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

Say YESSSSSS!

Therapists who work with hearing-impaired speakers have often told us that teaching them how to produce /s/ and related high-frequency sounds is a big challenge, as the frequency ranges in which these sounds exist is generally outside the range in which deaf folks can hear.  While it is possible to illustrate production of these sounds somewhat with the lips and air flow from the mouth, it’s really little changes in tongue position behind the teeth that make the most difference, and these can't be easily shown.  Having a concrete way to illustrate the differences between these two sounds can make a real difference in results.  The same is true with children who lisp or lateralize the /s/ sound. 

With Video Voice’s Formant Multi-Frequency displays, there are a couple of ways to make the differences between /s/ and /sh/ visible. One is the Temporal Display, which represents the F3, F2 and F1 components of a production. In that display, if you say a word that contains both /s/ and /sh/ sounds, such as "sunshine," you will see distinct differences in the F3 and F2 frequencies for the two sounds. With the /s/ sound, the F3 frequencies are higher than those for the /sh/, while the F2 levels higher for /sh/ than they are for /s/.

Any speech production can be saved as a model, and used for repeated practice of sound or words.

There’s also a Matrix-Match form of the Multi-Frequency Display. It transforms the F3 and F2 frequencies measured into a relationship of those sound components. This makes sounds like /s/ and /sh/ appear as dense patches of color in different regions of the screen, as shown the sample below.

You can use these matrix patterns in a model match mode, or in a live feedback format similar to the F2/F1 Gobble game. The immediate visual response to sound changes in the Gobble mode helps speakers learn articulator position needed to produce these sounds accurately.

There is presently no scoring in the Formant Multi-Frequency displays, but we’re working on that, and expect it to be available in an upcoming release. Stay tuned!

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

R-D-R-R-R: Gobbling Up Sounds

Almost every therapist who works with children has at least one with this problem - the pesky R sound. This semi-vowel is one of the most difficult to train, because, unlike many other sounds, it can’t easily be illustrated in the mouth. Minor changes in tongue position and "bunching" are the difference between a nice, clear ‘r’ and a sloppy ‘w’ sound, and lots of kids struggle with that.

Video Voice has a number of ways to help them learn how to produce this sound correctly, but for today, we’ll just talk about one of them, the F2/F1 Gobble display. In this Pac-Man-style game, the speaker uses his voice to erase the dots on the screen. The live feedback is very powerful. It lets him "play" with his voice and get instantaneous response while he explores different articulator positions. Being able to find and maintain correct articular position helps ingrain the kinesthetics of production of this sound.

Here’s a simple way to get going. Use the Formant Menu’s Free Form F2/F1 Match mode and produce a sample of the R target in isolation. We always recommend that you do several trials of a sound, looking for consistency in density and location of the dots before defining one as the model. Once you’ve decided to Use one, click the Match Mode control to switch to the Gobble format. Video Voice will prompt "Say ‘rrrr’" using your voice target, and you can have the child try to Gobble it up. If it’s too easy to succeed, just raise the Goal (percent erasure required to win above the default 80%).

Want to get rid of all the other vowels, leaving only the R symbol ? Just double-click on that symbol, and all the others will magically disappear. 

But what if you’d like to get rid of everything except the R and U, so the child can see the similar location of the two sounds on the screen (and in the mouth!). That’s easy, too. Click on one of the vowels, and when the small instructional box appears, click and drag any unwanted symbols off the edge of the screen. Then click Apply to temporarily save that more limited vowel chart for use in the current session. (Using Save will erase the other symbols until you reactivate them all with the Adjust button, so you may not want to take that more permanent action.)

Then, play, play, play! You’ll be amazed at how long the children will stay on task, how entertained and motivated they’ll be as they gobble up the sound dots.

By the way, if you have used New Session to activate a data folder, you can Save any Free Form target for reuse in subsequent sessions, so you won’t have to go through the definition process each time. Just use the Stored Models option from the Formant Menu to retrieve them later on.

This example presents work on the R in isolation, but you can just as easily set up word targets to let the child practice vocabulary words containing the R sound using these same steps.

That’s it for today! We’ll be back later to tell you more ways to use Video Voice for work on R and other sounds.

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