Contact Us / REPORT A BUG

Use the form on the right to contact us.

Always looking forward to hearing from you! 

         

123 Street Avenue, City Town, 99999

(123) 555-6789

email@address.com

 

You can set your address, phone number, email and site description in the settings tab.
Link to read me page with more information.

IMG_0435.jpg

All The Things We Love About Speech Therapy With Adults

This blog is about all the things we at Sanapsis Love about Speech Therapy with Adults. 

It is time.

Nana Lehtinen

We are proud to release our latest update! 

You can now download the latest version of Sanapsis from AppStore update (Finnish, version 2.4 and English, version 2.7) with new material in many of the familiar exercises (we think of them as Oldies but Goodies) and also brand new exercises. As always, all new material is free - no In-App purchases, ever!

This time, most of the new things will be in our Reading-category with some extra sweet treats around the app. Below you will find a list of the things we hope will assist you in planning your therapy sessions this fall and beyond.

Oldies but goodies, improvements:

Word and Picture now has 260 tasks 

Sentence and Picture has 40 new tasks, making it a total of 104

Organize  a story / Järjestä tarina has changed its name to Organize instructions / Järjestä toimintaohje to better reflect the nature of the task. It also gained 7 new tasks!

Read a story got a few more stories (4 to be exact) making it 20 in total

In addition to these we have something brand new to show you: 3 brand new exercises.

What does not belong (total of 64 tasks in exercise)

Sound familiar? Yes, I am sure all of you have used this exercise many times before. In What does not belong you see a selection of words on screen. Ask your patient to look for the one that does not belong to the group. This new exercise has three different levels. Level 1 has four nouns and one of these does not belong in the same category as others. Level 2 adds two words the selection. On level 3 things get a little bit more interesting. Here you may find a noun mixed in with verbs or a selection where one of the words that has no connection to a library (an example of level 3 in the picture). Tasks on level 3 can be a challenge and thus provide material for our higher performing patients. As usual, the info text in the app provides you with ideas on how to use this exercise in many ways with different patients in therapy. 

What does not belong? Level 3. One answer could be: The word THINK does not belong as it is not directly associated with music. Can you think of other solutions?

What does not belong? Level 3. One answer could be: The word THINK does not belong as it is not directly associated with music. Can you think of other solutions?

Connect sentences (with 90 tasks in total)

This new exercise is a meaningful reading task at sentence level. On screen you see sentences cut in half. Ask your patient to read the parts of sentences on screen and arrange them to make coherent sentences. On level 1 you find two complete sentences mixed up, on level 2 three. Level 3 provides more challenge with four sentences. Working on multiple sentences at the same time makes your patient challenge their working memory, attentional control, cognitive inhibition, and cognitive flexibility - all the executive functions we need to be able to communicate effectively using any domains of language. And all this while exercising those reading skills!

Connect sentences. Level 1. Solution: Worlds oceans are still vastly unexplored.  An aeroplane flies at incredible speed. 

Connect sentences. Level 1. 

Solution: Worlds oceans are still vastly unexplored.  An aeroplane flies at incredible speed. 

Fill in letters by hand (with 224 different words)

Remember the exercise Copy words by hand? The one where you can use a finger or a stylus pen to copy words they see on screen? Well, it now has a sibling! In the new exercise Fill in letters by hand the words have lost some of their letters.. But not to worry, just ask your patient to fill in the missing letters while writing the word. Some words are easy, some are more difficult (multiple let_e_s missing). You can take advantage of this by experimenting with different channels for clues (auditory and visual) and help your patient to find the ones that are most helpful to them. You can also choose a category for the words. By choosing a category you have some context for word-finding (priming). If you leave the selection blank you will be given a random word and the difficulty for the task increases.

Fill in letters by hand. You can guess this one, right?

Fill in letters by hand. You can guess this one, right?

And a special treat for our Finnish users only, just because the language is awesome:

Järjestä tavut (180 tehtävää)

Eräs ehdottomista lempimateriaaleistani terapiassa on tavukortit. Tyypillisesti luomme näitä lennossa kynää ja paperia käyttäen, hetkessä asiakkaan tarpeita vastaamaan. Nyt päätimme vihdoin tuoda tavut Sanapsikseen, toivottavasti olemme osanneet valita mukaan sanat  ja sanaparit joista on iloa käyttäjille (ja paperikori ei jatkossa pursua pieniä lappuja enää ihan samalla tavalla kuin aiemmin..)!

Tehtäväinstruktio sovelluksessa kuuluu seuraavasti: 

Ruudulla näet vaihtelevan määrän tavuja. Yhdistettynä tavut muodostavat sanoja, joita kuntoutuja voi rakentaa tavuja liikuttelemalla. Tasolla 1 ruudulla on yksi kaksi- tai kolmitavuinen sana, esim. SA-NA tai SA-RA-NA. Tasolla 2 ruudulta löytyy 1 nelitavuinen yhdyssana, esim. VE-SI-SA-DE, josta voi muodostaa yhden tai kaksi sanaa. Tasolla 3 tavut muodostavat kaksi 2-3 tavuista sanaa esim. KO-RI ja MU-KA-VA. Tavujen määrän lisääntyessä ja rakenteen muuttuessa tehtävä vaikeutuu niin visuaalisesti kuin kognitiivisestikin. Sopivien sanojen rakentaminen tapahtuu kuntoutujan ja terapeutin yhteistyönä. Sanapsis ei anna palautetetta suorituksesta, sillä kaikki suomenkieliset sanat (joiden merkityksen kuntoutuja osaa kuvata) tietenkin kelpaavat! 

Tavutehtävää voit hyödyntää perustehtävänä sanatason merkitykselliseen lukemiseen, jossa kuntoutujan tulee itse määritellä milloin tavuyhdistelmä muodostaa merkityksellisen sanan. Halutessasi voit myös itse terapeuttina järjestää osan tavuista sanoiksi, osan epäsanoiksi ja pyytää kuntoutujaa arvioimaan mikä sanoista on oikein ja mikä väärin. Tässä versiossa harjoitat sekä lukemista, semanttista päättelyä että kriittistä työskentelyotetta. Puhumattakaan yhteistyöstä ja erilaisista kommunikointirooleista roolien vaihtuessa! Yksinkertaisia tavurakenteita voit hyödyntää myös dysartria- tai apraksiaharjoitteissa, joko toisto tai ääneenlukuharjoitteina. Usein on myös tarkoituksenmukaista yhdistää monia tavoitteita yhdellä materiaalilla toteutettuun tehtävään, ja tavusarjoillahan puheterapeutit keksivät vaikka mitä! 

MItä tapoja ja ideoita sinulla on tavukorttien hyödyntämiseen? 

Järjestä tavut, taso 2. Ratkaisu voi olla KALAKEITTO tai KALA ja KEITTO

Järjestä tavut, taso 2. 

Ratkaisu voi olla KALAKEITTO tai KALA ja KEITTO

So, there you go. Now, off to work on the next one! Hope it won't be long till I see you again with a new update. In the meanwhile, please let us know how we are doing. We love to hear from our users! 

SO WHAT HAPPENED HERE?

Nana Lehtinen

As I scroll down on my own posts I see that I have totally... I guess you can call it "Dropping the ball".. I was meaning to write a post about all of our categories but fell one short! Where is the sixth post about Perseveration?! Hmm.

It is sad to realize you didn't meet your goal. However, in this case I don't feel too bad. You see, writing about different categories kind of launched us on a journey (a long one, I admit). As I write this our latest update is in it's final internal review stages for both language versions for Sanapsis, Finnish and English. In addition to these two, some surprises are cooking too, but more about those later.  Maybe one of those surprises will be me surprising myself by finally writing up that last category, only time will tell..

See you soon as we release our latest stuff in Sanapsis!

As wise as an owl? As dangerous as a plate?

Nana Lehtinen

If you are a speech therapist and work with adults with acquired brain injury you are no stranger to difficulties in interpreting and processing figurative and more abstract language. Chances are you have used a metaphor or two with your patients too! I know I have worked my way trough a lot of worksheets of similes and metaphors with my patients, sometimes truthfully wondering why is this important? What is the gain from this exercise, how will this help my patient to navigate his daily life?

After a lot of time observing and working with patients and comparing notes with colleagues we were able to draw lines from working with similes to actually being more competent in communicating in everyday surroundings. And so much so that we decided to include some exercises with similes in Sanapsis! In our Semantics category you can find two exercises that make use of similes.  Neither of them is the  "Tell me what this simile means"-type of exercise per se, but there is no stopping you from using the material provided for that too. 

Semantics category in Sanapsis

Our Is this simile true -exercise challenges the patient to judge if the simile is true or false. Fairly straightforward, right? However,  under the surface patients are

  1. working on understanding intentions behind the words
  2. doing feature analysis on everyday nouns
  3. working on judging the meaning of what they just heard
  4. communicating their opinion by making choices.

Is this simile true?

In addition to this, I like to take things a step forward and ask the patient to provide a suitable adjective or noun to transform the false similes into something that makes sense (like e.g. as loud as a vacuum cleaner), when applicable. And that, of course takes the exercise to a whole different level.

That new level can be explored further in our Complete the simile -exercise where the patient gets to fill in similes. Sanapsis provides the simile with a blank for the adjective and the patient gets to find a suitable word to match the noun provided. In the small black boxes you can find examples of suitable similes, but only the sky and verbal reasoning skills are the limit on what is accepted here! Yes, you guessed it right — in addition to working on generalizations and figurative language skills I always make my patients tell me exactly why they think their answer is a suitable one. 

Fill in the simile

We chose to use similes for our exercises because they are rather simple and straightforward figures of speech. In addition to these exercises there are many things you can do to expand your repertoire in working with figurative language. With higher level patients one of my favorites is to take a passage from a book or a poem and ask the patient to locate and explain the figures of speech in that piece of text. And if you listen and look closely you will find that similes and metaphors are hiding all around us! Just think of that athlete who "flew like an arrow" in that competition or that sad girl "whose face was like stone" or even the cute little puppy who was "as sweet as a sugar plum". 

In addition to the skills used in these tasks I like working with similes because they provide a good starting point to discussions about the abstract level of language. We often see patients who face the feeling of poor communication skills due to not being able to interpret and use figurative speech in their everyday communication, despite their fluent surface level communication skills. And this is where we can step in and start working on those skills in order to help the patients to understand their difficulties and overcome them in everyday situations. 

As for now, it is your turn. I have hidden four everyday figures of speech in this post (not counting the ones used as examples) and I challenge you to locate them! Happy hunting!

Would you mind repeating that?

Nana Lehtinen

Comprehension tasks in speech therapy with adults not the easiest nut to crack. Patients we work with on comprehension have, well, difficulties in understanding language so it can be a challenge to find common ground as to what we are trying to achieve with a given task. Some patients might not be very aware of their symptoms and think they are doing well in their everyday life, when in reality there are lots of difficulties or just drawing away from social situations where difficulties manifest themselves. There might be denial, frustration and all sorts of things going on around these problems.

Overall, comprehension can be a touchy subject. In therapy, I have found it easier to work on comprehension tasks together with the patient instead of making them work on tasks and me being the one who has the right answer. And of course - we incorporated some of this into Sanapsis!  

Here you can see our Menu for Comprehension tasks in Sanapsis. Lets take a minute to explore a few of our tasks.

 

Follow instructions opens with basic settings: view of two images and a sentence on screen. You are to place the iPad on the table between you and your patient. Now you read the sentence to your patient and they arrange the images following directions you read out loud. 

Our example shows you a task where your patient sees an image of the Colosseum and an image of a stack of hay. The (upside down) sentence reads: Move the hay under the Colosseum.

What I like to do in this task is to have a piece of paper handy and as we work trough the tasks with my patient I complete the task by drawing the images on a piece of paper as the patient is working on the same task on screen. Like you see in the picture here, just a quick drawing will do. After we complete a few tasks, we come back and compare notes. And correct each others work (yes, I make mistakes. Sometimes even intentionally).

I like this way of working because it enables us to work side by side with the patient and give feedback to each other — adding an extra layer to the task.

If you like a challenge, settings in this task allows you to add a third image and longer instructions on screen. You can also choose to use the task as a reading task where your patient sees the text alongside the images.

 

I also want to point out some cool stuff hiding in a task called Questions based on text. 

Questions based on text opens to a screen with a piece of text, as you can see in the examples below. You read the text to your patient, asking them to listen carefully as you will be asking questions. After reading the text, you tap the screen and questions based on that text appear. To mark an answer you tap it and it changes color. Swipe back-forward to find new material and return to completed tasks. Pretty straightforward? Yes, I trust you all know what to do here and when this kind of task is appropriate to use.

If you want variation for the task, go to settings (tap the info-button on the right hand corner) and choose Yes/No instead of Questions. 

When you return to the task you see a piece of text that you read to your patient. Tapping the screen provides material based on that text. But instead of questions, now you get to ask your patient to determinate if you are right or wrong. Again asking him/her to state an opinion and justifying it based on what they just heard. Very much like YES/NO questions but based on the text they just heard. Great stuff, right?

As you already know, Sanapsis does not give feedback. But why? We feel that when assessing and addressing real life skills we need to guide our patients to monitor themselves, recognize when they feel insecure about understanding what their communication partner is saying and help them find strategies in asking for clarification. Because real life situation do not beep when we get it wrong.

(However, sometimes there is a genuine need for feedback from the application, a more mechanical approach. Luckily we are not alone and there are many applications that are very useful for this. Just check out this amazing list by Tactus Therapy!)