Adaptive biofeedback speech tutor toy

Abstract

A prompt-providing adaptive speech tutor toy, is characterized by a programmed sequence of prompts in standard speech evoking a user's voice response of a word or phrase. Initially, a vocalized password provides a wake-up call during sleep mode to activate a start sequencer. This turns on the system. The user selects a category. A sequence of prompts and responses follows. Each response is accepted by a user input transducer, electronically treated to eliminate environmental noise and to put the response in a digitized form for computer evaluation. Computer evaluation follows. Frequency domain information from the user pattern is compared against frequency domain information from a standard pattern. Time domain information from the user pattern is compared against time domain information from a standard pattern. The comparisons are concatenated into a comparison score and this is checked against a threshold. Overthreshold score triggers applause biofeedback and a new prompt; underthreshold score triggers a re-prompt. Various mode changes may be made for mimic response, Q&A response, mathematics, music or others. Voice turn-on and initialization for the voice characteristics of the toy user are automatic. The pattern comparator is altered for optimum match to the frequency clustering pattern of the user, and where appropriate the standard pattern is altered for better match to the toy user's voice.