Hej!

We are very, very pleased to welcome a new version of Sanapsis, Sanapsis Svenska! This means we are now officially a family of three languages, English, Finnish and Swedish.

Our Swedish version will be rolled out gradually. The first version includes 15 exercises and it is currently available in the AppStore. We chose these exercises to give you a broad first impression on what Sanapsis can do for you in planning and executing therapy sessions. There is so much more behind the scenes, we are having a hard time holding back! But let’s take a quick first look on what we have available now in our six categories.

Main menu

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Speech Production - Talproduktion

Naming, verbs

Benämning, verb

Naming, nouns

Benämnign, substantiv

Precise sentence

Bilda en exakt mening

Presice sentence

Bilda en exakt mening

We kicked things off with our all time favorite exercises: Naming, nouns - Benämning, substantiv (514 images) and Naming, actions - Banämning - verb (300 images). These exercises provide a broad look into the images used in Sanapsis and also give you a few ideas on how to use these images in a versatile way in therapy. Precise sentence - Bilda en exakt mening also makes use of the images in Sanapsis, this time prompting your patient to produce precise and informative sentences. With examples, of course! Retell a story - Återge berättelsen introduces you to some text material we have created just for therapy.

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Comprehension - Förståelse

Questions based on text

Frågor om texten

Questions based on text

Frågor om texten

Yes / No

Ja / Nej

The comprehension category includes one of my personal favorites. The simple Yes / No - Ja / Nej -exercise. Such an elegant task of listening and answering simple and complex Yes / No questions. Our instructions give examples on how and why to use this task and of course the material of 88 questions is there for you to use as well.

Questions based on text - Frågor om texten provides a little more challenge on listening, attention and deduction skills with more complex material. Please note that there are two levels for this task, Questions and Yes / No arguments.

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Reading - Läsning

Word and picture

Ord och bild

Connect sentences

Sätt ihop meningen

Read a story

Läs berättelsen

Read a story, settings

Läs berättelsen, inställningar

For the reading category we wanted to start by providing three exercises with different levels of difficulty. Word and picture - Ord och bild is a task of matching a written word to the correct image. Familiar, right? Connect sentences - Sätt ihop meningen provides sentences cut in half for your patient to connect on three different difficulty levels. Again, instructions give you ideas on how and why to use this exercise as well as background on why we think there are many important skills at play when working on these tasks. Read a story - Läs berättelsen is a more challenging task for those patients who read at paragraph level but sometimes struggle with extracting the important information on what they read.

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Writing - Skrivning

Copy a letter by hand

Kopiera bokstäverna för hand

Copy a word by hand

Kopiera ordet för hand

Copy a word by hand

Kopiera ordet för hand

For writing we included two exercises in our first version: Copy letters by hand - Kopiera bokstäverna för hand and Copy words by hand - Kopiera order för hand. These were included for our patients with more severe challenges. They make the most of iPads touch screen and are designed as a canvas for practicing writing skills maybe with your less dominant hand. Take a look, they are actually very fun to work with!

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Semantics - Semantik

What does not belong ?

Vad hör inte hemma i gruppen?

Is the simile true?

Är jämförelsen sann?

For the semantic category we decided to include exercises Is the simile true? - Är jämförelsen sann? and the classic, What does not belong? - Vad hör inte hemma i gruppen? Is the simile true makes use of different similes and asks your patient to use their logic reasoning and interpret figurative language in judging could the given simile be true. Again, more detailed explanations and examples in instruction in the app! What does not belong is most likely a familiar task for every SLP. Our version comes with only words, not images and provides three different difficulty levels. Some of these really challenge you and also make good tasks for reasoning and expressing your opinions. There is usually so much more potential in simple exercises than just completing a task, don’t you think?

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Perseveration - Perseveration

Repetitive naming, numbers

Seriell benämning, siffror

Repetitive naming, letters

Seriell benämning, bokstäver

Perseveration category introduces two serial naming tasks, Repetitive naming, numbers - Seriell benämning, siffror and Repetitive naming, letters - Seriell benämning, bokstäver. Included are prompts on screen with customizable settings and, you know it by now, instructions and ideas on why and how to make use of these exercises. So many ways to use these prompts, really hope you take time to peek into the instructions and get started with patients whose communication efficacy is lower because of a tendency to persevere.

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So, the first version of Sanapsis Svenska is officially out in the world. As with all the versions, our updates and additions (yes, many many more exercises on their way) will always be free. No in-app purchases, no hassle. Please let us know what you think and send us your ideas on improvement and expansions. Looking forward to working together with a new group of friends from Sweden. Vi hörs!

Heja Sverige!

It is time.

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?

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. 

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?

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

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?

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?

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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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!