Speak in Public: an Innovative Tool for the Treatment of Stuttering through Virtual Reality, Biosensors, and Speech Emotion Recognition

Stuttering is a common speech disorder that affects over 80 million people worldwide. Exposure therapy (ET) is a well-established approach to treating stuttering, but it can be complex and risky to simulate challenging real-life situations. Virtual reality (VR) is a promising tool that can help overcome these limitations. This article presents Speak in Public, a system that combines VR, biosensors, and speech emotion recognition to provide objective measures of patients' stress and emotional state during ET sessions. In a preliminary study with five participants, we found that the use of VR successfully replicated stressful situations as indicated by biosensors. Additionally, speech emotion recognition showed that patients primarily experienced fear during these activities. Findings are preliminary, and further research with larger samples is needed to validate them. This study highlights the potential of VR and biosensors to enhance ET for stuttering and provides insights for future research in this area.