Science in the Wild: Episode 15
Adapting video games for user adherence to rehabilitative therapies
Click here to listen to the interview on the UR Business Network
We invited Cara to talk with us because of the problem sets outside the laboratory that have guided her education and research: (a) developing novel neurotechnology for speech assistance and rehabilitation; and (b) developing and testing novel videogame-based rehabilitation interventions to improve the quality of life of individuals with sensorimotor disorders of speech and swallowing. In this second interview with Cara, we focused on the trajectory of research that led her to an interest in video games.
The motivation and impact for Cara’s research is therapeutic aids for people who need to acquire or reacquire a skill, in particular speech production. The “science consumers” on which Cara focuses include individuals with severe or profound deafness. They have difficulty hearing the differences between sounds they are capable of producing, thus they have difficulty vocalizing precisely and reliably as intended. Cara’s research is directed toward solutions in two ways: (a) figuring out the bio-signals for control of the vocal apparatus that can be measured noninvasively, and (b) figuring out how to present that information to individuals who cannot hear the different sounds produced by this control.
Cara’s research spans boundaries between science and engineering. Understanding the production and perception of speech is a scientific problem, one that has been studied scientifically since the 19th Century in disciplines ranging from physics and biology to psychology and even sociology. Measuring speech signals and displaying them in some useful way is more of an engineering problem. Engineers integrate and develop technology that can substitute for natural sensory and movement systems or that augments natural systems. Cara’s work involves both sensory substitution and sensory augmentation.
As is typically the case in science, success brings new problems, and mastery pushes scientists to the brink of their momentary limitations and ultimately beyond them. In Cara’s research, developing efficacious systems for sensory substitution and augmentation created a new problem, one that is a broader problem in rehabilitation. How can a clinician provide rehabilitative therapies that individuals will adopt and to which they will adhere? In other words, how can one make rehabilitation enjoyable or at least keep it from being boring? This led Cara to video games, which is something to which she was exposed incidentally during her postdoctoral research at the University of Washington.
Video games, however, are an area of research and development that is more about human motivation and emotion than about computer science and technology. We talked about the decisions scientists make in such situations to engage in time consuming learning and development, while they are expected to produce, and partner with colleagues from with specialties in the appropriate subject matter.
In Cara’s experience, clinicians have been especially valuable colleagues because they understand the important psychological and social issues pertaining to individuals with disabilities. Together Cara and her clinical colleagues achieve things they could not do without each other. Continuing a theme from the first interview with Cara, we talked about how these relationships are a very satisfying aspect of science, part of the “back story of science.”
Collegial partnerships in science don’t preclude learning about new areas of research. They make such journeys into one’s zone of proximal development more efficient and manageable. Colleagues across disciplines can complement one another and facilitate each other’s self-development.
Cara also talked about the learning that occurs continuously in science even in one’s own field of expertise. In particular, she talked about the critical importance of exploratory (“pilot”) experimentation. This ubiquitous trial and error helps scientists, and those who fund them, make good decisions about the significant investments of time and money in formal experimentation. This is another important theme in the back story of science.
Cara Stepp, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and in Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. Dr. Stepp’s research addresses the relationship between acoustic parameters and speech and voice physiology as measured by kinematics (using electromagnetography and optics) and neural signals (sEMG, hooked wire EMG, EEG) in a variety of disorders (e.g., Parkinson’s disease, laryngeal dystonia, vocal hyperfunction) to develop objective measures of voice and speech to aid clinical assessment.
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Key Terms and Concepts
· severe deafness
· profound deafness
· neurotechnology
· biomedical engineering
· robotics
· sponsorship
· sensory substitution
· sensory augmentation
· zone of proximal development
· pilot experimentation
