Project team members:

• Assoc. Prof. Ana Bonetti, PhD
• Assoc. Prof. Gordana Hržica, PhD
• Assoc. Prof. Ana Leko Krhen, PhD
• Assis. Prof. Blaženka Brozović, PhD
• Dora Knežević, PhD
• Klara Popčević, PhD
• Ivana Šimić, PhD

Associates:

• Tomislava Bošnjak Botica, PhD
• Antonija Blaži Ostojić, mag. logoped.
• Prof. Kelly Mabry, PhD
• Assis. Prof. Ana Penezić, PhD
• Mirjana Lasan-Grevelhörster, prof. logoped
• Antea Šalinović, mag. logoped.

In clinical practice, speech-language pathologists still lack a fully integrated diagnostic system that combines different levels of analysis. Such a system would enable comprehensive clinical profiling of individuals with voice, speech, and language disorders. Establishing reference values and digital tools is a prerequisite for developing precise and reliable diagnostics. This project develops digital resources and tools for assessing children’s language, speech, and voice abilities, with particular emphasis on applying artificial intelligence in speech-language pathology diagnostics. The project will analyse existing language corpora and collect new ones, creating digital databases of children’s speech, voice, and language in both typical and neurodivergent development. For the first time in Croatian, reference values based on real data from the local linguistic and cultural context will be established, addressing the lack of representative, expertly annotated datasets. These databases, valuable in themselves, are also essential for designing and training artificial intelligence models for automatic analysis. Based on the new datasets, the digital tool MultiDis for language processing will be upgraded, and a new tool, MultiSound, will be developed for processing vocal and speech indicators. The tools will be validated on clinical populations to assess their diagnostic value. The project introduces innovation by integrating acoustic, speech, and language indicators into a unified system for automatic analysis, thereby increasing the objectivity of assessments, shortening the diagnostic process, and contributing to the digital transformation of speech-language pathology practice. At the same time, the project creates new opportunities for research in languages with limited digital resources, fostering open science and the development of interoperable research infrastructure.