Saying single words

Type of exercises & brief description:

Photos of nouns are presented for confrontation, verbal naming.  There are 20 items in each exercise set and a total of 10 exercise sets which must be purchased individually

Speech recognition software is used to assess whether the spoken attempt was correct

Prompts/cues:

If the first attempt isn’t recognised, an initial, written letter is provided. If the second attempt isn’t recognised, the word is spoken and written and the user moves to the next item automatically

Record results:

Results are shown at the end of the session. In order to receive results, the professional license must be purchased

Comments:

•  It is difficult to identify what some of the photographs are of
• The items are always presented in the same order
• Not all regional accents or dysarthric speech are recognised. 

Exercises for working on short-term memory, working memory, attention and processing.  There is an added function of adding in background noise

Exercises have 2-3 levels of difficulty with 240 exercises in total

·       Recall of visual scenes: 2-6 questions about what the scene depicted. The user must provide a verbal response & decide whether or not it was correct

·       Recall of visual objects: the user must provide a verbal response about the 5 objects seen or the items missing & decide whether or not their attempt was correct

·       Visual/auditory recall of written/spoken words & sentences: read or listen to words/sentences and select from written selection or verbalise the items & decide whether or not it was correct

·       Recall of personal information: verbalise answers to spoken questions or repeat lengthy sentences back & decide whether or not it was correct

·       Recall of recent information: very lengthy auditory information is presented for the user to then verbally respond to questions relating to the information

If using independently, the user must monitor whether their spoken attempts were correct. There is no facility to record own spoken attempts.  There are only a few exercises where the answers are selected from written options

Error handling: none

Prompts/cues: none

Record results: Results are recorded by exercise or by date within the app and can be emailed

Comments:  The results recorded are reliant on the user self monitoring and knowing whether they named the item correctly or not. There is no facility for recording speech attempts and the app itself does not determine level of accuracy. This app would therefore not be appropriate for independent use by someone with poor self monitoring

Exercises to work on understanding numbers in the written & spoken form, speaking numbers & writing numbers

Choose to work on numbers in different formats (e.g. money, years, time, fractions, ordinals)

Option to add personalised phone numbers

Option to record spoken attempts

3 difficulty levels

A Free trial is available through the Number Therapy Lite app

Suppliers: App store & google play store

Supplier: Tactus

Writing exercises:

• Copying letters & words
• Written picture naming
• Complete the phrase (spell a word to complete a saying)
• Sentence scramble (re-arranging words to form a short sentence)

Speaking exercises:

• Articulation & oro-motor exercises
• Functional spoken word & phrase repetition
• Flashcard naming (spoken picture naming of nouns, verbs & adjectives)
• Naming using semantic feature analysis strategies

Reading exercises:

• Letter, word and phrase matching
• Written word/sentence to picture matching
• Written word sentence completion
• Article reading based around current news topics

Listening exercises:

• Spoken word to picture matching
• Spoken phrase to picture matching
• Spoken question to picture matching
• Following auditory directions

There is also a large bank of memory, semantic categorisation & maths exercises 

There is also a large bank of ADL exercises (e.g. reading menus, reading product labels, telling the time and reading calendar entries).

The memory and ADL exercises also work on various language areas e.g. auditory memory, functional reading, semantics, auditory comprehension and inferences.

Error handling: Yes

Prompts/cues: Yes

Record results: Yes, very detailed, specifying which cues were required, which answer was chosen, how long the task took to complete and dates tasks were attempted

Comments/N.B

• There is only one version for UK, US, Aus

• 3-4 levels of difficulty, depending on exercises

• Very large bank of over 13,500 items

• Reliant on the user self monitoring and knowing whether they named the item correctly or not.

There is no facility for recording speech attempts and the app itself does not determine level of accuracy. This app would therefore not be appropriate for independent use by someone with poor self monitoring

• FREE TRIAL available

Program: Aphasia therapy online

Type of exercises:

• listening (auditory/word matching, auditory/picture matching, spell a spoken word, auditory letter discrimination)
• reading (single words & short phrases, matching upper/lower case letters, answering simple, written Y/N questions, auditory letter discrimination)
• spelling (picture naming & spelling spoken words)
• written picture naming, spoken picture naming

Access: keyboard & mouse

Developed with SLT: yes

Theory based: no

Record own speaking attempts: no

Correction of own speaking attempts: no

Number of exercises: several levels and 40-50 items per exercise

Easy to use? yes

Customisation/personalisation: no

Error handling: only 1 error is allowed before answer is given, to prevent errorful learning 

Prompts/cues given: initial letter/semantic cue, can limit word length

Record results: no

Tutorials: no

Free trial: program is free

Support: from the SLT who developed it

Comments: user must make own judgement of whether spoken naming was correct. No spoken models are provided to make this judgment

Languages: In addition to English, this resource is available in both European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese - either the therapy tasks or the entire website as preferred.

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

Picture naming tasks where the person can record their own spoken attempt

Verbal word finding exercises for 104 words associated with men, based on semantic feature analysis

A picture is presented for the person to name.  8 levels of cue are available (including phonemic, initial letter spelling, semantic description)

The exercises encourage semantic questioning (What type of thing is this? Can you describe it?)

The many levels of cue would be useful for communication partners wanting useful strategies to adopt to aid word finding

Specific stimuli can be presented from 104 items if wanting to work on specific items only

There is no option to record own speaking attempts

% scores recorded

Verbal word finding exercises for 106 common household object words based on semantic feature analysis

A picture is presented for the person to name.  8 levels of cue are provided (including phonemic, semantic description and initial written letter)

The exercises encourage semantic questioning (what would I use it for? where would I find it?)

The many levels of cue would be useful for communication partners to cue them into helpful strategies to use to aid word finding

Stimuli to be presented can be specified from 106 items

There is no option to record own speaking attempts

% scores are recorded