Literacy by Way of Automatic Speech Recognition

Abstract

The chapter commences with an overview of automatic speech recognition (ASR), which covers not only the de facto standard approach of hidden Markov models (HMMs), but also the tried-and-proven techniques of dynamic time warping and artificial neural networks (ANNs). The coverage then switches to Gluck’s (2004) draw-talk-write (DTW) process, developed over the past two decades to assist non-text literate people become gradually literate over time through telling and/or drawing their own stories. DTW has proved especially effective with “illiterate” people from strong oral, storytelling traditions. The chapter concludes by relating attempts to date in automating the DTW process using ANN-based pattern recognition techniques on an Apple Macintosh G4™ platform.