This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 62/571,328 entitled “Communication System For Processing Audio Input With Visual Display”, by Robert Taub and Lawrence Welkowitz, filed Oct. 12, 2017. Priority of the filing date is hereby claimed, and the disclosure of the Provisional Application is hereby incorporated by reference.

BACKGROUND

Prevalence rates of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are estimated to be 1 in 68 in the United States. See, e.g., Christensen, D. L., et al., (2016); Prevalence and Characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children Aged 8 Years—Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 Sites, United States, 2012; MMWR Surveillance Summary, 65(SS-3), 1-23. More recently, the incidence rate has been determined to be 1 in 59 children. See Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), Surveillance Summaries, Vol. 67, No. 6, Apr. 27, 2018, Centers for Disease Control (2018). A concerted effort is needed to understand the nature of its core symptoms. ASD is characterized by poor social reciprocity in the form of limited response (non-congruent lengths of speech) or inappropriate content (failure to follow the threads of conversation), as well as difficulties understanding emotional content (happy, sad, surprise), which are critical aspects of failure in social performance and communication. Endless loop social problems then result in which other people, referred to as conversational partners, tend to reject conversational opportunities with people diagnosed with autism, because of difficulties in connection. This social conversational rejection results in lost opportunities for practicing social behaviors, which in turn leads to chronic social isolation and further interruption in the development of adequate social skills.

Early studies in psycholinguistics demonstrated the importance of responding to certain non-content aspects of speech, including vocal intensity, length of pauses, length of vocalizations or utterances, pitch and rhythm. See, e.g., Jaffee, et al., “Rhythms of dialogue in infancy: Coordinated timing in development”, in Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 66(2), 1-149 (2001). Specifically, individuals who were best at matching or reproducing these patterns of sounds and silences (vocal congruence) were judged to be superior in interpersonal communication. See, e.g., Welkowitz, et al., “Conversational congruence as a criterion for socialization in children”, in Child Development, 47(1): 269-272 (1976). In other words, it is important to examine not only how individuals speak (production) but also how they respond to words spoken by conversational partners (interpretation). Research on speech has shown that individuals with ASD exhibit difficulties in acoustical speech recognition and prosody. For example, Diehl & Paul (2012) found that children with ASD exhibited greater variability in pitch, particularly when expressing emphatic stress. This finding is reported in Diehl, J., & Paul, R., “Acoustic differences in the imitation of prosodic patterns in children with autistic spectrum disorders”, in Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 6 (1), 123-134 (2012). The ASD group also showed longer duration in utterances, a sign that they were pacing conversation differently compared to typically developing children.

Communication abilities of persons diagnosed with ASD could be increased with techniques that help such persons understand the effect of their communications on others.

SUMMARY

In accordance with embodiments of the invention, a reference acoustic input comprising a spoken phrase is processed into a quantization representation such that the quantization representation comprises acoustic components determined from the reference acoustic input, wherein the acoustic components comprise amplitude, rhythm, and pitch frequency of the reference acoustic input; and a visual representation is generated that simultaneously depicts the acoustic components comprising amplitude, rhythm, and pitch frequency of the reference acoustic input. In one embodiment, a communication system is provided for processing audio input spoken by a test subject, a user of the device. The spoken reference acoustic input comprises a known phrase that is displayed to a user, who then speaks the phrase out loud such that the user spoken phrase is received by the device.

Other features and advantages of the present invention should be apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiments, which illustrate, by way of example, the principles of the invention.

