Dil ve Konuşma Terapisi Alanında Tele-Terapi Hizmeti Alan Bireylerin Memnuniyetlerinin Íncelenmesi

Amaç: COVID-19 sebebi ile ilan edilen pandemi süreciyle birlikte ülkemizde dil ve konuşma terapisi alanında tele-terapi hizmetinin kullanımında artış gözlenmiştir. Bu araştırma kapsamında vakaların bu süreç içerisinde aldıkları tele-terapi hizmetlerindeki memnuniyet düzeylerinin incelenmesi amaçlanmıştır. Çalışmada, dil ve konuşma terapisi alanında tele-terapi hizmeti alan bireylerin, terapiye yönelik memnuniyet düzeylerinin aldıkları tele-terapi seansı sayısına ve bozukluk türlerine göre incelenmesi hedeflenmiştir. Yöntem: Bu çalışma 0-64 yaş aralıǧında, 42 katılımcıdan (24E, 18K) alınan veriler doǧrultusunda oluşturulmuştur. Araştırmacılar tarafından hazırlanan "Dil ve Konuşma Bozukluklarında Tele-Terapi Danışan Memnuniyet Anketi" katılımcılara çevrimiçi platformlar aracılıǧı ile ulaştırılmıştır. Hazırlanan anket, 26 soru ve altı alt boyuttan oluşmaktadır. Bu alt boyutlar;"Terapistin Yetkinliǧi", "Íletişim Yeterliliǧi", "Erişilebilirlik ve Ödemeler", "Tele-terapiye Yönelik Donanım", "Genel Tele-terapi Memnuniyeti" ve "Anket Toplam Puan" olarak düzenlenip, analizleri gerçekleştirilmiştir. Elde edilen veriler, normal daǧılıma uygun olmadıǧı (Shapiro Wilk test;p <. 05) için verilerin istatistiksel analizi Mann Whitney U ve Kruskal Wallis testleri kullanılarak gerçekleştirilmiştir. Sonuçlar %95 güven aralıǧında, anlamlılık ise p < .05 düzeyinde deǧerlendirilmiştir. Bulgular: Analizler sonucunda bozukluk türü, alınan tele-terapi seansı sayısı deǧişkenlerine göre "Íletişim yeterliliǧi" alt boyutu dışında diǧer alt boyutlar ve toplam skorda anlamlı farklılık bulunmamıştır. "Íletişim yeterliliǧi" alt boyutunda akıcılık bozuklukları-konuşma sesi bozuklukları (Mann Whitney U test;p = ,044 < ,05) ile akıcılık bozuklukları-ses bozuklukları (Mann Whitney U test;p = ,019 < ,05) olan katılımcılar arasında istatistiksel anlamlılık ortaya çıkmıştır. Sonuç: Çalışmamıza katılan bireylerin bozukluk türü, terapistin yetkinliǧi ve alınan tele-terapi seansı sayısı deǧişkenlerine göre tele-terapi memnuniyetleri arasında anlamlı bir farklılık bulunmamaktadır. Yalnızca akıcılık bozuklukları -konuşma sesi bozuklukları ile ses bozuklukları olan katılımcıların "Íletişim yeterliliǧi" alt boyutunda anlamlı derecede daha yüksek puanlar verdikleri sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Elde edilen sonucun iki grup arasındaki katılımcı sayılarından kaynaklandıǧı düşünülmektedir. Bu çalışma kapsamında ülkemizde tele-terapinin memnuniyetine yönelik bilgilerin ilk verilerine ulaşılmıştır. Bu çalışmanın katılımcı sayısının arttırılarak tekrar edilebileceǧi düşünülmektedir.Alternate :Purpose: Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the usage of tele-therapy services has been increased in Turkey. There also seems to be an increase in the use of tele-therapy in speech and language pathology services. Therefore, the satisfaction levels of the clients in tele-therapy appears to be an important subject to examine. The aim of this study was to investigate the satisfaction levels in individuals who receive tele-therapy services for speech and language therapy. The data has been examined based on tele-therapy sessions the participants received and, the type of disorder they had. Method: This study is based on data from 42 participants (24 men, 18 women). The "Tele-therapy Client Satisfaction Questionnaire in Speech and Language Disorders" was prepared by the researchers and delivered to the participants through online platforms. The questionnaire consists of 26 questions and six sub-dimensions. These sub-dimensions "Therapist's Competence", "Communication Adequacy", "Accessibility and Payments", "Equipment for Tele-therapy", "Generalized Tele-therapy Satisfaction", and " Questionnaire Total Point" were analyzed. Since the data did not show normal distribution (Shapiro Wilk test;p < .05), the statistical analysis was carried out u ing non-parametric Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis tests. The results were evaluated at a 95% confidence interval, and significance was evaluated at p < .05 level. Results: The results revealed no significant difference between the sub-dimensions and total score, except for the "Communication competence" sub-dimension, based on the variables of the type of disorder and the number of tele-therapy sessions received. In the "Communication Adequacy" sub-dimension, a statistical significance was found among the participants with fluency disorders-speech sound disorders (Mann Whitney U test;p = .044 < .05) and fluency disorders-voice disorders (Mann Whitney U test;p = .019 < .05). Conclusion: According to the variables in our study;type of disorder, the competence of the therapist, and the number of tele-therapy sessions received, there is no significant difference between the satisfaction of the tele-therapy in speech and language services. It was concluded that the participants with fluency disorders, speech sound disorders, and voice disorders gave significantly higher scores on "Communication Adequacy". It is thought that the result obtained is due to the number of participants between the two groups. Within the scope of this study, the first data on the satisfaction of tele-therapy in Turkey was reached. It is thought that this study can be repeated by increasing the number of participants. Future studies may also examine the satisfaction levels of participants with speech and language disorders separately.

Learning with Mobile Augmented Reality- and Automatic Speech Recognition-Based Materials for English Listening and Speaking Skills: Effectiveness and Perceptions of Non-English Major English as a Foreign Language Students

Due to the outbreak of COVID 19, an online bilingual curriculum was conducted via "Google Meet." The learning material was developed and implemented by using a smartphone application, STEMUP, based on augmented reality (AR) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) technologies. This study investigated the oral performance and perceptions of learning with STEMUP of ninety non-English major students from several colleges at a technical university in Taiwan. Data were collected from pre- and post-tests and a questionnaire survey. Results indicated that students significantly improved their oral performance and recorded their positive perceptions. Students' oral performance significantly depended on their English proficiency. Their perceptions were not significant related to their English proficiency, gender, or college. Instant feedback and evaluation provided by ASR technology and online "Google" text-to-speech service both embedded in STEMUP helped students notice, modify and improve their listening and speaking skills. They were satisfied with the bilingual curriculum, which helped them increase understanding about content knowledge by the teacher's explanation in Chinese, and improve English listening and speaking skills by learning with STEMUP. This study is a good start in creating an interactive and communicative learning environment where translanguaging is effectively integrated with innovative technologies.

Embedded system vehicle based on multi-sensor fusion

As intelligent driving vehicles came out of concept into people’s life, the combination of safe driving and artificial intelligence becomes the new direction of future transportation development. Autonomous driving technology is developing based on control algorithms and model recognitions. In this paper, a cloud-based interconnected multi-sensor fusion autonomous vehicle system is proposed that uses deep learning (YOLOv4) and improved ORB algorithms to identify pedestrians, vehicles, and various traffic signs. A cloud-based interactive system is built to enable vehicle owners to master the situation of their vehicles at any time. In order to meet multiple application of automatic driving vehicles, the environment perception technology of multi-sensor fusion processing has broadened the uses of automatic driving vehicles by being equipped with automatic speech recognition (ASR), vehicle following mode and road patrol mode. These functions enable automatic driving to be used in applications such as agricultural irrigation, road firefighting and contactless delivery under new coronavirus outbreaks. Finally, using the embedded system equipment, an intelligent car was built for experimental verification, and the overall recognition accuracy of the system was over 96%. Author

Rehabilitation After Total Laryngectomy: An Integrated Protocol Remotely Delivered During COVID-19

The aim of this paper was to evaluate the results of an integrated treatment delivered remotely to laryngectomized patients with voice prosthesis. Eighteen laryngectomized patients were treated remotely in groups co-led by a speech therapist and a psychologist ("Online Group"). The results were compared with those of 17 patients ("In-Person Group") previously studied. The two groups obtained comparable results on all parameters of the INFVo perceptual rating scale, in the DEP, ANX, PHO and HOS areas of the Symptom Check List-90-Revised questionnaire, and in the areas investigated by the WHOQOL-B questionnaire. The "In-Person Group" obtained statistically better results on the Italian Self-Evaluation of Communication Experiences after Laryngeal Cancer questionnaire. Although the in-person treatment favored the acceptance of the new voice and the development of conversational skills, telerehabilitation guaranteed an adequate level of assistance in terms of voice acquisition, prevention of anxiety and depression, and recovery of a good QoL. © 2023, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved.

"I Won't Go Speechless": Design Exploration on a Real-Time Text-To-Speech Speaking Tool for Videoconferencing

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted many business activities to non-face-to-face activities, and videoconferencing has become a new paradigm. However, conference spaces isolated from surrounding interferences are not always readily available. People frequently participate in public places with unexpected crowds or acquaintances, such as cafés, living rooms, and shared offices. These environments have surrounding limitations that potentially cause challenges in speaking up during videoconferencing. To alleviate these issues and support the users in speaking-restrained spatial contexts, we propose a text-to-speech (TTS) speaking tool as a new speaking method to support active videoconferencing participation. We derived the possibility of a TTS speaking tool and investigated the empirical challenges and user expectations of a TTS speaking tool using a technology probe and participatory design methodology. Based on our findings, we discuss the need for a TTS speaking tool and suggest design considerations for its application in videoconferencing. © 2023 ACM.

Benchmark Data and Evaluation Framework for Intent Discovery Around COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy

The COVID-19 pandemic has made a huge global impact and cost millions of lives. As COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, they were quickly met with widespread hesitancy. To address the concerns of hesitant people, we launched VIRA, a public dialogue system aimed at addressing questions and concerns surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines. Here, we release VIRADialogs, a dataset of over 8k dialogues conducted by actual users with VIRA, providing a unique real-world conversational dataset. In light of rapid changes in users' intents, due to updates in guidelines or in response to new information, we highlight the important task of intent discovery in this use-case. We introduce a novel automatic evaluation framework for intent discovery, leveraging the existing intent classifier of VIRA. We use this framework to report baseline intent-discovery results over VIRADialogs, that highlight the difficulty of this task. © 2023 Association for Computational Linguistics.

Providing Virtual Support to Children With Mild Developmental Delays in Response to the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has had massive impacts across the globe. Children with developmental delays are an increasingly vulnerable population, highlighting the importance of ensuring they have access to high-quality virtual services during this time. The Early Discovery program currently provides therapeutic interventions for children with mild developmental delays. We sought to compare the outcomes of 2 cohorts within the Early Discovery program using different delivery approaches (n = 238 families): children who received services in person before the pandemic (n = 126) and children who received services via telehealth in the acute phase of the pandemic (n = 112). Both groups of children showed significant improvements in language skills posttreatment, and, with regard to auditory comprehension, both groups showed similar rates of improvement. However, children receiving in-person services before the pandemic showed greater improvements in expressive communication skills than children receiving telehealth services during the pandemic. Results indicate that the Early Discovery program was able to make adjustments during the pandemic that assisted families in maintaining progress in improving their child's language skills.

Similar symptoms at 3 months post discharge in ICU, COVID-19 ICU, and COVID-19 patients that received non-invasive ventilation in high dependency areas

Introduction: It is well documented that survivors of ICU admissions struggle to return to pre-admission level of function because of both physical and psychological burden. Current guidance therefore recommends a follow-up service to review patients 2-3 months post discharge from ICU [NICE 2009]. Prior to 2020 University Hospitals Bristol and Weston (UHBW) had no such service. With the increase in patient numbers seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, funding was received to provide a follow-up clinic to COVID-19 survivors. Spare clinic spaces were used for non COVID ICU patients. Objective(s): To review symptoms reported by patients in the following 3 groups, COVID-19 patients treated in ICU (COVID ICU), COVID-19 patients treated with continuous positive airway pressure ventilation in high dependency areas (COVID CPAP) and non COVID-19 ICU patients (ICU), at 2-3 months post discharge from UHBW. Method(s): Referred patients had an initial phone call at 8 weeks post discharge. The call identified both physical and psychological symptoms. Advice regarding recovery, signposting to resources and onwards referrals to appropriate specialities were provided. If symptoms indicated, patients would then be referred into the multidisciplinary team follow up clinic. Here they met with an intensivist, clinical psychologist, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, speech and language therapist and dietitian. Result(s): As Graph 1 shows all 3 patient groups had a wide variety of ongoing symptoms at 2-3 months post discharge. Fatigue was the most common symptom reported in all 3 groups. Breathlessness was the second most common symptom reported by COVID patients but was less frequently reported in the ICU population who had a variety of non-respiratory related reasons for admission. COVID ICU patients more commonly reported ongoing problems with their swallowing, voice and communication compared to the COVID CPAP group, most probably due to invasive ventilation. Psychological burden post critical illness was high in all 3 groups. More than 20% of all patients scored =10 on a PHQ-9 depression scale showing moderate to severe depression. More than 15% of all patients scored =10 on a GAD-7 showing moderately severe to severe anxiety. COVID ICU group had the highest incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This may be linked to the higher level of delirium we saw in this group, as a result of change in practice, such as full PPE and absence of visiting during the pandemic. ICU patients presented with a significantly higher percentage of physiotherapy needs. This is likely because patients with the longest and most complex ICU admissions were selected for the clinic. Sleep likely goes under reported in these results as we only began questioning specifically about this later on in the clinic. Conclusion(s): This data goes some way in supporting current literature that the rehabilitation needs of COVID ICU patients equal that of ICU patients (Puthucheary et al 2021). It also shows the need to follow up patients who receive advanced respiratory support outside of the ICU environment, as their symptoms, and therefore rehabilitation needs are very similar to ICU patients at 2-3 months post discharge.

ICU follow-up clinic provides the opportunity to recognise and address symptoms post critical illness, which may otherwise have been missed

Introduction: It is well documented that survivors of ICU admissions struggle to return to pre-admission level of function because of both physical and psychological burden. Current guidance therefore recommends a follow-up service to review patients 2-3 months post discharge [NICE 2009]. Prior to 2020 University Hospitals Bristol and Weston had no such service. With the increase in patient numbers seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, funding was received to provide a follow-up clinic to COVID-19 survivors. Objective(s): To provide a service that supports and empowers patients with their recovery from critical illness. Improving quality of life, speed of recovery and reducing longer term health care needs. Method(s): Referral criteria for the clinic included COVID-19 patients who received advanced respiratory support within intensive care and the high dependence unit. 8 weeks post discharge patients had a telephone appointment where ongoing symptoms could be identified. Advice around recovery, signposting to resources and onward referrals to appropriate specialities were provided. At 10 weeks post discharge patients had lung function tests and a chest X-ray which were reviewed by respiratory consultants. Based on the combination of these assessments, patients would be discharged or referred into the multidisciplinary team (MDT) follow-up clinic. The face to face clinic consisted of appointments with an intensivist, clinical psychologist, physiotherapist, and occupational therapist. Where needed patients would also be seen by a speech and language therapist or dietitian. Patients were seen only once in follow up clinic but again would be referred onto appropriate services within trust or the community, including but not exclusively community therapy services, secondary care services, SALT, dietetic or psychology clinics. Result(s): One of the key outcomes was the need for 147 onward referrals (an average of 1.13 referrals per patient). This included, 31 referrals to musculoskeletal physiotherapy outpatients for problems originating or made worse by their admission. 20 referrals to secondary care, including cardiology and ENT. 16 referrals to community occupational therapy, for provision of equipment, home adaptations and support in accessing the community. Subjectively, patient feedback was excellent. When asked what they felt was the most valuable thing they had taken from the clinic they reported: "Reassurance";"To know I'm not alone, others feel like this";"They listened to me and gave advice";"The ability to ask anything I wanted and the obvious kindness and support from all the clinicians I saw". Conclusion(s): Onward referral rates made by the follow-up clinic highlight the many issues faced by patients following discharge from ICU and hospital. With timely recognition and management, we can prevent a majority of these symptoms manifesting into chronic problems. This has the potential to lower the long-term burden on health care and improve quality of life for patients in both the short and long term. Without the follow-up clinic, these issues may have been missed or delayed. This reinforces the importance of the follow-up clinic and the need for ongoing investment.

I'm out of breath from laughing! I think? A dataset of COVID-19 Humor and its toxic variants

Humor is a cognitive construct that predominantly evokes the feeling of mirth. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the situations that arouse out of the pandemic were so incongruous to the world we knew that even factual statements often had a humorous reaction. In this paper, we present a dataset of 2510 samples hand-annotated with labels such as humor style, type, theme, target and stereotypes formed or exploited while creating the humor in addition to 909 memes. Our dataset comprises Reddit posts, comments, Onion news headlines, real news headlines, and tweets. We evaluate the task of humor detection and maladaptive humor detection on state-of-the-art models namely RoBERTa and GPT-3. The finetuned models trained on our dataset show significant gains over zero-shot models including GPT-3 when detecting humor. Even though GPT-3 is good at generating meaningful explanations, we observed that it fails to detect maladaptive humor due to the absence of overt targets and profanities. We believe that the presented dataset will be helpful in designing computational methods for topical humor processing as it provides a unique sample set to study the theory of incongruity in a post-pandemic world. The data is available to research community at https://github.com/smritae01/Covid19-Humor. © 2023 ACM.

Living in a Democracy as a Fallen People: A REVIEW ESSAY

Rather, it would be more correct to say that Donald Trump found a ready audience for nationalism and postliberal thinking in the United States and rode a seemingly unlikely wave into the White House by semi-miraculously navigating the twists and turns of the Electoral College. COVID-19, of course, has proved to be a breeding ground of predominantly right-wing conspiracy theories, including regarding vaccines even though they were the result of a Trump-led program. [...]he made an argument that Vice President Mike Pence would be able to refuse to certify the election results. Tocqueville approached democracy as a young aristocrat from a family that had suffered in the French Revolution.

Artificial Intelligence-based Speech Signal for COVID-19 Diagnostics

The speech signal has numerous features that represent the characteristics of a specific language and recognize emotions. It also contains information that can be used to identify the mental, psychological, and physical states of the speaker. Recently, the acoustic analysis of speech signals offers a practical, automated, and scalable method for medical diagnosis and monitoring symptoms of many diseases. In this paper, we explore the deep acoustic features from confirmed positive and negative cases of COVID-19 and compare the performance of the acoustic features and COVID-19 symptoms in terms of their ability to diagnose COVID-19. The proposed methodology consists of the pre-trained Visual Geometry Group (VGG-16) model based on Mel spectrogram images to extract deep audio features. In addition to the K-means algorithm that determines effective features, followed by a Genetic Algorithm-Support Vector Machine (GA-SVM) classifier to classify cases. The experimental findings indicate the proposed methodology's capability to classify COVID-19 and NOT COVID-19 from acoustic features compared to COVID-19 symptoms, achieving an accuracy of 97%. The experimental results show that the proposed method remarkably improves the accuracy of COVID-19 detection over the handcrafted features used in previous studies. © 2022 ACM.

Rapid transition to telepractice across the lifespan in speech-language pathology: Insight from a survey of clinicians in Canada.

PURPOSE: This study aims to describe the experiences and needs of Canadian speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who conducted communication assessments via telepractice across the lifespan during the first year (2020) of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: The present study consisted of an online survey that aimed to capture both quantitative aspects of telepractice-based communication assessment and the qualitative experience of shifting to telepractice. One hundred sixty-eight practicing SLPs across Canada participated in the survey, between September 2020 and January 2021. Quantitative results were analysed using descriptive statistics while open-ended responses were analysed using thematic analysis. RESULT: SLPs identified challenges and opportunities relating to client and family engagement, access to and knowledge of technology, and the reliability of assessment tools. SLPs also identified a future need for online assessment materials and training, such as materials adapted for different communication needs (e.g. augmentative and alternative communication). CONCLUSION: The present study contributes to a growing understanding worldwide of potential benefits and challenges related to telepractice, fuelled by the necessary shift in practices in our field during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results provide direction for continuing to build a valid and inclusive approach to telepractice in the future.

Identifying Hate Speech and Attribution of Responsibility: An Analysis of Simulated WhatsApp Conversations during the Pandemic.

BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, public confrontations between people who had agreed to be vaccinated and those who had not, highlighted the relevance of the deepening dissemination of violent and discriminatory expressions and determined a level of perception of hate discourses. METHOD: A cross-sectional observational study was carried out, based on an innovative methodology: simulations of WhatsApp conversations. In addition, the following variables were considered among others: level of empathy, personality traits and conflict resolution. RESULTS: The participants were 567 nursing students (413 females, 153 males and 1 person who did not identify with any gender). The results showed that, for the most part, the participants correctly identified hate speech, but were unable to discern the frame of reference. CONCLUSIONS: It is necessary to implement intervention strategies to minimize the impact of hate speech, which continues to be used on many levels to harass others, justify violence or undermine rights, generating an environment of prejudice and intolerance that encourages discrimination and violent attacks against certain individuals or collectives.

Erratum: Conducting clinical research in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic: Challenges and lessons for Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology research.

No abstract available.

Scurvy in a Pediatric Patient Unable to Bear Weight: A Case Report.

Pediatric scurvy is uncommon in the twenty-first century but cases have been reported in children with neurodevelopmental issues and restricted diets. We are reporting a two-year and nine-month-old boy who had a coronavirus disease (COVID) infection and then presented with a refusal to walk. By careful history-taking, he was found to have a restricted diet, speech delay, and gum bleeding suggestive of scurvy, which was confirmed by extremely low levels of ascorbic acid. In this case, the diagnosis of scurvy was established before establishing the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental delay. Treatment with ascorbic acid resulted in a remarkable improvement in his symptoms. This case highlights the importance of collecting a thorough history, connecting exam findings to the history, and including scurvy in differential diagnoses for the presentation of inability to bear weight.

Exploring the Influence of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic on the Accessibility of Rehabilitation Services Provided to Children with Disabilities: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background and Objectives: Children with disabilities (such as cerebral palsy, autistic spectrum disorder, and Down syndrome) are the most vulnerable and marginalized subset of the population, representing 2.7% of the total population of Saudi Arabia. The COVID-19 outbreak might have disproportionately affected children with disabilities, augmented their isolation, and induced severe disruptions to the services on which these children rely. Limited research has been conducted in Saudi Arabia to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the rehabilitation services provided to children with disabilities and barriers. This study aimed to investigate the effect of the lockdown implemented as a result of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the accessibility of rehabilitation services, including communication, occupational therapy, and physical therapy, in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a survey was conducted between June and September 2020 during the lockdown in Saudi Arabia. A total of 316 caregivers of children with disabilities from Riyadh participated in the study. The accessibility of rehabilitation services provided to children with disabilities was assessed by designing a valid questionnaire. Results: A total of 280 children with disabilities received rehabilitation services before the COVID-19 pandemic and showed improvement following therapeutic sessions. However, during the pandemic, most children stopped receiving therapeutic sessions because of lockdown, which deteriorated their condition. This shows a significant reduction in the accessibility of the rehabilitation services provided during the pandemic. Conclusions: The findings of this study revealed a drastic decline in services provided to children with disabilities. This caused a notable deterioration in the abilities of these children.