Evidence for "Aided effects": how SentenceShaper helps people to create better spoken utterances

Here is a brief summary of research studies about SentenceShaper's "Aided effects," that is, about the ways in which speech produced on SentencerShaper may be superior to spontaneous speech. These studies were conducted at the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute in Philadelphia, PA. Note: Some of the studies described below used an early prototype of SentenceShaper named "CS" (short for "Communication System").

Aided effects in retelling of silent videos

In the first study employing the system (Linebarger, Schwartz, Romania, Kohn, Stephens, 2000), six people with nonfluent aphasia were trained to use SentenceShaper, and used the program in their homes for approximately 15 hours. After this practice, narratives were elicited on the same topics with and without SentenceShaper. The aided narratives (those produced on the system) were longer and more grammatically structured than the unaided versions for five of the six participants, despite the fact that the version of the system used in this study provided no word-finding help at all. For two of these participants, the contrast between aided and unaided narratives was quite striking. For example, one participant described a particular scene as follows when asked to retell the story without using SentenceShaper:

The, the maid, the maid, the maid, uh, uh, upstair and she, uh, the maid upstairs and 'scuse me' and um … go around but now uh the …. The policeman, she she?, no, the man, two men, and the uh, oh, she, uh, her, she…knock them out, knock them out, um hum, knock them out, two men

But when this participant was using SentenceShaper, she was able to describe the same event in the video as follows:

The man goes around them. She did not do it. The nurse goes around the baby carriage. The policeman, she fights the, the two men.

Another participant described a different scene as follows in the unaided condition (without using SentenceShaper):

Ooh! A fish! Ah, water" and….uh mmm and attendant, "here," and bumped his head. "Oh boy, oh my hand, my hand, my hand.

Her description produced with the help of SentenceShaper was much clearer:

The boy and the fishmonger is taking the fish. The boy hit his hand.

Aided effects in functional messages

A currently funded study explores the use of a portable handheld computer to which the aphasic individual himself can transfer spoken utterances he has created on SentenceShaper. This handheld computer can then be used to assist communication in "real life" situations.

An early experiment in this project examined the quality of functional messages created on SentenceShaper (that is, responses to situations such as finding oneself in a grocery store with no cash). As reported in Bartlett, Fink, Schwartz, & Linebarger (submitted), unfamiliar listeners were asked to rate the informativeness (accuracy and completeness) of the aided and unaided versions of these messages; the aided versions, produced on SentenceShaper, were rated significantly more informative than the unaided versions.

Having established that SentenceShaper's aided effect is found with functional messages, and that it is "perceptible" to human ears, we are now studying the most effective ways to deploy the handheld computer as an AAC aid in real life.

This page is derived from our Research Report; right-click here to download the entire report, then choose "Save target as..." (The report is in PDF format.) More information about these research studies and the scientists and clinicians involved in them may be found on the grants page; full references to articles cited above are on the publications page.

You may also wish to read the page describing research on the treatment effects of our aphasia software SentenceShaper.

Also, research is ongoing. People with aphasia in the Philadelphia and Baltimore areas are encouraged to contact us regarding being subjects in our aphasia research. The link takes you to a page with more information.