with 33 students enrolled in the last year of the career of initial education, early stimulation, and precocious intervention (in Cuenca, Ecuador). The participants validated our proposal through a survey, and the achieved results are encouraging.