Assessment of need & exercises suggested

Aims to improve understanding of spoken word.

Includes 800 words - presented singularly or in a sentence

Gamified activities - match spoken words to pictures.

Choose sets of words to practice

Part of a current clinical trial - can choose to participate in research during use of app - or decline.

Tested in clinical trial with 30 participants living with aphasia. They compelted 85 hours practice over 12 week period. 31% imprvement seen for practiced words.

A phone/tablet based app which targets issues with single word reading associated with alexia & aphasia

Written and spoken words as well as pictures are used to re-build associations between semantics, orthographics and phonology

600 stimuli items are provided and up to 30 'trials'

Initially, the user is required to complete a test of reactions, vision, reading, spelling and writing. They then do 'look & listen' exercises to familiarise themselves with the target words.  There are then 'trials' using auditory to written word matching with pictorial support.  The initial tests are time consuming but can be paused

Familiarisation tasks and trials are automatically created based on performance and change according to progress made

Audio and visual, on-screen aphasia guides are provided to guide the user through how the app works

Results are recorded and include training time taken, reading accuracy and reading speed

60 tasks with a functional bias to work on:

• Auditory comprehension (sounds/words/paragraphs/rhyming/auditory instructions)
• Speech (word repetition, picture naming, reading aloud)
• Semantics (written & spoken)
• Spelling (picture naming, copying, anagrams, auditory naming)
• Reading (picture-word matching, reading comprehension, written lexical decision making)
• Attention
• Visual processing
• Time telling
• Map reading
• Cognitive function
• Problem solving
• Planning
• Reading & understanding numbers

There are 2 versions of the therapy app - a user version & a clinician version

In the clinician version, the clinician can remotely edit exercise sets and access results

Supplier: Constant

Supplier: Tactus

60 tasks with a functional bias to work on:

• Auditory comprehension (sounds/words/paragraphs/rhyming/auditory instructions)
• Speech (word repetition, picture naming, reading aloud)
• Semantics (written & spoken)
• Spelling (picture naming, copying, anagrams, auditory naming)
• Reading (picture-word matching, reading comprehension, written lexical decision making)
• Attention
• Visual processing
• Time telling
• Map reading
• Cognitive function
• Problem solving
• Planning
• Reading & understanding numbers

There are 2 versions of the therapy app - a client version & a clinician version.  The clinician version is free. The client version requires a yearly subscription.

Supplier: Constant

Type of exercises:

• Verbal and written naming of nouns, verbs, adjectives (e.g. people, weather, hobbies, nature, clothes+ customised/personalised vocab  (needs to be able to be pictorially represented))
• Single word and sentence level spoken word finding
• Word level semantics
• Spoken repetition exercises
• The My Words suite of exercises uses the words the user is practising in a range of different exercises in order to intensively work on the same words in different exerise formats (e.g. matching, repetition, naming, spelling)
• Up to 10 levels of exercise, gradually increasing in complexity
• Assessment items provided to gauge start level & vocabulary

Developed with SLT: Yes



Theory based: Yes. Lots of evidence to support this software, some of which is on the research evidence page of this site



Record own speaking attempts: Yes



Correction of own speaking attempts: No



Customisation/personalisation: Yes



Error handling: Yes. Spoken, written, phonemic & video cues given, options reduced & then correct answer provided to copy. Can’t make more than 2 consecutive errors.  Clinician can specifiy degree of accuracy required before the program automatically moves the person onto the next level of exercises or moves them to an easier level of exercise



Prompts/cues given: Yes. Written, spoken, video, phonemic



Tutorials: Yes. Comprehensive, step by step video tutorials provided for each section of the software for both users and clinicians



Free trial: Yes



Support: Free phone support & in-program video tutorials



Comments:

• Sentence level: e.g. incorporating the word ‘tea’ into the sentence ‘I would like a cup of …’
• Assessment stimuli can be used as a start guide and for re-assessment of progress
• Gradual building of skills through graded exercises. User moves on to next level automatically once competent at the previous level (SLT can set the criteria for when to move them on). Equally, if they fail to achieve a certain % the SLT can set the facility to automatically provide an easier level of exercise
• Can remotely update and download exercises & results (with the clinician version of the software)
• There is the facility to write therapy notes within the program if the clinician is doing the exercise with the user
• Personalised vocabulary and photos can be programmed and the clinician can provide the phonemic cue (phonetic keyboard provided) & a video of mouth shapes as well as sentence level examples of the word's use

N.B:

  British accent

 

Type of exercises:

• Letter and word recognition.
• Written naming.
• Multiple choice matching tasks and gap filling naming tasks.

Theory based: Not a particular theory base, SLT experience

Error handling: Only for picture naming exercises.

Prompts/cues given: Progress tracking to move the user on if they are getting responses correct. User selectable hints and number of multiple choice options provided.

Support: Free lifetime technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments: Have to backspace previous answer before entering new, correct response

Type of exercises:

• Multiple choice and gapfiller exercises for generating words that ‘sound like’ or are ‘the opposite to’ or are ‘the same as’

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: Not a specific theory base, SLT experience

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: Gives cues after each wrong answer.

Prompts/cues given: Yes. Says word aloud, gives number of letters in word, gives multiple choices

Tutorials: No

Free trial: Yes

Support: Free lifetime technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments:

• Some Americanisms
• Some items are very high level
• Model voice is American

N.B:
   Need spelling skills
   Need whole word reading
 

Type of exercises:

• Reading comprehension with multiple choice answers.
• Reading of bills, adverts, product labels, timetables. Locating services and recipes.

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: No specific theory base, SLT experience

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: Yes. If a wrong answer is given, it will highlight the area of the text to look at to obtain the correct answer.

Prompts/cues given: Chunks of text to read are highlighted to aid finding correct answer. Can alter number of multiple choice options.

Tutorials: No

Free trial: Yes

Support: Free lifetime technical support via phone, email or online livechat

Comments:

• Very American (e.g. American product labels, prices in $, American vocabulary)
• Not real life clippings
• Some exercises only have 2 items to read
• Progress tracking to automatically move user on as they improve

N.B:

    Very American.
    Not many exercises so would quickly complete the whole program.