Speakcare

The award-winning projects in the CNRS 80PRIME program are designed to support and strengthen interdisciplinary, multi-team research.
The SPEAKCARE (SPEech And language modelling for CAREgiver training) project, led by Jean-Luc Rouas (TAD team, I&S department), has been selected within this framework, with funding for an interdisciplinary thesis, in partnership with the phonetics and phonology laboratory (LPP, Paris).


 

The SPEAKCARE project aims at exploring ways to improve communication in elder care using the "Humanitude" method, which emphasizes verbal, visual, and tactile interactions to enhance caregiver-patient relationships. The study focuses on vocal and linguistic aspects, analyzing how caregivers adapt their speech. A pilot study showed that caregivers modify their voice when performing professional tasks. The project aims to expand this database with recordings from trained and untrained caregivers. A key challenge is analyzing spontaneous speech, which is often unpredictable, with hesitations and incomplete sentences.
The research will combine linguistic analysis and automatic modeling to better understand vocal dynamics.
The ultimate goal is to develop AI-powered training tools for caregivers with explicit interpretable feedback.
The study also includes a cross-linguistic comparison between France and Japan to explore cultural and linguistic differences in caregiving communication.

 

Contacts