What's New? Version 3.0.128 Has Launched!

Long time, no blog...  Perhaps you thought we'd dropped off the face of the earth.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  We've been busy for a number of months working on the recent release of Video Voice Version 3.0.128.  Just when we were about ready to release it last fall, Microsoft threw us a bit of a curve ball with their own release of the new Windows 8 operating system.  If you have tried it, you know that it's very different from earlier versions of Windows!  Rather than release the new version with unknown compatibility, we spent the next several months making sure Video Voice will operate correctly on this new platform.

Now, FINALLY, we're happy to announce the release Version 3.0.128.  In addition to Windows 8 compatibility and all its previous, fabulous features and capabilities, Video Voice 3.0 now includes:

• Fundamental frequency measurement to complement other Assessment capabilities.
• Customization of on-screen reward text and other prompts to correspond with user-modified audios to personalize the therapy experience
• Enhanced trace operation in the Multi-Frequency Formant Spectral Display to make it easier to capture sounds for practice, opening up potential for work on minimal pairs, in addition to high frequency sounds and more
• Goal scoring in the Formant Multi-Frequency Gobble game to make display more effective for therapy use
• F2/F1 and Multi-Frequency (F3/F2) Gobble display access directly from Formant Menu to make reaching this powerful feedback mode easier.
• Simultaneous display of pitch and volume in P-A-R Connected Speech, with volume shown as peaks and pitch in spectrum colors
• New Streaming Speech P-A-R display, provides live, "marching" display of pitch, volume, or both volume and pitch (as color) 
• New Fun & Games 12-Pack, a lower price option for those with limited budgets or interest only in game practice options
• Price reduction on all other software packages
• Revised internal documentation (Help) with more internal links to relevant pages
• Improved Windows 7 operation

There are numerous benefits to purchasing the Video Voice Speech Training System.  The most important one is the change the displays and games bring to the therapy process - helping individuals feel more in charge of their speech skills.  Another significant benefit is that software updates are FREE.  As we add new features and capabilities, you may download and install a new copy at no additional cost.

Already an Authorized User?  Please visit www.videovoice.com/vv_curel.htm to download Version 3.0.128 and update your Video Voice software.    

Haven't yet made the investment in this valuable tool for your speech therapy activities?  What are you waiting for?  Download Video Voice 3.0 and try it for 30 days, with absolutely no charge, at www.videovoice.com/vv_demo.htm.

We'll be back soon to tell you more about some of these new capabilities and offer more thoughts on how visual feedback can accelerate the therapy process.  Meanwhile, have questions?  Need assistance with using Video Voice with your caseload?  Want to restart a free trial you previously used to evaluate Video Voice's potential for your therapy needs?  Just pick up the phone and give us a call, or send an email.  We'd love to hear from you!

Yours in good speech,

Video Voice Support Team

1-800-537-2182

mv@videovoice.com

Have It Your Way

Video Voice is a very flexible speech tool, with options for nearly any kind of speech problem. Although the games and displays all have default settings, operation of most areas is up to you, and can easily be modified to fit your needs. To start with, there are no speech targets preprogrammed. It's up to you to define the content appropriate for the individuals in your caseload, and creating models is an easy process.

In addition, for almost any area of the program, there are ways to customize it to meet the needs of each and every individual in your caseload. Don't like some aspect of operation? Look around, there's probably a way to change it. Almost every control is adjustable!

So, how do you know when something can be modified?  Well, Video Voice offers various visual cues.

1. Any control that can be adjusted generally appears in cyan color.  
2. The mouse pointer offers hints, changing from an arrow to a hand when it passes over an adjustable control.  
3. If you briefly dwell the mouse cursor over a button or cyan control, a small “tool tip” will appear that briefly describes its operation. 

Here are just some of the things you have control over:

Speech Representation:  With the Formant Displays, which are helpful for articulation, you can choose to represent sounds in a matrix or cross-time (temporal) form. Matrix generally illustrates sound differences more effectively than temporal displays, but does not show durational differences as well. 

With the P-A-R (Pitch-Amplitude-Rhythm) displays, you can view the pitch or volume characteristic of any sound production. With both Formant and P-A-R models, you can switch between the two styles with a single mouse click.

Formant Matrix Vowel Chart: By default, vowel symbols will appear on the screen in the F2/F1 matrix display, identifying the general locations on the screen where different vowels generally appear. Dont want to see them at all? Click the Vowels button to turn the whole chart off and on. The default vowel symbols are IPA style; if you prefer standard "dictionary" symbols in the chart, make that change with the Formant Adjust button. 

Want to change the position of a vowel in the chart? Differences in speakers' production of vowel sounds can affect where they map on the screen. To change the position of any symbol, just click and drag it to the desired screen location. Don't want all the symbols to appear? Just click any symbol, drag it off the edge of the screen, and it will disappear. The new locations will be stored either in your therapist folder or in the individual's folder if one has been activated. This lets you customize the vowel chart to your own voice, or those of people in your caseload.

In the F2/F1 Gobble game, you can specify whether the vowels are "permanent," automatically refreshing when the Gobbler eats parts of them, or "erasable" and can be ''eaten up in the vocalizing process. This can be helpful if you're working on production of specific vowel sounds, and want the reward to be erasure of the symbols themselves. (Of course, the Gobbler's movement back to the corner of the voice space can cause parts of symbols to be erased without production of that sound, so use this cautiously!)

Performance Goal: Typically set to 80 by default, this control exists in most displays and determines the score needed to achieve an “Excellent” message and see a reward animation. You can raise or lower it at any time to make the display or game more or less demanding. If you change the performance goal in one display, that change automatically carries over to the other displays, too.

Reward Animations: There are two types of reward graphics. One is an animated cartoon that appears on the right side of the screen in pattern-match displays. The other is a box in the middle of the screen that contains a congratulatory message along with a colorful pattern; these rewards appear in many of the games. You can preview and select among the animated cartoons with the Adjust button in the Formant and P-A-R displays.

The game rewards are controlled through the Game Preferences button on the Fun & Games menu. (There you can also choose from among the many reward sounds, too.)
You can control whether rewards appear automatically when a production's score exceeds your performance goal, override Video Voice if you disagree with its assessment, or award all cartoon animations yourself. Use the Formant and P-A-R Adjust buttons, or the Game Preferences button on the Fun & Games menu, to access these settings.

Game Controls:  The Fun & Games options have a variety of adjustable controls. Some are common, shared across games, such as the Fade Speed (how fast a graphic disappears from the screen when the desired task isn't met) and Stop Sensitivity (how quickly Video Voice reacts to pauses in vocalization ). If you make a change to one of those common controls, it will apply to all games that have that adjustable option, too.  

Mostly, however, controls are specific to the individual games. Examples:

Pitch Painting, which provides a colorful display of pitch, has adjustable brush shapes and sizes that let you add visual variety to the feedback.  You can simply show varying pitch levels in speech, or choose only to reward vocalization with pitch above or below certain levels.

In Speech Ball, you can control how many balls will be in play in the game, the Speed at which they move, and the Hot Zone (area of the screen in which voicing will be detected).

With the Chat-N-U-Go Choo-Choo game, you can choose the game icon (antique or modern train, cars of different colors, or horse) and select from speech goals including more or less volume, vocal onset, or production of target sounds or individual words. Within any of the game goals, you have control over the performance required, speed of the game icon, and number or duration of vocalizations or trips required to complete the game, so you can make it easier or more demanding.

Likewise, Jumping Jack offers track events for work on volume control, duration, onsets and speaking rate. Each event has its own set of controls, such as running speed, vocalization time required, and amount of volume necessary for success.

The Bulls Eye! game lets you control which games appear in the menu. Although the little boys enjoy the bomb-dropping games and their explosions, some therapists prefer only the peaceable Care Packages and Flower Power games. With the Game Selection option, you can make the Battleships and Tanks A Lot games invisible and inaccessible. (This capability was added in response to a school district's non-violence requirement - we listen to our users!) You set the onset targets in all the Bulls Eye! games, and also can control the game speed.

The Voice-A-Sketch game has 78 built-in, high-quality pictures to choose from, but you can also use your own images if you wish. This makes it possible to tailor the graphic feedback to each individual's interests. Voice-A-Sketch also has multiple speech goal options, from simple continuous phonation or vocal onsets to volume control, duration, and word or sound articulation.

Personalized Audio and Display Text: Newly added to Video Voice is the ability to personalize the prompts for voicing and reward audios and messages that appear. The generic "Say" or "Very Good" messages can be replaced by "Mary, say..." or "Very good, Johnny!"  Modified audios and text can be stored in each individual's case folder, customizing the feedback for each person you work with. In the International/Simplified Operating mode, the prompts can even appear in other, non-Latin keyboard languages such as Arabic.

These are just some of Video Voice's displays and games, and controls that let you "Have it your way." Look around and explore the software to determine what works for best for you and is most motivating and effective with members of your caseload!  (If you don't already have Video Voice, download the program at www.videovoice.com and try it free for 30 days.  If you're already using it, you can make sure you're using the most up-to-date version, and download a no-charge update there.)

Yours in good speech,

Video Voice Support Team
mv@videovoice.com
1-800-537-2182
www.videovoice.com

Help!!

What do you do when you need help communicating information about speech with those in your caseload and getting them to understand how to make changes in their voices? The little boy who just can't seem to find the right tongue position for his 'R's. The girl whose slushy 'S' is driving you crazy. The youngster who just won't do purposeful voicing.

There are, of course, a plethora of speech therapy techniques and a number of tools available to streamline the process. One of those tools is the visual feedback on voice production Video Voice provides. We obviously believe its displays and games offer great benefits for communicating about most any aspect of speech development and remediation, and so do the many speech-language pathologists who have added it to their tool kits.

But what do you do when you need help with Video Voice? Used to be, you’d pull out the big user manual and pore through the index for answers. The problem with printed documentation, however, is that it can all too quickly become out of date, especially if the software changes. Since we’re always working on adding to and improving Video Voice, changes are a common and frequent occurrence. We therefore decided not to provide a printed manual, but instead make it an internal, integral part of the software operation. As the program changes, so does its reference material.

On virtually every Video Voice screen, you’ll find a Help button. Clicking it opens the built-in manual to the page appropriate to the area you're using. This internal documentation is not the anemic, sketchy variety many software programs have, the kind that can raise more questions than they answer. Video Voice's Help file contains more than 150 "pages" of information, chock-full of details on what the controls do for you, and how they function. The pages have an on-line "feel" to them, and are loaded with links that easily transport you to other related parts of the manual.

There are other built-in tools, too, like the Help Me Choose interactive guide and the Solutions and Support materials, all of which have buttons/links on the Main Menu. The "tool tips" for controls that appear when you dwell your cursor over them also briefly describe function to let you know if a control is what you need to use.

But sometimes you just really need to talk to somebody! We're proud to offer friendly, responsive support to both existing Video Voice users and those who are evaluating to see how it can meet their needs. You can ask your questions or get suggestions for appropriate use with different speech problems either by phone or email. Most of the time when you call, you'll hear a real person's voice on the other end of the line. If you do happen to get a recorded voice, just leave your name and number, and we'll call you back as soon as we can.

Just the other day a speech-language pathologist who's considering Video Voice called for guidance on what things would be most helpful with children she works with. Her caseload runs the gamut of the autism spectrum, from low-functioning, preschool-aged children who need vocal awareness encouragement to older, fluent ones who need to work on expressive function, particularly increasing pitch range and intonation skills. I was able to make a variety of suggestions for both cases. For the little ones who need to develop understanding that something happens when they use their voices, games like Chat-N-U-Go Choo-Choo and Pitch Painting can communicate that cause and effect. For the older boy who speaks in a monotone, P-A-R Pitch displays can illustrate desired voicing, pitch and fluent intonation in a sentence like "How ARE you?" vs. how it looks and sounds differently when he uses a flat pitch with distinct pauses between words. There are lots of other options, too, but we only talked about those few in our brief conversation.

We all need a little help sometimes, and that includes us. We do our very best to make Video Voice a flexible, easy-to-use tool, but hearing from speech-language pathologists (or others) about how they're using the displays helps us understand what we can do to make it even more effective. Of course we like to hear about things you like, but just as important are the things you don't like. If you have problems, they’re our problems, too, but we can’t fix them if we don’t know they exist. We welcome all feedback, so please give us yours!

In closing, here’s a little musical entertainment that fits the bill, and might just put a smile on your face: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=606ZcMKXlUg. 

And remember, when you need someone, we're here to help!

Video Voice Support Team
mv@videovoice.com
1-800-537-2182
www.videovoice.com

Models for Speech

People sometimes wonder why Video Voice has no preprogrammed models of target sounds and words. There are actually very good reasons for that.

To start with, we don't know what targets any individual needs to work on. Consider the number of words that exist. In the English language alone, there are at least a quarter of a million words, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. And that's just English. Video Voice's displays are language-independent, and can easily be used for speech therapy in Spanish, French, Arabic or most any other language.

Even if we were to put together libraries of target models, there are other issues. There are usually distinct differences in male vs. female, adult vs. child voices. It's difficult-to-impossible to strip out the pitch elements from sounds, so a man may not be able to match a woman's model, nor a child an adult's voice.

Then there's the matter of dialectical differences. What constitutes the “correct” production of any sound? In the northeast part of the U.S. a word like “bet” is pronounced with a short vowel (“beht”). In the south, the vowel is often elongated to a diphthong, e.g., “bay-uht.” Which way is the right way? Well, that really depends on where you're living, doesn't it? To Video Voice, however, those two pronunciations won't "look" the same.

In the F2/F1 Formant Matrix representation, you can see the addition of the extra vowel sound in the red pattern ("Bay-uht"). The "ay" appears higher and more toward the left of the screen space. The durational differences in the sounds aren't strongly noticeable in this display, although the changes in the vowel sounds are.

If you switch to the F2/F1 Temporal representation for a cross-time view of the productions, the longer duration of "Bay-uht" is obvious. In both cases, you can see why the two words don't look the same to Video Voice, and why pre-programming models for use could end up being frustrating for users.

Model Libraries 

Although there are no built-in models, Video Voice does provide a structure in which you can assemble your own sets of target models for your caseload, creating your very own model library. Once you’ve defined and stored them, they’re available for repeated use, or for transfer to other folders.

Within the Authorized User operating mode, each therapist can have up to 255 folders. Each folder can contain up to 255 models. That's a total of 65,025 separate models, more than you’re ever likely to need. (I sure hope you don't have 255 individuals in your caseload!) Video Voice will allow as many as 255 separate therapist folders, which means you could have as many as 16,581,375 models stored, but I think we can agree that's just plain silly.

So let's be serious. This caseload structure means you can easily build libraries of models, which may be useful if you’re a school-based therapist, especially if a number of your students have similar speech problems, such as articulation of /r/. By building a library of models featuring that sound in different positions, you’ll have a source for targets that you can use to set up directories individualized for each student. And then you’ve got a therapy tool customized to your particular needs.

How do you go about this? Start by setting up a Therapist folder to contain the library, giving it a name such as MODLIB. Then, within that folder, define a caseload folder with a name like R Sounds. Activate the R Sounds folder with New Session, then use Formant Create to make a series of models with R: run, race, round, etc. (Make sure you clearly enunciate/stress the R during production so that it will be clearly visible in the patterns.)

You can repeat the process for S Sounds, Vowel Sounds, or whatever other targets you commonly work with, until you have a series of MODLIB folders containing your models.

Once you have built your library, you can transfer copies of any target models to any student's folder. Start by activating the desired student's folder with New Session. Then, go to the Data Management Copy Data function. Specify your MODLIB folder as the target source, and select and move desired models into the student's destination folder. Easy!

If you have students who share common therapy goals or articulation problems, you can also use this same strategy with their own data folders, treating them as a source for targets. Model libraries can streamline setup time, especially if you have a large caseload.

A final note. During therapy, consider library models to be only starting points. It’s always easiest to match your own voice, so when a student successfully produces a target, it’s a good idea to turn his voice pattern into the model. All it takes is a single click of the Replace (or SaveAs) button.

Model libraries are a good way to maximize your productivity with Video Voice and customize activities for everyone in your caseload. Why not give it a try?

Video Voice Support Team
1-800-537-2182
mv@videovoice.com
http://www.videovoice.com/

Learning Video Voice - Help Me Choose

Learning to use a new piece of software can be fun, but can also be a challenge. Everything is new and unfamiliar, and you may not be sure where to start. There are lots of choices, and you're not sure what they do. How do you proceed? Click and guess? That's what a lot of us do, and it can be all too easy to get into "deep water," unsure of how you got there and how to get out!

Video Voice is a robust therapy tool with a variety of games and displays, each with many adjustable options that let you tailor operation to your specific needs. We’ve tried to do our very best to make it easy to learn and use. But, because there’s so much you can do with it, figuring out where to start can be daunting.

Welcome to Help Me Choose! In the lower area of the Main and Start-Up menus, you’ll find a Help Me Choose button. This opens an interactive application that lets you pick and choose among many common goals therapists share, things like articulation, vocal awareness, pitch, volume, and breath control and get information about them and access to them.

Start by clicking one of the speech goals. The first one, Vocal Awareness, has been preselected for you, and on the right side of the window you’ll see the different options Video Voice offers for work on that aspect of speech. Click on any of the options, and a brief summary of that game or display appears in the lower area of the window. Want to give it a try? Just click Use, and Video Voice will take you to that area so you can explore it. When you’re done, click Back, and you’ll see the Help Me Choose interactive guide again, where you can select other games or displays to try out.

 Pretty cool, isn’t it? Help Me Choose is just one of the ways Video Voice helps you learn about how it operates. Others include:

• Context-Sensitive Help. You can click Help at most any point in Video Voice operation, and open the extensive internal manual to the page appropriate for the area where you’re working.
• Tool Tips:  Dwell with your cursor over any button or adjustable control (cyan-colored text identifies adjustability), and a little pop-up box will appear that briefly describes its function.
• Start-Up Tips:  This button on the Main Menu provides suggestions on how to get started with Video Voice, as well as access to lots of other information, such as FAQs, Uses and more.
• Solutions and Support PDFs:  Solutions are 1-2 page documents that offer guidance on using Video Voice for common speech goals, things like Vocal Awareness, Articulation, Pitch and Volume.  You can print them to keep handy for reference.  Other support PDFs provide information about Getting Started, and Overview of operation, a handy Displays and Activities reference chart, and more. 

And, if you get stuck, we’re available by phone or email to make suggestions on use for different therapy activities and help you get going. We want your experience with Video Voice to be positive, so don’t hesitate to call on us for assistance!

Video Voice Support Team
1-800-537-2182
mv@videovoice.com

The History of Video Voice

Video Voice has a more than 25 year history. It got its start back in 1984, when a team of scientists, one of whom was hearing-impaired, began looking for a way to illustrate speech. The chemistry professor, who had been deaf since birth, decided as a child that he wanted to be a scientist, and understood that he’d need to be able to speak to be successful in that career. So he regularly attended speech therapy and diligently practiced at home between sessions, but was often frustrated to find he’d been practicing the wrong sound. So he and colleagues - an electronic engineer and a software designer - set about creating an electronic device that would illustrate sounds as they were produced. Their design was based on the vowel representation scheme from Grant Fairbanks’ Voice and Articulation Drill Book (©1954), and they  were granted a patent for both the hardware and software.

The first version of Video Voice was based on a small microcomputer called the Interact. Most people haven’t heard of it, but it was one of the first personal computers on the market. It was released about the time of the Radio Shack TRS80. The graphics capabilities were modest, with only a 112x77 pixel resolution (!!) and a total of 8 colors, but it had a built-in analog-to-digital converter, an important capability since speech is analog by nature. The earliest Video Voice models included that computer and an external device called the Speech Analyzer (or "black box") that converted the voice data to digital form as it was sampled.

The inventors’ prototype provided feedback that was pretty meager, nothing more than a few dots on the screen that showed the basic location of a vowel sound. That didn’t seem like it would be interesting for long, so we set about fleshing out the display and software to turn it into a tool that would be motivating - adding color, a model and trial structure, on-screen vowel display, and much more.

As computers gained popularity in schools, therapists started asking for a version that would operate on Apple II/IIgs computers, so we converted the software to operate on those platforms. Then came the Macintosh, and we produced a Mac-based Video Voice. And then one for the IBM PC, first a DOS-based version, then a Windows-compatible one. (During this time, IBM produced its Speech Viewer program, which became widely known, but is no longer available.)

The external Speech Analyzer was retired with the release of Version 3.0. All voice sampling is done through the computer’s internal sound capabilities, and the analysis with our own specialized software routines. This allowed us to greatly expand Video Voice’s capabilities to increase the frequency ranges of sound sampling and add many new games and displays, at a signficantly lower price,.

Expanded capabilities include much wider pitch range to accommodate low-pitched male voices and high-pitched children’s voices (something the Speech Analyzer versions were limited in). We’ve also been able to increase the formant frequency sampling to illustrate and differentiate high frequency sounds like /s/ and /sh/. (The earlier, hardware-dependent versions could detect the presence or absence of high-frequency sounds, but could not tell the difference between them.)

With faster computers with greater capabilities, we’ve been able to greatly enhance the graphics used in Video Voice. They’re still not as fancy or with Xbox-type resolution, because there’s a lot going on "behind the scenes" in the voice sampling and analysis that takes substantial "compute time." And, after all, the point is to illustrate speech, not to be a realistic action game.

To wit, many years back, some folks designed a software interface that integrated with some video games that were then available which had higher resolution graphics and action. It could be programmed to accept 4 words that would control the action of a game (for purposes of this example - "left," "right," "up," and "down"). The goal was to command virtual game player to move around and avoid being attacked by a monster (again, an example). Unfortunately, what hadn’t been considered was the excitement factor in the sound analysis. Targets that were calmly produced when the game was being initially set up, didn’t achieve the desired motion response when the player got excited during the game action and began shouting the words at the screen. Pitch and volume, after all, do affect sound production! This program quickly faded from the scene.

Version 3.0 is the only Video Voice model now being produced. It operates on most Windows operating systems (Windows 2000 and later), and is not dependent on processor speed. In fact, on really fast computers, we actually have to slow some things down. A two-second model, for example, needs to be two-seconds long, even if the computer is capable of displaying the graphics much faster.

That’s the basic history of Video Voice. Development is ongoing, with new things added all the time, so there will still be future chapters written!

Video Voice Support Team
1-800-537-2182
mv@videovoice.com

Technical Yada-Yada

From time to time, people ask about the technical details of Video Voice. So I asked the programming staff to provide some, and here’s what they had to say.

The heart of the Video Voice software is a specially developed Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) routine packaged in a .dll. It "pumps" the speech data to the various therapy displays and games. The FFT analyzes data obtained from the computer’s sound card and extracts F1, F2, F3, Pitch and Volume data as well as the strength of each frequency in the range of (70-7000 Hz), while simultaneously allowing graphic display and analysis in real-time. The FFT was developed for Version 3.0 and replaces a patented filtering process that required external Speech Analyzer hardware in previous versions of the software. The .dll also contains a set of precision timers that permits timed operations on computers with different internal processor speeds. The ability to use the computer’s sound facilities to record and play back sound files is another capability.

The Video Voice program consists of 270,000+ lines of VB6 programming code organized in more than 5,700 procedures. If printed as a book (called a listing in the old days), it would be over 7,200 pages long. Needless to say, we never print listings any more! In addition to the program code, there are nearly 1,000 built-in picture and sound (.wav) files, and an extensive Help subsystem with more than 150 topics that document program operation and use.

Have your eyes glazed over yet?

So, what does all this mean to Video Voice users? Well, there are 31 different colorful, motivating games and displays with more than 70 different modes of operation that can easily be customized to your personal needs. Most have entertaining graphic animations to reward successful performance. Individuals’ vocal productions are recorded and can be saved as models for repeated use. For most games and displays, performance can be reviewed in a variety of single session and cross-time reports and graphs. Whether your computer is an old workhorse with Windows 2000 or a fancy new one driven by Windows 7, Video Voice will run on it.

The program is fully documented with context-sensitive Help – just click the Help button at any time, and the internal manual will open to the page appropriate for the area where you’re working. There’s also a "Help Me Choose" interactive guide that helps you select appropriate areas for most common speech goals, as well as integrated Demos that use prerecorded audio to simulate operation of the games and displays. Adjustable options and game controls have "tool tips," helpful little hints that pop up to let you know what their basic functions are when you pause your cursor over them. Also integrated are a number of printable PDF supporting materials that suggest activities for work on pitch, volume, articulation and more.

First released in 2006, Version 3.0 is still undergoing development. We continue to find new things to add and ways to enhance what it can do. But more on that later!

Good speech to you,

Video Voice Support Team
1-800-537-2182
mv@videovoice.com

Shared Smiles

Probably the most rewarding part of about being involved with Video Voice is hearing stories about how it helps people. We get lots of positive feedback from users, and I thought I’d share a few with you.

A year or so ago, a therapist told us about using the Voice-A-Sketch game with one of her students with fluency problems. She had him try to reveal an entire hidden picture with by sustaining vocalization of a sentence, and he’d been practicing diligently. A teaching aide who was in the room with them as he successfully completed the task spun around in surprise - it was the first time she'd heard him form a complete sentence without stuttering!

A therapist who uses Video Voice with autistic students told us that it really motivates them to participate in speech therapy. In fact, sometimes it's the ONLY thing they will respond to! (Obviously, that’s not the ultimate goal, but at least it’s a start.)

Pitch awareness and control is a common problem for hearing-impaired students, and that was the case with a profoundly deaf third grader. Her voice was shrill and squeaky, so her therapist used the Pitch Painting game to help her learn to lower her pitch. That game represents, pitch as colors in a spectrum, with high pitch appearing as light colors such as yellow and white. The child’s goal was to keep her colors "under pink," and she was able to achieve that goal regularly while using the display. Carry-over is always a challenge, though, so the therapist came up with a creative idea for times when they were not at the computer. She began to sign "under pink" when her pitch was too high, and the child would respond by lowering it. They taught teachers in her other classes to use that sign, too, and all were impressed at how she responded appropriately.

Especially rewarding are the stories come from those who improved their speech skills with the visual feedback.

One of our favorite, long-time Video Voice users shared a story that had made her smile. While she was out shopping one day, a young woman approached her and said "I don't know if you remember me, but you were my speech therapist when I was in school. We used a computer program that helped me learn to say my R's correctly!" This was at least 10 years after the fact, but when she learned her name, she did recall her and their therapy goals. So pleased to be remembered and know she’d made a real difference in that young woman’s life, that she made sure to share the story with us.

Not long ago we received an email from a hearing-impaired woman who had run across the Video Voice website and thought it might be the same program she'd used in therapy about a decade earlier. She said she'd often thought about how Video Voice helped her understand what she needed to do with her voice, and wondered if it was still around. She was pleased to find that it was. Her therapist was the one who suggested the "train game" (Chat-N-U-Go Choo-Choo) to us, and offered guidance in the development of that activity. It was fun to hear that she remembered Video Voice fondly, particularly that activity, and felt she had benefitted from the feedback it provided.

These are just a few of the stories we’ve heard over the years. If you’ve had successes with people in your caseload either while using the Free Trial or full Video Voice program, we’d love to hear from you, too!

Video Voice Support Team
1-800-537-2182
mv@videovoice.com

Visual Feedback Enhances Speech Therapy Results

The benefits visual feedback offers to both clincians and individuals receiving speech therapy are unquestionable.  Speech is fleeting and intangible by nature, and challenges in interpreting it can be influenced by a number of things, including hearing loss and other auditory processing deficits.  While production of some sounds can be illustrated fairly easily using our mouths, elements such as pitch and volume are essentially invisible.  Having a way to freeze, view and replay a speech production and its components therefore has great value.

Visual feedback changes the nature of the speech therapy process, giving the student or patient a different sense of control.  After all, it is his voice that's represented and recorded, and he has a new way to understand and learn to modify tongue or other articulator position to change the resulting display.  It's no longer a case of what the therapist says he's doing right or wrong, it's what both people see happening on the screen, and it gives them a different way to discuss it.  As more than one therapist has told us, "They can't argue with me anymore!"

For those who have already had years of speech therapy and are bored with the process, visual feedback brings new life to the activities.   Having different games to play and displays to practice sounds, words and connected speech turns therapy into a fun, exciting adventure to be explored and enjoyed.

Video Voice has many entertaining practice formats that keep therapy recipients motivated and eager to succeed in improving their speech skills.  Many provide live feedback on pitch, volume or sounds, so the speaker gets instant response to changes he makes, helping him find and maintain correct production.  Colorful animations and encouraging messages support the therapist by rewarding good performance. 

There are many reasons to consider visual feedback as an adjunct to speech therapy.  If you're not already exploring the benefits, you're missing out on a tool that can expedite progress with your caseload.  You can give Video Voice a try for free to see for yourself how it can enhance your therapy results.  There's no cost to download and explore what it can do for you.  Just pay a visit to http://www.videovoice.com/!

Video Voice Support Team
1-800-537-2182
mv@videovoice.com