Keyword Understanding vs And, Or, But…

“This app is great for children with processing difficulties which need to improve their ability to follow directions with a variety of embedded concepts.” ~ Smart Speech Therapy blog “Every child I have used it with has been very engaged by the lovely, brightly-colored pictures, and has quite happily kept on listening and following the instructions.” ~ Speech Blog UK “It can be used for informal assessments, language therapy and home practice. It can also be used to target auditory attention and working memory for cognitive-communication goals.” ~ Speaking of Apps blog Keyword Understanding is a professional speech and language therapy app that targets the ability to understand sentences and follow spoken and written directions of increasing difficulty. Children and adults are asked to follow directions in their everyday lives. In order to follow directions, the child or adult requires a strong knowledge of vocabulary, basic concepts and the ability to process and retain the information they have listened to or read. WHO IS KEYWORD UNDERSTANDING FOR? - Parents - Teachers - Speech language pathologists / Speech and language therapists - Children with reduced attention and listening comprehension or auditory processing difficulties  - Children with receptive language delay, developmental language delay or autism - Adults with mild to moderate aphasia due to stroke or traumatic brain injury - Adults with cognitive-communication difficulties due to stroke or traumatic brain injury  WHAT COMPREHENSION ACTIVITIES ARE INCLUDED IN KEYWORD UNDERSTANDING? Comprehension Check: This activity helps you identify where comprehension breaks down. It checks the understanding of individual vocabulary items, and the basic concepts of size and color. Object, Size & Color: This activity works on the understanding of the basic concepts of size and color as well as the ability to follow one and two-step directions of increasing difficulty. 2 keyword level: Touch the green car 3 keyword level: Touch the big red mug 4 keyword level: Touch the green vase and the yellow cushion 6 keyword level: Touch the small pink gloves and the big blue comb Before & After: This activity works on the ability to understand and follow temporal directions (directions which include the concepts before/after in a variety of positions in the sentence). “Before you touch the t-shirt, touch the phone” “After you touch the lamp, touch the vase”, “Touch the flower before you touch the box”, “Touch the sock after you touch the bucket”. First & Then: This activity works on the ability to understand and follow sequential directions (directions which include the concepts first/then in the sentence). “First touch the ladder, then touch the bike”.  WHAT LANGUAGE & COGNITIVE SKILLS DOES KEYWORD UNDERSTANDING TARGET? - Vocabulary - Listening / Auditory Comprehension - Reading Comprehension - Working Memory - Attention to Detail - Language Processing - Basic Concepts / Adjectives (size, color) - Temporal Directions (Before/After) - Sequential Directions (First… Then)  FEATURES 3 modes: - Listening/ Auditory Only: Match the spoken direction to the picture(s) - Reading Only: Match the written direction to the picture(s) - Listening and Reading: Match the spoken and written directions to the picture(s) Keyword Understanding lets you: - Choose from a variety of vocabulary items in different sizes and five different colors allowing for thousands of following directions tasks - Follow directions of increasing difficulty and length - Add individual user profiles - Automatically track correct and incorrect responses of each user - Email a detailed result summary after a session or at a later date - Receive audio feedback for correct answers only, incorrect answers only or both All Aptus Speech Therapy apps participate in the 50% off Volume Purchase Program.  Visit our website for more details about our other speech and language therapy apps.

And, Or, But… requires the player to find the object on the screen that has a specified color, size, number, or spatial relationship. There are four levels of difficulty and seven tasks: And, With; Qualitative Relationships - Size; Quantitative Relationships - Number; Spatial Relationships; Or; Negatives; and Challenge. The Introduction level has two items on the screen. The objective for this level is to get the user comfortable with the tasks. The items on the screen are simple squares, circles, and triangles. In the Introduction level, the user gets immediate feedback on whether their choice was correct or incorrect. There are seven tasks for the user to complete. They will be discussed below. The Beginning level has four items on the screen. In this level, there is only one target but there is more variety in the kinds of items that are displayed on the screen. We also introduce the Check It button. In this level, and all higher levels, when the user taps on an item, the frame turns blue. The user must now complete the second part of the task, checking their answer. If the answer is correct and no incorrect items are highlighted, the frame of the correct item turns green. After a short delay, the next set of pictures is presented. If any incorrect items are selected, the user will hear the “Show Me…” prompt and be given a chance to change their selections. When the user is confident that only the correct item is selected, they will again tap on the Check It button. As before, if the correct item is selected—and no incorrect items are selected—the frame of the correct item will turn green, and after a delay, the next screen will be displayed. Otherwise, the frame of the correct items will turn green, incorrect items will turn red, and items that were supposed to be selected, but were missed, will turn yellow. The app will pause so that the user can discuss the screen with their mentor. The Intermediate and Challenge levels each have nine items on the screen. There may be more than one target on the screen and the user is expected to select all of them. There may also be more than one of each foil on the screen, so the user can’t just pick the item that appears the most on the screen and expect to get it right. In addition to the four levels, the game has seven tasks. The first task is the And, With task. The user is asked to pick the item that has two colors in it. The word connecting the two colors will be either “and’ or “with”. Sample prompts would be either “Show Me Red and Blue” or “Show Me Red with Blue”. In the Qualitative, Quantitative, and Spatial Relationships tasks are fairly straightforward. The user is asked to find the large or small item on the screen, the frame with “Few” or “Many”, or whether an object is “Above” or “Below”, at the “Top” or “Bottom”, or “Left” or “Right”. The Or task is a bit more difficult than the other tasks. In this task, the user hears the colors of two objects, but is asked to pick only one of them. The first two levels introduce the concept of one or the other but not both, with single colors. In the higher levels, the prompt contains two colors. Sample prompts would be either “Show Me Red and Blue or Green and Blue” or “Show Me Black and Purple or Green and Blue”. In the Negatives task, the role of target and foil is reversed. The user is asked to select all of the items that do not have the specified attribute. Sample prompts would be “Show Me Not Red and Blue” or “Show Me Not Green with Purple”. The Challenge task has two parts. If the user has selected the Introduction or Beginning level, they are presented with screens from each of the other six tasks. Unlike what normally happens in these two levels, the groups are randomly selected for each item, so the kind of items on the screen may all be different. If the user has selected the higher levels, they are presented with tasks that combine concepts that were learned in the earlier tasks and have more confusing foils.