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. Right-click if you would like to download the SentenceShaper Manual, then choose "Save target as..." (The report is in PDF format.)
Whether subjects 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.
Subjects often forget the assignment, 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 subjects can replay it as needed to remind themselves 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 subject has a home computer, Internet access, and home support, subjects 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 subjects’ computers). Photographs brought in by subjects 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.
A portable, handheld device interfacing with SentenceShaper is currently under development. However, there are "low tech" equivalents to allow subjects to create messages on SentenceShaper to be played 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 subjects to bring into the lab productions they have created at home.
Finally, SentenceShaper can be used to create speeches or short talks (one agrammatic subject 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.