Our Evaluative Artificial Speech Intelligence-Autism Screener project (EASI-AS) is an NSF/SBIR Phase II grant that expands on the work from our Phase I NSF/SBIR grant. EASI-AS will feature cutting-edge machine-learning technology that will reliably screen for autism by identifying non-linguistic acoustic features, extracted from recordings of children’s speech. The system will use familiar mobile devices to collect speech samples, which will employ a user-friendly interface that parents and professions can operate with little to no training. 

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We are working to help autistic children and their families by creating a tool that anonymously screens for autism by using speech samples. Research has shown that early intensive intervention services can improve social and communication skills in autistic children. Other studies have shown that these gains can be maintained years later, after services have concluded. So increasing access to early intervention services is one of the key goals of our project. 

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But in order for our system to work, we will need your help! To ensure that the technology properly differentiates between autistic and non-autistic children, we will need lots of data from both populations. In the first stage of the project, we will be creating a website that will collect anonymous speech recordings from a variety of children. The recordings will help train the system to identify the unique acoustic traits that are often present in autistic children’s voices.