Conversation Rules (pragmatics)

Exercises to encourage inference making from photos of real-life situations (places, events, feelings, situations etc.)

200 pictures are included in 7 exercise formats: what happened? Jobs, places, seasons, feelings, conversations & thoughts.  For each photo, the user is asked to make an inference about the picture (the user can request 3 multiple choice options if they are struggling to make the inference). They are then asked 'How do you know?' (no prompts are given for this part of the exercise).

Could be used to ellicit spoken or written responses

Could be useful when working with people with TBI or as conversation topics

Results are not stored in-app but can be emailed each time an exercise is completed. 

Results are reliant on the user correctly self-rating whether they were correct or not (if they are using the app independently)

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

Type of exercises:

• Category discrimination & reasoning (semantics)
• Category naming & completion (semantics)
• Cause & effect (what would happen if…)
• Conditional statements (if X then Y…)
• Deductive reasoning (semantics)
• Form & function (semantics)
• Inferential naming (semantics)
• Logical thinking
• Problem solving (pragmatics)
• Reasons why (pragmatics)
• Situation Reasoning (pragmatics)
• Things in common (semantics)

Access: Mouse for all exercises except inferential naming which also requires keyboard

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: None

Tutorials: Yes

Free trial: Yes but not the complete program

Support: Via Livechat. The suppliers can also log onto the user’s computer. 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 subscription version
• A download version exists for $19.95 per program but works only on Windows, not mac
• The pragmatics exercises are aimed at ‘what if’ scenarios
• Remote access to results is possible as long as the SLT has the user’s login & password.

N.B:
    US terminology
    Voice is American and computer generated
    Need single word/simple sentence level reading or good auditory comprehension to complete the tasks
    US terminology & vocabulary
    No visual rewards for correct answers
 

Type of exercises:

• Money
• Time
• Functional Reading
• Pragmatics

Developed with SLT: Yes

Theory based: Based on SLT experience

Record own speaking attempts: N/A

Correction of own speaking attempts: N/A

Customisation/personalisation: No

Error handling: None

Prompts/cues given: None

Tutorials: Yes

Free trial: Yes

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

Comments:

• Money – recognising, matching, calculating costs & change, solving money problems
• Clock – setting clock faces, solving time problems (including days, months & years)
• Functional Reading – e.g. labels, menus, receipts, adverts etc with multiple choice answers.
• Pragmatics – intonation, idioms, getting your message across and choosing what you would do/say in social situations

N.B:
    Module covers very different skills at very different levels.
    Some exercises need good listening skills, some need reading skills and some need both
    Big difference in the number of exercises for each section. E.g. the clock problems have over 1000 exercises but the pragmatics only has 200
    British accent.

This program can be purchased as a monthly subscription which gives access to all the React2.com modules. This may work out cheaper than purchasing the stand alone module, depending on how long it is needed for. A stand alone, offline version exists for those without internet access.

Supplier: React