Perspectives of persons with aphasia towards SentenceShaper To Go: A qualitative study

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Jennifer S. Lowery MA CCC/SLP, Michelene Kalinyak-Fliszar MA CCC/SLP, and Roberta Brooks MA CCC/SLP for their assistance with the CIU scoring procedures and modifications. We gratefully acknowledge Paula Sobel MA CCC/SLP for her assistance with the interview validation procedures and Laura MacMullen BA for her help with the literature review and construction of earlier drafts. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. Support for this study was provided by a grant from the NIH (#1 R01 HD043991; P.I., M. Schwartz).

SentenceShaper uses methods and computer interfaces covered by U.S. Patent No. 6,068,485 owned by Unisys Corporation and licensed to Psycholinguistic Technologies, Inc.; in addition, Psycholinguistic Technologies, Inc. owns the software described in this paper and has released SentenceShaper as a commercial product. Therefore a conflict of interest arises for Marcia Linebarger, because she owns shares in this company and serves as its director. In order to manage this conflict of interest, ML has not participated in testing or in scoring of raw data in any of the studies described below. No one else involved in the research has a financial interest in the software.

Notes

¹In the version of the Handheld Display (Component 2) used in this study, only 8 utterances could be stored on the device at a given time. This was more than enough for the narratives elicited during the study. However, the final version of SSR-TG embodies a more complex design, allowing up to 24 buttons per topic, with no limits on the number of topics. This increased flexibility allows the handheld to be loaded for more than one situation at a time. The impact of this increased flexibility will have to be examined closely in future studies with the device.