Speechmag

Voice banking to preserve the freedom of speech

More on voice banking, a subject I posted on a year ago when Laurence Brewer was interviewed for Radio 4’s Word of Mouth. This time there was a Scottish flavour to another Radio 4 programme ‘Giving the Critic Back His Voice’, presented by Deacon Blue’s Ricky Ross.

Mike Arnott - who is originally from Belfast but now lives in Aberdeen – is 45 and has motor neurone disease. He was referred to speech and language therapist Karen Yuill at a time when he had no speech difficulties to explore possibilities for voice banking. Like Laurence, his goal was primarily to ensure his children would still be able to hear him as him in the event of him losing his speech and voice as the disease progressed. As he says, “How you sound is so much of who you are.”

Karen explains that she had to go away and do a bit of reading and, “We kind of explored the whole thing together really”. Initially this was via ModelTalker, which was straightforward but left Mike a little disappointed.

The next port of call was Edinburgh based company CereProc. They specialise in characterful speech synthesis, and created a text-to-speech voice for film critic Roger Ebert from his recorded documentaries when he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The process adopted for Mike involves software recording thousands of phrases and sentences based on phonetic coverage so that all speech sounds can be captured in a way that will make the synthesis sound as natural as possible.

The programme explores the difficulty for synthetic voices in conveying emotions and feelings adequately, including humour, boldness, fear, anger, excitement and joy. Joanna Courtney from CALL Scotland is interviewed about CereProc’s female Scottish voice ‘Heather’, as is Louise Smith whose 19 year old daughter Leanna has Worster-Drought Syndrome. She has been excited to get the Heather voice for her communication aid as it sounds “so normal”.

Michael Arnott says that after the months of recording there was “a hesitation pressing the play button just in case I’d be disappointed – but I certainly wasn’t.” Most importantly, his 8 year old immediately said, “'That’s you daddy!' And I was so pleased because all of that’s been part of the goal...they still hear me as me.”

You can download Scottish voices from the CereProc website. The programme is available for a limited period on BBC iPlayer.

Article on speech sound disorders course posted as Caroline Bowen receives special award

By happy coincidence, I completed a new article reflecting on two days immersed in speech sound disorders with international expert Caroline Bowen just as Caroline was awarded life membership of Speech Pathology Australia at its National Conference in Darwin. She is pictured here being congratulated by Ros Neilson, Councillor for New South Wales.

Having known Caroline 'virtually' for many years, it was a pleasure to meet her at last at her two day 'Speech Sound Disorders - the Basics and Beyond II' course hosted by the Association of Speech & Language Therapists in Independent Practice (ASLTIP) in the beautiful city of York. Reading my article will give you a sense of the contribution Caroline has made to promoting evidence based practice around the world, and of why she thoroughly deserves the highest honour of her own professional body.

Caroline is returning to the UK shortly to run three one day courses in London (18, 20, 22 July). She will then deliver two complementary one day courses (28, 29 July) in Durham, 'Spoiled for Choice - Therapy approaches for speech sound disorders in children' and 'Sound Reasoning: Therapy targets and techniques for children with speech sound disorders'. If you are interested in attending, there is more information here.

Major conferences in 2011 and how to get there

With training budgets severely constrained, it is likely UK speech and language therapists will have to use some ingenuity to access funds for major conferences in 2011.

If you're not quite ready to have a car boot sale or go busking, the Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists (RCSLT) offers minor grants up to £500. These are awarded on merit to members for activities which will “benefit the profession of speech and language therapy” and “enhance their own professional development”. The ‘Grants and awards’ section of its website also lists external sources of funding.

A number of conferences with exciting programmes are coming up this year. In addition to Caroline Bowen's Speech Sound Disorders (9-10 March, York) which I have already blogged about, here are a few more:

29-30 March 2011
No Mind Left Behind, Glasgow
The 52 speakers from a range of backgrounds in autism, ADHD and other early onset neurodevelopmental disorders include Lorna Wing, Simon Baron-Cohen, Jeremy Turk and Sam Goldstein. Topics include collaborative working, the impact on parents and families, attachment, and what makes different conditions (such as autism, Tourettes, intellectual disabilities, obsessive compulsive disorder, epilepsy) distinctive and similar.

2-3 April 2011
NAPLIC
Championing Better Communication: Theory, Practice and Innovation
University of Warwick
Early booking discount available until 31 January.
Keynote speakers include Jean Gross, Julie Dockrell, James Law and Sue Roulstone.

13-14 June 2011
Child Language Seminar
Newcastle
Themes include child language and literacy, children with speech, language and communication needs, capturing change in child language and bilingual and cross-linguistic perspectives on child language. Keynote Speakers include Maggie Snowling, James Law, Sheena Reilly and Elizabeth Pena.

PS Eagle-eyed Norbert Lieckfeldt (Chief Executive of the British Stammering Association) has pointed out that I failed to mention the 9th Oxford Dysfluency Conference, 1-4 September 2011. Abstracts are due by 1 April.

Better Communication Research Programme needs input from practising therapists

What interventions do you offer children with speech, language and communication needs, and what outcomes are you looking for?

The Better Communication Research Programme team is looking for speech and language therapists to respond to a survey about practice. The closing date is 17 December 2010.

This research programme was set up by the government as part of its response to the 2008 Bercow Review of provision for children and young people with speech, language and communication needs. The team, which includes Professor Sue Roulstone and Yvonne Wren, wants to make sure that its research takes account of everyday practice, and that it will ultimately be useful to practitioners, commissioners, policy makers and parents.

It therefore intends to use the survey responses, together with the findings of a systematic literature review, to develop a database of the evidence for specific interventions and the outcomes which can be expected from them. The researchers want to capture different factors that influence effectiveness and efficiency. These include where the intervention takes place, the content of the intervention, the people and resources involved and whether it is offered via a direct or indirect method.

The researchers say the survey should take between 10 and 20 minutes to complete, and that all responses are in confidence and anonymous. Click here to complete the survey.

Voice banking for people with degenerative diseases

Radio 4's Word of Mouth this week interviewed Laurence Brewer. Laurence has Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and is in the process of banking his voice to create his unique synthesised version for future use.

Laurence says that, although the idea of voice banking is popular in the US, he wants to raise awareness among speech and language therapists in the UK of the potential benefits. Laurence knows that at some point his speech will deteriorate; his desire to find out about the different options was driven by a wish for his 6 month old son to grow up knowing his voice.

Laurence is going through the screening process of a home-based speech synthesis software package called ModelTalker. Once this is complete, he will record himself saying 1600 pre-set sentences. The researchers will then 'cut and paste' phonemes and syllables to reproduce his speech patterns. As it is a US program, Laurence is not sure how it will cope with his accent! Although aware it might be very clear, he is cautious in his expectations: "I think it will probably sound a bit stilted and a bit robotic, but I think there will still be an element that will be of myself. So it will sound similar to myself - but maybe myself imitating a Dalek!"

The Word of Mouth programme will be repeated on Monday 13th September at 23.00. It starts with Tony Crimlisk who has been recording voices in his family since 1956 in the way that many people take photographs. Dr Shelley Trower, an oral historian, then discusses how such projects give voice to people who wouldn't normally be included in written history. Dr Tim Bunnell talks about how the ModelTalker technology works and Laurence explains to interviewer Chris Ledgard that voice is an important part of people's identity. He wants to leave a legacy of his voice, and to make speech and language therapists more aware of the technology that can support this.

Free conversing with Sharynne McLeod article now available

Being a speech-language pathologist herself, internationally renowned educator, researcher and editor Sharynne McLeod knows how much our profession likes to talk.

During a study day in Bristol in July ('Speech Sound Disorders in Children - Seminar for SLTs'), Sharynne made a point of encouraging the 50 attendees to shift seats at each interval and talk to someone new. It may feel more natural to find a seat and stick with it, but I enjoyed experiencing her informative, challenging and inspiring seminar from different vantage points, and discussing it with a variety of friendly speechies. Definitely something to do again at future events.

To finish, Sharynne got us each to blow up balloons and write on them the main two messages we would take away from the day. The activity also involved a song and punching the balloons around, which I imagine goes some way towards explaining why I still remember that I wrote 'siblings' and 'polysyllabic words' on mine.  

There were, however, many other equally important messages about making sense of the literature, writing for publication and making a difference across the globe, which I have written about in a new free article on the study day and a follow-up interview with Sharynne. This e-article supplements the content of the Autumn 10 issue of Speech & Language Therapy in Practice magazine. Other free original articles are also available here.

Caroline Bowen brings her 2 day speech sound disorders workshop to the UK

I can't believe it was as long ago as 2002 that Australian speech-language pathologist Caroline Bowen compiled her top ten child speech resources for Speech & Language Therapy in Practice.

I have "known" Caroline virtually for many years, and enjoy her humourous contributions to the excellent ACQ magazine. I also admire the firm hand with which she guides the phonologicaltherapy listserv, a fantastic resource for anyone who works in the field of child speech.

Now finally I am going to meet her in person when she presents a two day workshop in York next year on behalf of ASLTIP (the Association of Speech & Language Therapists in Independent Practice). 'Speech sound disorders: The basics and beyond II' will cover referral and screening, assessment, diagnosis, contextual factors, intervention approaches, target selection, treatment principles, goals and strategies and roles. It should be an exciting - if exhausting! - couple of days.

 

Holography as phonetics teaching resource

In the Winter 09 issue of Speech & Language Therapy in Practice, we report on the development of a student teaching resource which could become a useful tool for speech and language therapists.

Pip Cornelius, a lecturer in phonetics and phonology at De Montfort University, has worked with Professor Martin Richardson who specialises in holography to produce the 3D visualisations of different sounds. Here are 3 examples (uploaded to You Tube by kind permission of De Montfort University).