Background:
Our team selected a project dealing with stuttering under the advisement of Dr. Tedra Walden of the Vanderbilt Departments of Psychology and Hearing and Speech Sciences and the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. In this project, we aim (1) to develop a quantitative means of distinguishing between the patterns of stuttering and non-stuttering speech, and (2) to build a research tool to assess biases against stuttering.
As of our last progress report, we were primarily focusing our efforts on finishing the functionality of the IAT from round to round. We had set a goal by this time to have a fully functioning IAT.
Achievements:
Since the last progress report, we have completed a number of major tasks integral to our final design. First, the test logic of the IAT has been completed. This means that the program can run from start to finish on its own and the program stores the latencies in appropriate locations. This was a major hurdle in the development of our design, and now we can clearly see the finish line. Second, the aesthetic of the GUI interface was improved upon. The visual experience of the program is now equivalent to that of a typical IAT. Third, the final audio (stuttering and nonstuttering) and images have been obtained and are a part of the program.
Challenges encountered:
Since the last progress report, significant challenges have come to our attention. First, applet webpage is going to be a greater challenge than we had previously anticipated. We believed that we would be able to easily combine our Java source base case with HTML source code to produce an online applet. While this is possible, it is perhaps a bit more difficult than we understood. Additionally, we cannot even test this combination code until we have access to a server, which was our next challenge. Second, the IT professional that our adviser had us in contact with has been unresponsive to our emails in terms of setting up a server. We identified that we needed a UNIX server with data collection capabilities (but not enormous capabilities), but we have been unable to acquire access to test out our IAT on the internet.
None of the challenges identified is insurmountable.
Future work:
The next steps of the project can be seen in our project timeline (GANTT chart) below. In the next two weeks, we anticipate making major advancements in applet webpage integration and in data storage & retrieval. We hope to continue our progress on the IAT nuances and the IAT front and back matter (subject information collection and debriefing). These tasks are difficult, but, with sufficient contributions from both members of the team over the next few weeks, they are attainable.
Project timeline:
Bottom line:
We strongly anticipate that we will meet the objectives in the proposed schedule and budget. Our team is strong, and our knowledge and skills are propelling us towards a dynamic design. We are confident that on our design day our project will be viewed as outstanding.