Effectiveness of the haptic chair in speech training

Abstract

The 'Haptic Chair' [3] delivers vibrotactile stimulation to several parts of the body including the palmar surface of the hand palm and fingers and has been shown to have a significant positive effect on the enjoyment of music even by the profoundly deaf. In this paper, we explore the effectiveness of using the Haptic Chair during speech therapy for the deaf. We conducted a 24-week study with 20 profoundly deaf users to validate our initial observations. The improvements in word clarity observed over the duration of this study indicate that the Haptic Chair has the potential to make a significant contribution to speech therapy for the deaf.