Supporting Personal Narrative for Children with Complex Communication Needs

Children with complex communication needs who use voice output communication aids seldom engage in extended conversation. The “How was School today...?” system has been designed to enable such children to talk about their school day. The system uses data-to-text technology to generate narratives from sensor data. Observations, interviews and prototyping were used to ensure that stakeholders were involved in the design of the system. Evaluations with three children showed that the prototype system, which automatically generates utterances, has the potential to support disabled individuals to participate better in interactive conversation. Analysis of a conversational transcript and observations indicate that the children were able to access relevant conversation and had more control in the conversation in comparison to their usual interactions where control lay mainly with the speaking partner. Further research to develop an improved, more rugged system that supports users with different levels of language ability is now underway.

[1]  Michael Bamberg,et al.  Building Complexity and Coherence: Children's Use of Goal-Structured Knowledge in Telling Stories , 2012 .

[2]  Uta M. Quasthoff,et al.  What Makes a Good Story?: Towards the production of conversational narratives+ , 1982 .

[3]  Richard I. Kittredge,et al.  Using natural-language processing to produce weather forecasts , 1994, IEEE Expert.

[4]  Allyssa McCabe,et al.  Patterns of narrative discourse : a multicultural life span approach , 2003 .

[5]  Norman Alm,et al.  Modelling conversational pragmatics in communication aids , 2003 .

[6]  Storr,et al.  Communicating With Blissymbolics , 1985 .

[7]  J Brodie,et al.  Evaluating the use of TalksBac, a predictive communication device for nonfluent adults with aphasia. , 1998, International journal of language & communication disorders.

[8]  Peter Davies,et al.  Improving narrative skills in young children with delayed language development , 2004 .

[9]  Nava Tintarev,et al.  Automatically generating stories from sensor data , 2011, IUI '11.

[10]  WallerAnnalu,et al.  Supporting Personal Narrative for Children with Complex Communication Needs , 2012 .

[11]  Norman Alm,et al.  Whole Utterance Approaches in AAC , 2008, Augmentative and alternative communication.

[12]  Annalu Waller.  Providing narratives in an augmentative communication system. , 1992 .

[13]  Dzmitry Aliakseyeu,et al.  Enabling storytelling by Aphasics in an augmented home environment , 2008, BCS HCI.

[14]  Kathryn Drager,et al.  AAC technologies for young children with complex communication needs: State of the science and future research directions , 2007, Augmentative and alternative communication.

[15]  Robert Dale,et al.  Building Natural Language Generation Systems: Figures , 2000 .

[16]  Abdullah Al Mahmud,et al.  Enabling storytelling by Aphasics in an augmented home environment , 2008 .

[17]  Jim Hunter,et al.  Automatic Generation of Textual Summaries from Neonatal Intensive Care Data , 2007, AIME.

[18]  Andy Hopper,et al.  The active badge location system , 1992, TOIS.

[19]  Jim Hunter,et al.  Choosing words in computer-generated weather forecasts , 2005, Artif. Intell..

[20]  R. Sell,et al.  Children's literature as communication : the ChiLPA Project , 2002 .

[21]  Michael Elhadad,et al.  Using Semantic Authoring for Blissymbols Communication Boards , 2006, HLT-NAACL.

[22]  Martine Smith,et al.  Literacy and Augmentative and Alternative Communication , 2004, Literacy and Augmentative and Alternative Communication.

[23]  Kathleen F. McCoy,et al.  Compansion: From research prototype to practical integration , 1998, Natural Language Engineering.

[24]  Ehud Reiter,et al.  An Architecture for Data-to-Text Systems , 2007, ENLG.

[25]  W. Labov,et al.  Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. , 1997 .

[26]  Annalu Waller,et al.  Communication Access to Conversational Narrative , 2006 .

[27]  Allyssa McCabe,et al.  Getting the story: A longitudinal study of parental styles in eliciting narratives and developing narrative skill. , 1991 .

[28]  Maria Nikolajeva.  5. The verbal and the visual: The picturebook as a medium , 2002 .

[29]  J. Bruner.  From communication to language—a psychological perspective , 1975, Cognition.

[30]  Sandra A. Thompson,et al.  The predictability of informal conversation , 1990 .

[31]  Ehud Reiter,et al.  Book Reviews: Building Natural Language Generation Systems , 2000, CL.

[32]  Alan F. Newell,et al.  The rôle of natural language processing in alternative and augmentative communication , 1998, Natural Language Engineering.

[33]  Norman Alm,et al.  Automatic generation of conversational utterances and narrative for Augmentative and Alternative Communication: a prototype system , 2010, SLPAT@NAACL.

[34]  Ralf W. Schlosser,et al.  Augmentative and alternative communication: Knowledge and skills for service delivery , 2002 .

[35]  Avi Parush,et al.  Helping People with Visual Impairments Gain Access to Graphical Information Through Natural Language: The iGraph System , 2006, ICCHP.

[36]  D. Polkinghorne.  Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis , 1995 .

[37]  Allyssa McCabe,et al.  Developmental Psycholinguistics: Three Ways of Looking at a Child’s Narrative , 1983 .

[38]  Albert Gatt,et al.  SimpleNLG: A Realisation Engine for Practical Applications , 2009, ENLG.

[39]  Robert N. St. Clair,et al.  Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. William Labov. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972. 412 p. + xxiv. $6.95 paper , 1974 .

[40]  Ruli Manurung,et al.  The STANDUP Interactive Riddle Builder , 2006 .

[41]  D. Entwisle,et al.  Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular.@@@Sociolinguistic Patterns. , 1975 .

[42]  Nava Tintarev,et al.  Using NLG and Sensors to Support Personal Narrative for Children with Complex Communication Needs , 2010, SLPAT@NAACL.

[43]  D Jeffery Higginbotham,et al.  The effect of the communication output method on augmented interaction , 2007, Augmentative and alternative communication.

[44]  Annalu Waller,et al.  Using written stories to support the use of narrative in conversational interactions: Case study , 2001 .

[45]  James Shaw,et al.  Practical Issues in Automatic Documentation Generation , 1994, ANLP.

[46]  David R. Beukelman,et al.  Augmentative and Alternative Communication: Management of Severe Communication Disorders in Children and Adults , 1995 .

[47]  Albert Gatt,et al.  Automatic generation of textual summaries from neonatal intensive care data , 2009 .

[48]  Pablo Gervás,et al.  Computational Approaches to Storytelling and Creativity , 2009, AI Mag..

[49]  A F Newell,et al.  Towards a narrative-based augmentative communication system. , 1997, European journal of disorders of communication : the journal of the College of Speech and Language Therapists, London.