About SentenceShaper and how to use it

This section of the website explains SentenceShaper^®, the software we have developed to help people with aphasia communicate.

Here are the contents of this section:

• A detailed description of how SentenceShaper works, and why.
• Requirements for a computer to run SentenceShaper.
• Links to view or download the Quick Start Guide, instructions for using the program once it's installed; the full SentenceShaper Manual; and links to other pages on this website that you may find helpful.

How SentenceShaper works

PLEASE NOTE: We have just released SentenceShaper 2, the new version of our program. The description below was written for the original version of the program, not SentenceShaper 2. However, both versions incorporate the same core mechanism to help people create better speech.

Below is a picture of the SentenceShaper screen. We have added some labels (they look like cartoon balloons) to identify the most important parts of the screen. These labels make the picture rather "noisy", which may give the impression that the program is very complicated. It's not! But you will need to know the names of the important parts in order to follow our explanation of how the program works.

Here's how you record a word or phrase on the system:

• Click the "ON" button, shown above (labelled, at the bottom of the screen shot above), to turn the computer's sound recorder on.
• Speak into your computer's microphone.
• Click the "OFF" button (labelled, above) to end the recording.

Whatever you say while the sound recorder is on gets recorded by the program; then a "shape", a small crystal ball like one of these, appears on the screen immediately, in what we will call the "Work Area".

If you click on the shape, it plays back the chunk of speech that was just recorded. As you record different chunks of speech, the crystal balls that show up on the screen have one or another of the designs shown above, so you can tell them apart visually.

These shapes can be dragged up to another part of the screen (the "Sentence Assembly Area" - see labelled screen shot above) to be ordered (from left to right) into sentences.

You can play back the entire sequence of shapes in this area in order to correct errors or to help yourself think of new words. Shapes can also be put into a different order in this Sentence Assembly Area, by moving them to different slots.

When you are satisfied with your sentence, you click a button to have the entire sequence moved up to another part of the screen, the "Narrative Assembly Area", where it is now represented by a single icon (which looks like a purple bean, shown here on the right).

A purple bean can be moved back from the Narrative Area to the Sentence Area, where it decomposes back into the individual shapes, which can be replaced, re-ordered, or combined with new material. An entire narrative (the ordered sequence of purple beans) can be built up in this way. Since the narratives are saved as .mp3 files, they can be emailed to family or friends, or used in many other ways. (See the SentenceShaper Manual for more information on how to do this.)

In the above screen shot of SentenceShaper, the white arrow at the lower left is how you exit the program, and the question mark takes you to another word-finding tool (the WordFinder).

SentenceShaper was designed to have a very simple interface with as little distraction as possible. For that reason, it actually covers the toolbar that usually appears at the bottom of the screen on Windows computers. For the same reason, it doesn't have the usual three little boxes in the upper right corner of the screen. To exit the program, you use that arrow at the bottom left

Why does SentenceShaper help people to create better speech?

There’s a lot of evidence in the aphasia research literature (see our professional section) that people with aphasia may retain knowledge of their language, but can’t use this knowledge in real time because their processing is slowed down – it takes them longer to think of words, and words vanish from memory before they can be combined into sentences.

For example, a person with aphasia trying to describe this picture might produce a subject noun phrase, “the girl,” and then struggle for a long time to come up with a verb, such as “hit”. But then, when he tries to create the full sentence, that subject phrase “the girl” may have disappeared from his memory and will have to be re-retrieved. By the time “the girl” has been produced for the second time, the memory of the verb "hit" may have vanished, and so it goes.

Observing this kind of struggle suggested the idea behind SentenceShaper: that language production in aphasia might be helped by an assistive device that makes it possible for the user to hold words and phrases in memory longer so they can be combined into sentences.

That's basically what SentenceShaper does. Once the user has recorded "the girl" in describing the above picture, he will not have to keep it in memory; just clicking its associated shape on the screen will play it back. Also, for people with aphasia, speaking is very effortful, making it hard for them to do what is called "self-monitoring"--that is, listening to what they are saying as they talk. Therefore, people with aphasia may not realize that what they are saying is incorrect, incomplete, or confusing. SentenceShaper allows speakers to create an utterance and then play it back. This will allow them to correct any errors, and may also help them to think of ways to expand or improve it.

PLEASE NOTE: The downloads below are for the original version of the program, not for SentenceShaper 2, the new version of the program. Documentation for the new version is incorporated into the program itself, and updated/printable versions will be posted on the SentenceShaper 2 page in the near future.

The Quick Start Guide

Our Quickstart Guide provides step-by-step guidance in using the software program the first time, and may give you a better sense of how it works. Click here to view the guide in PDF format. Note: Your browser may pause while the file loads. Or, if you right-click and then choose "Save target as...", you can copy it to your own computer. The file is named "sentenceshaperquickstartguide.pdf"; be sure to remember where on your computer you have saved it.

If you are unable to view the file, then you may need to download the free Adobe Reader, from www.adobe.com. If the file still doesn't open in your Internet browser (that is, if you can't view it as a web page), just download it onto your computer, where you can view it with the Adobe Reader.

The SentenceShaper Manual

The SentenceShaper Manual is a longer document (approximately 70 pages). You can click here to view the manual in PDF format, though it may take a little while for your browser to load. Or, if you right-click and then choose "Save target as...", you can copy it to your own computer. The file is named "sentenceshaperquickstartguide.pdf"; be sure to remember where on your computer you have saved it.

If you are unable to view the file, then you may need to download the free Adobe Reader, from www.adobe.com. If the file still doesn't open in your Internet browser (that is, if you can't view it as a web page), just download it onto your computer, where you can view it with the Adobe Reader.

Links to other pages on the website that you may find helpful

• SentenceShaper FAQS (Frequently Asked Questions)
• What others are saying about the software