News

March 2023: SWAN at "Therapy Talks"

SWAN featured at the "Therapy Talks" event, organised by the Association of Speech & Language Therapists in Independent Practice. Caroline gave a lightning quick overview of numeracy difficulties which may occur in adults and children with language difficulties, the SWAN app and the outcomes of our feasibility study. Many thanks to the ASLTIP members for the invitation and for all the interesting questions and conversations!

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Our paper outlining the development and validation of the functional numeracy assessment has now been published in the International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders: "Which blueberries are better value? The development and validation of the functional numeracy assessment for adults with aphasia". See the post below from November 2021 for a video abstract of the study.

December 2022: Full report published

The public report for our feasibility study exploring the SWAN game-based approach to (re-)learning foundational number skills is now available via UCL Discovery: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10161227/. We thank our participants, their families and all those who generously supported the project.

"The study has provided strong indications that the SWAN game may be used as an intervention to enhance basic numeracy in PWA. Similar indications are found for children with DLD, though the data are sparse. The study has confirmed the importance of unmet needs for numeracy support in PWA and provided a possible framework for categorization of such needs. In both PWA and children with DLD, improvements attributable to intervention were observed across the range of pre-intervention numeracy levels and gameplay skills. There are indications that the learning algorithms written into the SWAN game were successful in supporting participants with a wide range of learning difficulties."

November 2022: SWAN in Chicago

The SWAN team were delighted to be joined by our colleague Yael Benn from Manchester Metropolitan University to present a symposium on "Post-stroke Numerical Difficulties (Acalculia): Impact, Assessment and Intervention" at the American Congress of Rehabilitation Research in Chicago - and to enjoy some of the sights and sounds of the city.

20th October 2022: World Stroke Day

Our SWAN research was featured in this year’s World Stroke Day forum hosted by the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging at UCL. We were included in a documentary film and a Q&A session about rehabilitation apps called “Aiding Recovery From Home”. You can see more details and watch the documentary at the Wellcome Centre website: https://engagement.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/projects/wsdforum/documentaries/rehabilitation-apps-aiding-recovery-from-home/ 

26th June 2022: SWAN at the International Aphasia Rehabilitation Conference

We were delighted to have the opportunity to present some of the main findings of our study with adults with aphasia at IARC, and to talk to others working in this important area.

26th November 2021: Congratulations to Kerri

Many congratulations to Kerri Ichikowitz, an MSc student who has been working with the SWAN team this year. Her research project was awarded the Tavistock Trust for Aphasia student prize as well as the IJLCD-RCSLT student project award and the British Aphasiology Society student project prize!

Kerri's project was a validation of the task we used in our intervention study to assess number skills in everyday tasks. You can hear all about Kerri's work here:

31st August 2021: Data collection complete!

We have completed all the data collection for our study exploring the feasibility of the SWAN app. We are currently hard at work analysing the data in detail, but here is Carolyn Bruce describing some of the findings from our participants with aphasia:

29th October World Stroke Day - No longer able to count on yourself when it comes to numbers?

Aphasia is when a person has difficulty with their spoken and/or written communication skills. It is usually caused by damage to the brain resulting from a stroke affecting the left hemisphere. As well as having trouble with understanding and producing words, people with aphasia often have difficulties with numbers. Our message today is: let’s think about numbers as well as spoken and written language.

Research shows that people with aphasia do less well on tasks involving numbers and calculation than either people with brain damage to the right hemisphere or adults without brain damage matched for age and education. In addition to making mistakes, people with aphasia often take longer when working with numbers, frequently relying on counting with fingers. They can also experience higher levels of anxiety and frustration.

Unfortunately, number skills are essential in everyone’s daily life, from locating and saying a telephone number, to conducting complex calculations in our heads or on paper. To operate effectively in today’s digital world, people need to have a basic level of functional numeracy. Getting just one number wrong can result in a failed transaction, the wrong dosage of medicine, a missed appointment or a lost contact. Here is Caroline from the SWAN project team to explain more:

Although for some people with aphasia number skills are a big challenge, it can be overlooked in rehabilitation. Because of time constraints, occupational therapists are more likely to focus on training coping strategies for dealing with numbers, for example using apps, while speech and language therapists target communication skills and literacy. There may also be an assumption in society that acquired numeracy problems are not a serious problem and people will get by. Moreover, some adults with aphasia are reluctant to admit to their numeracy difficulties and ask for help.

We think that it is important to acknowledge this problem and to find ways to improve numeracy skills. That is why we have set up the SWAN project and designed a new digital game to make learning fun. No single programme will solve this problem alone, but we think that our game may be an important step in consolidating basic numeracy skills. Initial work suggests that repeated practice at naming and sequencing numbers improves attainment. However, we need to collect stronger evidence that this is the case. So, in the next couple of months, we are going to be recruiting for the next phase of our study which explores these difficulties and whether the game we designed is effective in helping. If you are interested in taking part or finding out more please fill out our contact form here: Take part

For tips about about strategies and tools that can help when experiencing difficulties with numbers click here:

For more information about the difficulties with numbers faced by adults with aphasia take a look at this article by Gabriela De Luccia and Karin Zazo Ortiz:  

https://www.scielo.br/pdf/anp/v72n3/0004-282X-anp-72-03-197.pdf

Friday 16th October 2020 is DLD Awareness Day.

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) refers to problems with speaking and/or listening to language. It may affect a person’s ability to learn and remember words, and to put together words in sentences. It is estimated to affect approximately 7% of people; that’s 2 children in every class of 30.

Our message for today is: let’s think about numbers as well as words and sentences.

Although for some children with DLD numbers are a strength relative to other difficulties, for most children numbers are a big challenge. These difficulties are understandably often overlooked as intervention focuses on supporting a child’s broader language problems.

Here’s Chris from the SWAN project team to explain more:

Difficulties with numbers may seem like a small problem, especially in relation to the broader language difficulties associated with DLD. These difficulties though will impact a child’s ability to access the maths curriculum at school and many other aspects of school learning and life. They can also have a significant effect on activities of everyday life, like telling the time, playing and keeping score in games, sharing out things like sweets, following a recipe. These things can have a big impact on a child’s quality of life.

This is why on the SWAN project we think helping with numbers is so important.

In the next couple of months, we’re going to be recruiting for the next phase of our study which explores these difficulties and whether the game we designed is effective in helping. You can find out more about the study here: About SWAN DLD

You can find out more about the difficulties with numbers faced by children with DLD in this review article by Alexandra Cross and colleagues (you’ll need to pay to access the full research article, but you can see a summary here): https://pubs.asha.org/doi/full/10.1044/2018_LSHSS-18-0041

And you can find out more about DLD and DLD Awareness Day here: https://radld.org/dld-awareness-day/