SentenceShaper.com
An innovative approach to language software for aphasia
An innovative approach to language software for aphasia
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 short description of how to create speech with SentenceShaper, and why it works.
- Requirements for a computer to run SentenceShaper.
- Links to view or download the manual and other documentation.
How to create speech on SentenceShaper
The best way to learn how to use SentenceShaper is to download the free Trial copy and open the SentenceShaper Tutorial workbook. Below is a very short summary of the mechanics of using SentenceShaper, to give you a rough sense of how the program works.
Shown here is a simple screen from the program, one without any pictures on it:
How to record your speech with the program:
1. Start by clicking on the Microphone Button at the bottom of the SentenceShaper screen. It looks like this:
2. Immediately afterwards, a small screen called the Recording Box will appear. It looks like this:
As soon as you see this box, say a word (let's use “tomorrow”) and immediately click the “Done” Button in the box.
3. The box will close, and a crystal ball icon will appear in this lower part of the SentenceShaper screen.
Now click this icon: it will replay your utterance ("tomorrow"). This recorded speech fragment with its associated icon is called a snippet.
4. Record another snippet: Click the Microphone Button, say “I want”, and then click “Done.” A second snippet will pop up in the same part of the screen, and will replay your utterance when you click it.
5. Now let’s make a sentence: Drag both snippets up to the Sentence Row, the seven slots in the middle of the screen. Put them into the first two slots as shown below:
6. Play the turquoise button above the Sentence Row (on the left) to play the snippets in order from left to right. Change the order if necessary by moving them to different slots.
7. Finish the sentence by recording a word or phrase and add this snippet to the sequence. Play the entire sentence (for example, “tomorrow – I want – a haircut”).
8. Click the button on the upper right of the Sentence Row. Your sentence will be moved to the Story Row higher up on the screen, where it will be represented by a single icon (a “purple bean”), circled in this screenshot:
9. Click the bean to replay the entire sentence. If you drag the bean back to the Sentence Row, it will decompose into its original snippets so that you can edit it further. You can build up an entire message in this way: recording snippets, arranging them in the Sentence Row, then adding them to the Story Row.
10. How does this simple, text-free interface help people create better speech?
- REPLAYING items by clicking their icons keeps them in memory so that the user can plan larger structures like sentences and messages, and can revise an utterance without producing all the words over again each time.
- Replaying snippets and sequences helps users to to self-monitor (listen to their own speech) to correct or expand it.
- DRAGGING ICONS to order them into sentences provides a tactile, visual experience of word order.
Click here to download this short summary as a PDF file.
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.
Links to other pages on the website that you may find helpful
- SentenceShaper FAQS (Frequently Asked Questions)
- What others are saying about the software
- Download the Manual in PDF format