User-centred app design for speech sound disorders interventions with tablet computers

© 2017 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany Traditional speech and language pathology practice (SLPP) faces challenges delivering effective and timely therapy due to long waiting lists, the need for regular practice outside the clinic and a lack of children’s motivation to engage in persistent practice. Technology has untapped potential to address these issues and improve SLPP. This paper describes the design of a tablet app for delivering technology-enhanced therapy for children with speech sound disorders and investigates the impact of the use of apps on SLPP. The initial design was informed by a nation-wide survey of speech-language pathologists (SLPs). The quantitative analysis disclosed that even though SLPs positively perceive mobile technology, they do not currently fully exploit it in their practice due to a lack of apps in their native language and the limited usefulness of apps in foreign languages. Using a user-centred design process, a multidisciplinary team created three prototypes and a final version of an app that has been tested in real therapeutic sessions during everyday practice and informed by feedback from SLPs and children. The observation analysis is presented based on an adaptation of Koole’s FRAME model. The qualitative findings indicate that SLPs identify mobile apps as enabling greater mobility, allowing new therapeutic approaches, creating possibilities for practice outside the therapeutic setting and increasing children’s motivation, supporting greater persistence to practise in the context of the therapy

Tablet game-supported speech therapy embedded in children’s popular practices

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Modern speech-language pathology practices (SLPPs) have adopted tablet games in recent years. Research is needed to take advantage of the potential benefits tablets can offer and to explore the factors that influence its introduction. This paper discusses a survey that was conducted to investigate the factors that influence speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) beliefs and the actual use of tablets in SLPPs. The results of the survey, conducted among Slovenian SLPs, indicated that their most positive beliefs concerning tablets relate to social influence. Specifically, the beliefs relate to children’s interest and practice with tablets and have a significant impact on the decision-making of SLPs concerning introducing tablets in therapy. Conversely, SLPs’ most negative beliefs relate to the conditions for facilitating tablet use, particularly the lack of Slovenian applications. This paper discusses a separate case study that was conducted in which tablet game-supported therapy was introduced to a group of 44 children. The case study results indicated that the children accepted the use of tablet games for therapy purposes and the games had a positive impact on the children’s motivation and satisfaction

User-centred app design for speech sound disorders interventions with tablet computers

© 2017 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany Traditional speech and language pathology practice (SLPP) faces challenges delivering effective and timely therapy due to long waiting lists, the need for regular practice outside the clinic and a lack of children’s motivation to engage in persistent practice. Technology has untapped potential to address these issues and improve SLPP. This paper describes the design of a tablet app for delivering technology-enhanced therapy for children with speech sound disorders and investigates the impact of the use of apps on SLPP. The initial design was informed by a nation-wide survey of speech-language pathologists (SLPs). The quantitative analysis disclosed that even though SLPs positively perceive mobile technology, they do not currently fully exploit it in their practice due to a lack of apps in their native language and the limited usefulness of apps in foreign languages. Using a user-centred design process, a multidisciplinary team created three prototypes and a final version of an app that has been tested in real therapeutic sessions during everyday practice and informed by feedback from SLPs and children. The observation analysis is presented based on an adaptation of Koole’s FRAME model. The qualitative findings indicate that SLPs identify mobile apps as enabling greater mobility, allowing new therapeutic approaches, creating possibilities for practice outside the therapeutic setting and increasing children’s motivation, supporting greater persistence to practise in the context of the therapy

Tablet game-supported speech therapy embedded in children’s popular practices

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Modern speech-language pathology practices (SLPPs) have adopted tablet games in recent years. Research is needed to take advantage of the potential benefits tablets can offer and to explore the factors that influence its introduction. This paper discusses a survey that was conducted to investigate the factors that influence speech-language pathologists’ (SLPs) beliefs and the actual use of tablets in SLPPs. The results of the survey, conducted among Slovenian SLPs, indicated that their most positive beliefs concerning tablets relate to social influence. Specifically, the beliefs relate to children’s interest and practice with tablets and have a significant impact on the decision-making of SLPs concerning introducing tablets in therapy. Conversely, SLPs’ most negative beliefs relate to the conditions for facilitating tablet use, particularly the lack of Slovenian applications. This paper discusses a separate case study that was conducted in which tablet game-supported therapy was introduced to a group of 44 children. The case study results indicated that the children accepted the use of tablet games for therapy purposes and the games had a positive impact on the children’s motivation and satisfaction

Spin-glass magnetism of the non-equiatomic CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy

International audienceThe CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy (HEA) is a magnetically concentrated crystalline system with all lattice sites magnetic, containing randomness (five different types of spins are randomly positioned on the lattice) and frustration (a consequence of mixed ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions). The sample material was prepared as a non-equiatomic, fully random solid solution of the five magnetic elements and we have studied experimentally the nature of the magnetic state. Upon cooling, no long-range magnetic ordering takes place, but the spin system undergoes a kinetic freezing transition to a spin glass phase, where below the spin freezing temperature 20 K, ergodicity of the system is broken. The observed broken-ergodicity phenomena include zero-field-cooled – field-cooled magnetization splitting in low magnetic fields, a frequency-dependent cusp in the ac susceptibility, an ultraslow time-decay of the thermoremanent magnetization and the memory effect, where the state of the spin system reached upon isothermal aging at a certain temperature can be retrieved after a reverse temperature cycle. All these phenomena are associated with the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a nonergodic, frustrated system of coupled spins that approach thermal equilibrium, but can never reach it on a finite experimental time scale, so that we are observing only transient effects of partial equilibration within localized spin domains

Spin-glass magnetism of the non-equiatomic CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy

International audienceThe CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy (HEA) is a magnetically concentrated crystalline system with all lattice sites magnetic, containing randomness (five different types of spins are randomly positioned on the lattice) and frustration (a consequence of mixed ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions). The sample material was prepared as a non-equiatomic, fully random solid solution of the five magnetic elements and we have studied experimentally the nature of the magnetic state. Upon cooling, no long-range magnetic ordering takes place, but the spin system undergoes a kinetic freezing transition to a spin glass phase, where below the spin freezing temperature 20 K, ergodicity of the system is broken. The observed broken-ergodicity phenomena include zero-field-cooled – field-cooled magnetization splitting in low magnetic fields, a frequency-dependent cusp in the ac susceptibility, an ultraslow time-decay of the thermoremanent magnetization and the memory effect, where the state of the spin system reached upon isothermal aging at a certain temperature can be retrieved after a reverse temperature cycle. All these phenomena are associated with the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of a nonergodic, frustrated system of coupled spins that approach thermal equilibrium, but can never reach it on a finite experimental time scale, so that we are observing only transient effects of partial equilibration within localized spin domains