Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
many functions are involved in determining the symptom (for example, difficulty
of reading). The path of rehabilitation is considered to be concluded when
• Reasonable objectives have been reached;
• The advanced age of the subject means that the effectiveness of the interven-
tion can no longer be guaranteed; and
• In some cases, further improvements cannot be achieved.
2. A compensatory path aims, instead, to guarantee to the individual, despite the
continuation of the difficulty (for instance, nonautomatic reading, which is there-
fore not functional for study purposes), access to information, with the possibility
of undertaking a regular path of study, thus providing access to the consequent
professional opportunities.
From this perspective, AT managed by a specialist team (as presented earlier in the chap-
ter) is of fundamental importance.
The introduction of speech synthesis,* which is, along with the use of texts in digital
format, now provided for by current regulations, enables the acquisition of information
through listening, circumventing the problem of reading.
It should be emphasized that the use of vocal synthesis for studying does not undermine
reading skills; if anything, it helps improve them. By personalizing the speed of the reader
and highlighting the text, which can be followed while it is read by the vocal synthesizer,
it enables indirect training in the process of reading.
Vocal synthesis is a program that enables the computer to read a text that must obviously,
therefore, be inserted in digital form; a voice, with an intonation ever closer to natural pat-
terns, enables the user to decodify and listen as necessary, thus avoiding the obstacle of
nonautomatic reading.
The objective of vocal synthesis is to provide a reader able to decode in the place of the
user who may experience difficulty in doing so, rather like a mother or teacher who, aware
of the tiredness reading may provoke and the resulting limited comprehension, decides
to read aloud. The child is thereby finally able to listen and maintain sufficient attentional
resources, which are generally lost in the tiring process of nonautomatic reading, to under-
stand the meaning of the text. Compared with a person such as a mother or teacher who
reads the text for the child or the young person, vocal synthesis has the advantage of
rendering the subject autonomous. Thanks to this tool, a child with reading difficulties
does not need to be accompanied by others and, using a computer, may autonomously
access information.
The problem that often confronts young people starting to use vocal synthesis is that
there may still be difficulties of comprehension that cannot be recovered through the use
of the tool. This is certainly not due to problems related to intelligence (see diagnostic crite-
ria for inclusion/exclusion) but rather, in general, to the impoverishment of metacognitive
resources. In other words, these children or young people, distracted by the difficulties of
decodification imposed by dyslexia, make enormous efforts to learn the process of read-
ing itself and therefore only with difficulty do they activate the resources necessary to
ask themselves, “What purpose does this process serve? Why read?” These resources are
* Speech synthesis is a technique for the artificial reproduction of the human voice. A system used for this
purpose is described as a vocal synthesizer and can be achieved by means of software or hardware. Systems
of vocal synthesis are also known as text-to-speech (TTS) systems because of the possibility that they pro-
vide conversion of text to spoken word. There are also systems able to convert phonetic symbols into speech
(Wikipedia.org).
