Sign Language Tutor for Deaf Children

Research proposal by Tom Culpepper

Project description

90% of deaf children have hearing parents. As the parents are often not native speakers of American Sign Language (ASL), deaf children do not receive the reenforcement of ASL learning at home. Additionally, in the class room teachers (even if they are familiar with ASL) are not able to give individual attention to every deaf student. Partial sentences are generally tolerated rather than corrected. For example: “May I have the pink ball?” may simply be signed by the children as “ball”. This type of speech often goes uncorrected by teachers or parents. Deaf children often miss out an a crucial period of language development as a result of this lack of instruction. Development of short term memory may also suffers because of the lack of language development. Once the deaf children pass through this stage of development, it may be harder for them to learn ASL at a later point. Many deaf children never develop the level of proficiency in ASL they could otherwise have given the proper instruction earlier in life.[1]

The goal of this project will be to develop system that will augment children's learning of ASL through the use of a game.

Work plan

The project will consist of two main components. The first is an ASL recognition system. This section of the project has already been developed to a usable level by grad students.[2]

The second component is a game featuring Sony Aibo. This is the part of the project I will be concerned with. The robotic dog will be given signed commands in ASL. Commands will be passed to the Aibo from the first component using Rcode, a scripting language for the Aibo. The user will be able to give commands to the Aibo using complete sentences in ASL and the Aibo will then perform the given trick. Tricks that are possible will include simple tasks such as “sit”, “play with the ball” and “go to x”. A math tutor program where the Aibo will solve math problems by counting like a horse will even be possible. There will also be a video display to assist in the acquisition of the sentences necessary to command the Aibo. There will, of course, be times when the use of the Aibo is impractical. For these occasions there is also a flash animated cat that will be available. Because the cat will be animated it will be less interactive but will have a wider set of features.

bibliography( at least two references)

[1] “Linguistic encoding in short-term memory as a function of stimulus type”, Harley Hamilton & Thomas G. Holzman. 1989

[2]”Towards a One-Way American Sign Language Translator”, Helene Brashear. 2004

William Culpepper

2004-06-29T13:45:04