VOICE-PITCH TACTILE DISPLAY FOR THE DEAF

长期目标是生产一种可穿戴的触觉交流辅助设备 为聋人服务 与其他触觉辅助工具相比，该系统将呈现 特定语音特征、音高，已知其提供重要的 关于句法结构和交际意图的交际线索。 聋哑学生接受通常的对话惯例的速度很慢 教师和学生之间交流信息。 据信 关于教师的声音音高和节奏的信息将加速 发展教育交流。 项目第一阶段将 开发一种可供学童穿戴的触觉音高系统。 它 将基于现有的系统PORTAPITCH（Boothroyd，1983）。 试点 研究将制定培训程序，让聋哑儿童 通过系统可获得的通信提示。 第二阶段将进行 对聋儿佩戴的新系统进行了一项受控评估， 一年级的教室 业绩计量将说明各种类型的 孩子和老师之间的沟通。 商业应用 一个成功的装置将有助于加快非常缓慢的发展， 聋生在正常的基础上在课堂上学习。 一 进一步的应用是作为成年聋人唇读的辅助工具。

The long-term objective is to produce a wearable tactile communication aid for the deaf. In contrast to other tactile aids the system will present a specific voice feature, voice pitch, that is known to provide important communication cues about syntactic structure and communicative intent. Deaf school children are very slow to adopt the usual dialogue conventions between teacher and pupil for exchanging information. It is believed that information about the teacher's voice pitch and rhythm will hasten the development of educative communication. Phase I of the project will develop a tactile pitch system that is wearable by school children. It will be based on an existing system, PORTAPITCH (Boothroyd, 1983). Pilot studies will develop training procedures for introducing deaf children to the communication cues available through the system. Phase II will carry out a controlled evaluation of the new system worn by deaf children in first-grade classrooms. Performance measures will describe the types and amount of communication between child and teacher. Commercial application of a successful device would serve to hasten the very slow development by the deaf pupil of the normal basis for learning in the classroom. A further application would be as an aid to the adult deaf for lipreading.