SentenceShaper.com
An innovative approach to language software for aphasia
An innovative approach to language software for aphasia
This page is derived from the SentenceShaper Manual. As it comes near the end of the manual, some things may not be obvious if you haven't yet read the manual. Click here if you would like to view the SentenceShaper Manual in your browser (there will be a delay while the file is loaded). Or you can download it by right-clicking on the link and then choosing "Save target as..." (The report is in PDF format.)
Whether people are working at home or in the lab, they will need variety in order to remain engaged with the system. Below are a few suggestions regarding homework.
Because of their language problems, people with aphasia may have trouble remembering homework assignments, so it may be useful to record homework instructions in a single purple bean. This bean can be placed in some distinctive location (e.g., rightmost in the Narrative Assembly Area), and the user can replay it as needed to remind herself of the assignment.
Allow the user to select a favorite TV show or movie to retell. While wordless movies created for children may be the most appropriate to the linguistic ability of an adult with aphasia, s/he may find the use of these materials insulting.
For higher-level patients, an entertaining home exercise we have employed in our research studies is to use the descriptions of outrageous actual lawsuits provided in a 1980s board game, Blind Justice (Avalon Hill). The clinician records the game's brief description of one of these lawsuits onto a single SentenceShaper chunk, and asks the patient to take the part of each side in the dispute, and argue for that side.
If you have access to the Internet, or if the person with aphasia has a home computer, Internet access, and home support, then he can create messages for friends and family on the system.
As discussed in the "Sending Narratives as Email Attachments" section of the SentenceShaper Manual, the system creates a compressed mp3 file for each session narrative. This file may be sent as an attachment, just as you would send a picture or file attachment.
In a study incorporating the system into aphasia groups, we developed a group "website" (which actually ran locally on group members’ computers). Photographs brought in by members were paired with related narratives created on the system, allowing the group members to learn much more about each others’ histories, family, interests, and opinions than they could learn under the constraints of the group meetings themselves. Such a scrapbook might also prove motivating in 1:1 therapy; rather than an html program running on the browser, such a scrapbook could also be created in PowerPoint, which will play sound files and display pictures. SentenceShaper 2 has this electronic scrapbook functionality built in.
A portable, handheld device interfacing with SentenceShaper is currently under development. However, there are "low tech" equivalents to allow people to create messages on SentenceShaper and then play them in some real world setting (e.g., a lawyer or doctor’s office, a dinner party, a store).
SentenceShaper sound files (see "Sending Narratives as Email Attachments" in the SentenceShaper Manual) can be copied onto a CD and played in a CD player or an mp3 player. Still simpler, a SentenceShaper production can easily be recorded on a portable tape recorder or a portable AAC device such as the MessageMate™: just hold the portable device up to the computer's speaker, click the portable device's recording button, and click SentenceShaper's Play Narrative button to play the SentenceShaper narrative. Turn off the portable device's recorder when SentenceShaper is finished playing the narrative.
These portability options can also be used to allow patients to bring into the clinic or office a SentenceShaper production they have created at home.
Finally, SentenceShaper can be used to create speeches or short talks (one woman with agrammatic aphasia presented a series of speeches to over a thousand people using the system). These might be appropriate in the context of a public speaking group in a clinic, or as an adjunct to an aphasia conversation group.