Gesture Recognition in Aphasia Therapy

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Aphasia is a language disorder, usually caused by stroke. It affects a substantial number of people; there are about 250,000 people living with aphasia in the UK and approximately 45,000 new cases each year. People with aphasia have difficulty with all aspects of communication: speaking, reading and writing. The negative effects of aphasia can be immense and are not confined to the affected person but are also felt by the immediate family and social circle.One approach advocated by therapists is for the aphasic person to communicate using gestures, but this also poses challenges as the ability to produce and understand gestures may be impaired. In recent research we have investigated whether gesture production can be enhanced by therapy and the initial evidence from face-to-face therapy is encouraging. However gesture therapy is resource-intensive and this has motivated our proposal.Our goal is to develop and pilot an innovative gesture training tool to be used in aphasia therapy at home. This will build on our existing work on non-computer based therapy and there is no previous published research in this area. Our approach to achieving this goal will be to refine and adapt existing gesture recognition technology, incorporating it within a training package that we will develop. In so doing, we will refine and exploit existing research into gesture recognition and gesture-based interaction, utilising mainstream interaction devices such as the Nintendo Wii remote and open source software. We will investigate appropriate forms of gesture recognition and feedback for this user community.The development of the tool will address several fundamental issues: it needs to recognise a substantial set of gestures that are relevant to the aphasic user and can be trained by the therapist; it must not be over-sensitive as gesture production is likely to be variable and inaccurate; we need to understand and incorporate appropriate forms of training and feedback in the tool.Research in the wild is integral to this proposal. Close engagement with the user community will be facilitated by our project partner, the Stroke Association. Aphasic people will be employed as consultants in exploring and evaluating gesture recognition technologies as the design and development of the therapy tool progresses. In the later stages of the project, a pilot study will be conducted with 10 people who have severe aphasia to investigate the therapeutic efficacy of the tool as well as its broader acceptability.The potential transformational impact of using gesture-recognition technology in therapy is significant. Given the numbers of people affected by aphasia, the provision of a therapeutically effective, low-cost, gesture training tool would be of substantial benefit.