According to a new study, using adaptive language-learning software is extremely beneficial on helping individuals with aphasia to regain their language skills.
What is Aphasia?
Many stroke survivors experience aphasia, which is a speech and language processing disorder, which can have serious, negative impacts on daily life for the individual with aphasia.
Currently, traditional treatments for aphasia will typically require a specialised therapist, which can be expensive.
This therapy is also typically conducted in a clinical setting, whereas with language-learning software, the user can use it wherever and whenever they like.
Senior author of the study, Dr Jed Meltzer, says: “These results are highly encouraging and suggest that the use of adaptive language-learning software should be considered for widespread adoption in treating aphasia.”
The study
This study examined 28 individuals who were recruited from aphasia support groups and aphasia-related groups on social media.
Each study participant began by completing an evaluation with a researcher, where they were shown pictures and asked to name them, for example “umbrella” or “squirrel.”
Next, participants used an online program in order to practice identifying images they could not name during their initial evaluation, with each image having two clues and then the answer.
Participants were to use this program 30 minutes a day for two weeks.
As part of this study, researchers tested three differing strategies to schedule the repetition of words in the software.
On of the strategies used was “spaced repetition” which presents correctly named items less frequently, thus making the participants focus more on the items they do not remember correctly.
After the two weeks of training was completed, participants completed two additional evaluations.
The first evaluation was taken one week after completing, whilst the second was taken four weeks later., in order to test how well they had retained their skills.
Study findings & conclusion
The research team discovered that participants successfully relearned the majority of the trained items using the software, with the adaptive spaced repetition strategy performing best.
Thus meaning that there was no negatives to dropping items from the practice list once they had been mastered.
Dr Meltzer concludes: “Our research suggests that stroke survivors and others living with aphasia can improve their language skills using apps over several months, and can potentially relearn hundreds of words if they practice enough.
“Adaptive language-learning software using spaced repetition appears to be extremely helpful in scaling treatment for stroke survivors and other individuals living with aphasia, ultimately helping to improve their quality of life.”
