Click & Drag

Free app co-designed by consultants with aphasia and researchers at City University to encourage people with aphasia to engage in creative writing

Select a piece of writing (your own or one of the 10 included) as your starting point. Automatically erase most of the words to reveal a small set of words to work with. Add and erase words until you have a set of words you'd like to work with. Arrange these words to make a piece of writing and save a photo of it or share it via Twitter or the other apps on your ipad (e.g. email, text, Whats App etc).

Web based suite of exercises designed for cognitive rehabilitation.  Each activity has 2-5 levels of difficulty.

Language activities:

Auditory comprehension (true/fase) tasks, including some very high level activities

Written sequencing tasks where the user is required to put steps for an activity in order (3-16 steps, depending on the level)

Picture-adjective; picture-noun and picture-verb matching activities, including some very high level tasks

Functional, object-location matching tasks

Language based executive functioning activities:

Written decision-making tasks 

Written reasoning of consquences tasks

There are also social cognition tasks including inferring facial expressions & inferring emotional reactions 

Error handling: none

Prompts/cues: none

Record results: yes, and they can be accessed remotely

Free trial: yes, a 10 day trial is available

Comments: Latency is measured for most exercises.  Although a large number of rehab areas are listed, some contain no activities (e.g. expression, naming, fluency, writing). Although reading activities are listed, it is simply matching digits to written numbers. Alot of the exercises rely on very good reading comprehension (e.g. decision making, time estimation, reasoning of consequences, task sequencing). On some activities, the user is unable to amend their response before submitting it (e.g. on task sequencing exercises). 

Suppliers: https://www.neuronup.com/en

Type of exercises & brief description    

• Auditory memory and basic sequencing with adjectives.
• Can also be used for reading comprehension of adjectives and position.
• A verbal and/or written description is given (e.g. the red one is bigger than the green one), user must select the corresponding picture from a choice of 12.
• 60 items in total

Error handling: None

Prompts/cues: None

Comments/N.B

• American accent

Type of exercises:

• Semantics
• Sequencing
• Spelling
• Homonyms & synonyms

Developed with SLT: Yes



Theory based: No, based on clinician experience



Record own speaking attempts: N/A



Correction of own speaking attempts:N/A



Easy to use?: No. The user must click on an answer, then click again to input their answer and then click again to move onto the next question.



The internet subscription exercises are very slow to accept the answer making multiple activations possible and therefore potentially confusing.



Customisation/personalisation: No



Error handling: None



Prompts/cues given: Only for one set of exercises



Tutorials: Yes, online



Free trial: Yes but not the complete program



Support: Via Livechat or the supplier can take over the user’s PC. All support takes place 9am-5pm New York time



Comments:

• The online subscription allows access to all the modules available so as the user progresses they don’t need to purchase new modules. It feels like an app when downloaded on an ipad
• The CD version has more functions than the internet version
• Need reading skills (single word and simple sentences)
• Sequencing exercises work on functional, everyday activities (e,g, parking, dressing). They go from 2 step to 5 step sequencing
• Remote access to results is possible as long as the SLT has the user’s login & password.

N.B:

    US terminology/vocabulary

    Voice is American and computer generated

    No visual rewards for correct answers

 

Type of exercises:    Speech production, single word and sentence level targeting a range of linguistic/grammar structures.

Examples of exercises provided:

• sentences with prepositions
• sentences with adjectives
• sentences with prepositions and adjectives
• why questions
• complex sentences with multiple verbs and nouns

Access:    Mouse (including click & drag), Touchscreen

Developed with SLT:    Yes

Theory based:    Yes 

Record own speaking attempts:    Yes

Correction of own speaking attempts:    No, the program does not judge the correctness of utterances

Number of exercises:    Over 800 + unlimited if creating own

Easy to use?    To some extent

Customisation/personalisation:    Yes

Error handling:    None

Prompts/cues given:    Yes. Words/sentences are modelled. User can listen to verbal models of each word. Sentence completion words are provided. Possible to customise own prompts (e.g. semantic ones). Model sentences are also provided.

Record results:    Yes. The users’ speech (& photos) can be made into a video which they can send to others directly from within the program, via email (Windows version) or, in the iOS version, via the full range of sharing options (email, messaging, Facebook, Instagram, etc)

Tutorials:    Yes

Free trial:    Yes but not full version

Support:    Free technical support via email or phone

Comments:

• Ability to customise own exercises with target vocabulary
• Don’t need any reading or spelling skills to use
• Practising speech at sentence level at the user’s own level and speed
• Designed to encourage self-monitoring of speech so whilst there are example models, there are also no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers
• Word finder dictionaries (customiseable) are available to aid sentence construction

N.B:    

• need to use click and drag if not using a touchscreen
• interface could be difficult to follow initially for some users 
• American accent

Supplier details:    www.sentenceshaper.com 
 

Type of exercises:

• Following written and auditory instructions (up to 7 steps) with letters, numbers, pictures
• Sequencing
• Remembering patterns
• Multi tasking
• Pairs games
• Visual motor memory tasks

Access: Mouse & keyboard. Requires click and drag function

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: No, based on clinician experience

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Easy to use?: No. The user must click on an answer, then click again to input their answer and then click again to move onto the next question.

The internet subscription exercises are very slow to accept the answer making multiple activations possible and therefore confusing.

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: None

Prompts/cues given: None

Tutorials: Yes, online

Free trial: Yes but not the complete program

Support: Via Livechat or the suppliers can take over the user’s PC. All support takes place 9am-5pm New York time

Comments:

• The online subscription allows access to all the modules available so as the user progresses they don’t need to purchase new modules. It feels like an app when downloaded on an ipad
• The CD version has more functions than the internet version
• A download version exists for $19.95 per program but works only on Windows, not mac
• Following/remembering instructions are not functional, everyday tasks – pure therapy tasks
• High level memory, attention and sequencing tasks
• Remote access to results is possible as long as the SLT has the user’s login & password.

N.B:
    Voice is American and computer generated
    No visual rewards for correct answers