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EarlyBird Dyslexia Screener and SoapBox Speech Recognition Technology Paired to Help Predict Reading Problems in Young Pre-Readers

  • By Kate Lucariello
  • 12/08/22

EarlyBird Education and SoapBox Labs have partnered and paired their technology to identify potential dyslexia or other reading problems in young children who have not yet learned to read. The technology was developed at Boston Children’s Hospital, along with faculty at the Florida Center for Reading Research. It is now available for pre-K and first-grade levels, and will be expanding to second- and third-grade levels, EarlyBird reports.

Using a cloud-based platform, the EarlyBird dyslexia screener features a friendly robot that extends a microphone to invite the child to speak. SoapBox’s automated speech recognition engine listens to and identifies the child’s speech patterns, processing various accents and dialects. The results are scored automatically by an AI and shown on the dashboard. Assessed are the main predictors of reading skills: naming speed (Rapid Automated Naming), sound symbol correspondence, phonemic/phonological awareness, word reading, phonics, and oral language comprehension. The software provides a customized plan to help teachers work with students in specific problem areas before they learn to read.

SoapBox Labs will hold a webinar Tuesday, December 13, at 11:30 a.m. EST on how EarlyBird uses voice technology for dyslexia screening. Register here to attend.

Visit EarlyBird Education to learn more about how it developed its assessment technology.

Visit this SoapBox Labs’ page to understand how child speech recognition technology is used in language assessment.

About the Author

Kate Lucariello is a former newspaper editor, EAST Lab high school teacher and college English teacher.

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