Remote exercise updates

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

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

Customiseable app to enable the non-verbal/non-literate user to send text messages to designated communication partners

The user presses a sequence of 2 messages to be automatically sent by text to the communication partner of their choice. All messages are represented by a picture/photo (e.g. I need shopping, please get me some apples)

Pictures, text labels and spoken labels can all be customised

App can be modified remotely (i.e. SLT/carer can change messages on a desktop and it will be immediately available to the user on their tablet/phone)

Work on answering questions with help

Questions on current affairs, updated weekly

Work on asking questions and social phrases

Work on people’s names with video and spelling practice

Spelling with sounds

Letter spelling

Rhyme judgement

Reading tasks

Matching tasks

Sentence processing (e.g reversible sentence ordering)

Written & spoken sentence building

Semantic associations

Tasks for working on verbs in a sentence context

Conversation starters

Articulation: 5000+ videos of target words and phrases, including breakdown into individual syllables & phonemes

Features a communication props drawer with maps, drawing board, numbers, time 

Multiple ways to create hierarchies (e.g. according to word length, sound, frequency, number of phonemes)

Video tutorials are provided to demonstrate how the app works & each exercise has its own tutorial to demonstrate how to complete the exercises

Can create multiple therapy sessions and can share sessions over internet

Error handling: Wrong answers are removed; the response is read aloud for the user to judge;  contextual information is given

Prompts/cues: Closure cues; spoken word

Record results: Results are shown after the session with % of items completed correctly. Can request additional details about accuracy, speed and help requested. Results can also be emailed to the clinician.

Option to break up sentence level questions into chunks to support reading and listening

Comments:  

• Can choose option for items to remain on the screen until the user moves onto the next exercise (i.e. no automatic scrolling onto the next item).  This is useful when used in therapy to discuss the user’s response
• Advanced settings for SLT to designate exercise features for each exercise set
• Remote management/allocation of exercises and results

Free version, monthly subscription option, 1 & 3 year subscription options

Supplier: Tactus

6 levels of reading, listening and topic vocabulary exercises for those with moderate to mild reading difficulties who are keen to practise independently

Within each level, there are 10 everyday topics (e.g. making a journey, reading a paper, reading an email, how to lose weight), each with 6 different exercise sets

Web based program - exercises can be allocated remotely & results can be accessed by the SLT remotely

The clinician purchases a yearly license and patients have free access to the software on a computer or via an app on a tablet or phone device

The software is designed for learners of English as a foreign language but can be useful for people with aphasia

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