Anyone have any particular intuition for whether a dog would be likely to be able to learn to use a device that combined phonemes as its basic constituent parts, rather than entire words?
I’m working on a device that affords this possibility. I have a functional prototype that is mouth-held and -operated; it uses a pressure sensor (measuring bite) and gyro/accelerometer to produce (at the moment) a limited selection of vowels and consonants; they can be varied by moving the head around and biting down.
My inspiration is these button boards together with the intuition that some of the main obstacles to language production are the physical machinery, and also a fast feedback loop.
I do not have custody of a dog and have had limited opportunities to test thus far.
When it comes to teaching the meaning of the words with the buttons it seems much easier to introduce new words and the dog can easily see it when the button is pushed. It’s going to be much harder for the dog to learn sounds on their own.
It might be worth writing out a plan of how you think all the individual subskills can be taught.
(new account because I couldn’t log in again with github)
Good question — difficult at the moment because I only have the one prototype, and I’m still updating it. Though I’m open to show-and-tell and/or short-term loans for readers in San Francisco.
Anyone have any particular intuition for whether a dog would be likely to be able to learn to use a device that combined phonemes as its basic constituent parts, rather than entire words?
I’m working on a device that affords this possibility. I have a functional prototype that is mouth-held and -operated; it uses a pressure sensor (measuring bite) and gyro/accelerometer to produce (at the moment) a limited selection of vowels and consonants; they can be varied by moving the head around and biting down.
My inspiration is these button boards together with the intuition that some of the main obstacles to language production are the physical machinery, and also a fast feedback loop.
I do not have custody of a dog and have had limited opportunities to test thus far.
When it comes to teaching the meaning of the words with the buttons it seems much easier to introduce new words and the dog can easily see it when the button is pushed. It’s going to be much harder for the dog to learn sounds on their own.
It might be worth writing out a plan of how you think all the individual subskills can be taught.
How easy is it to ship a prototype to LW readers who have dogs?
(new account because I couldn’t log in again with github)
Good question — difficult at the moment because I only have the one prototype, and I’m still updating it. Though I’m open to show-and-tell and/or short-term loans for readers in San Francisco.