• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.923-930
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• 2002

This study aims at developing dialog system to improve the quality of life of the elderly with a dementia. The proposed system mainly consists of three modules including speech recognition, automatic search of the time-sorted dialog database, and agreeable responses with the recorded voices of caregivers. For the first step, the dialog that dementia patients often utter at a nursing home is first investigated. Next, the system is organized to recognize the utterances in order to meet their requests or demands. The system is then responded with recorded voices of professional caregivers. For evaluation of the system, the comparison study was carried out when the system was introduced or not, respectively. The occupational therapists then evaluated a male subjects reaction to the system by photographing his behaviors. The evaluation results showed that the dialog system was more responsive in catering to the needs of dementia patient than professional caregivers. Moreover, the proposed system led the patient to talk more than caregivers did in mutual communication.