Just In-Time for Autism Awareness & Acceptance Month: InnerVoice Releases a New Way to Communicate Thoughts and Emotions.
San Francisco, California (PRWEB) April 18, 2017 -- Video-modeling is an evidence-based instructional intervention for people on the autism spectrum. Interestingly, video-modeling also seems to be an excellent learning tool for neurotypical people. YouTube has helped millions of people learn complicated physical skills (drumming, skiing, Jiu-Jitsu), difficult academic subjects (descriptive statistics, calculus, etc.), and other complex topics through video tutorials — or often video-modeling.
Many people also master a variety of skills by uploading videos of themselves progressively learning: think of a golf swing. Watch videos of your good swings that you can use again on the greens, or view clips of your poor swings that you’ll avoid in the future.
In short, watching yourself can help you improve a skill. That’s why dancers, drummers, boxers and many other practitioners work in front of a mirror.
For non-verbal people, they may not yet be able to produce speech volitionally, so they can’t easily practice in front of a mirror or use video-modeling to learn speech — a person has to possess the capacity to demonstrate a skill in order to be recorded on video.
The app InnerVoice Autism Language & Literacy Tool, can model speech being produced by a non-verbal person, who may or may not produce intelligible speech. As a learning tool, think of it as your mirror reflection teaching you how to speak the words of a new language. Your reflection says “Bon Jour,” and you reply, “Bon Jour.” Your brain sees a model, which helps you learn to imitate and produce the physical movements.
Similarly, InnerVoice can model how to produce facial expressions for three basic emotions: anger, happiness, and sadness. InnerVoice also models speech traits associated with anger, happiness, and sadness, using word emphasis, speech rate, and pitch. The combination of these two technologies (facial recognition and synthesized speech) can help visually demonstrate and auditorily convey non-verbal emotional communication —through facial expressions and speech.
In 2015, InnerVoice won a prestigious grant called the National Science Foundation Small Business Innovative Research Grant. InnerVoice was among the top 1% of applicants selected for the program: thanks, Mensa! The study was successfully completed — and here’s the link for the public: Research
In 2013, InnerVoice won the Mensa Intellectual Benefits to Society Award for a provisional patent registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The MIBSA helped InnerVoice — by providing solid credibility to our app design. Mensa Award
Download the InnerVoice Communication Bundle today and enjoy many then next generation of communication apps that are designed with the combination of evidence based practice and cutting edge technology.
Lois Jean Brady, iTherapy, http://www.innervoiceapp.com, +1 (925) 812-0037, [email protected]
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