Understanding spoken words

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.

Tasks to work on spoken and written comprehension of nouns, verbs and occupations.

2200 functional stimuli items, from 10 different categories e.g. clothing, health & body, home & garden, leisure, nature

Includes a training section where the user can familiarise themselves and practise with stimuli items before moving onto the comprehension tasks

In the training tasks, the client can hear and/or see 2 examples of the target word, then match the word to the correct picture (choice of 3)

In the photo shuffle: tasks, the client is required to match the spoken and/or written word to the pictures (choice of 2-6)

In the word match tasks, the client is required to match the picture  to the correct spoken and/or written word (choice of 3)

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

Free demo app for Advanced Language Therapy

Try out exercises for Advanced Comprehension Therapy, Advanced Naming Therapy, Advanced Reading Therapy & Advanced Writing Therapy apps (search each app separately for more detailed information)

1 trial is provided for each section of each app to enable you to inform purchase decisions for the apps which can be purchased separately or as a bundle in Advanced Language Therapy

Supplier: Tactus

4 bundle app containing:

Advanced Comprehension Therapy, Advanced Naming Therapy, Advanced Reading Therapy & Advanced Writing Therapy. We recommend searching each app separately for detailed information on each app however below is a brief summary of each:

Advanced Comprehension Therapy:

Written and auditory comprehension exercises, & sentence building exercises

3 modes: Identify (picture matching), Build (sentence building) & Follow (follow directions). Each set of exercises has 12-16 levels

Advanced Naming Therapy:

4 sets of sentence and conversation level exercises: Using verbs to make sentences; Comparing similar items; Category association naming; Generating conversations

Advanced Reading Therapy:

3 levels of paragraph level reading exercises with functional materials (cards, texts, stories)

Advanced Writing Therapy: Matching letters to sounds; Spelling words to dictation; Typing to dictation; Writing sentences & paragraphs

Free trial: yes, free trial available through Advanced Language Therapy Lite app

Supplier: Tactus

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

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