The Societal Impact work package developed a range of apps and serious games based on research from the Consortium. You can find more information on these apps below.
List of apps and serious games on this page:
- Yvo (iOS): Mutually compose sentences from words in a playful manner
- TicTacTeam (iOS): Playfully develop a new communication system together
- LingQuest (iOS / Browser): Listen and recognize similar samples of languages worldwide
- SynQuiz (iOS / Android / Browser): Discover if you associate colors with letters, numbers, days, or months
- Woordwolk (iOS): Browse through word clouds and discover words almost on your mind
- Vowel Space Travel (iOS): Learn to recognize and discriminate vowels from British English
- SIMPTELL (Browser): Language therapy for persons with chronic Broca’s aphasia
1. Yvo (iOS): Mutually compose sentences from words in a playful manner
Yvo is a board game for two to nine players, that lets you practice with grammar in a playful manner. Yvo is similar to Scrabble or Wordfeud, but instead of composing words with letters, players compose sentences with words. The iPad is the gameboard on which the players put the words from their shelf into a gramatically correct sentence. The players determine mutually whether a sentence is grammatically correct. When putting a word, a player can change its form such as the conjugation or tense. Further, Yvo can speak out loud words and sentences, and players can look up its definition. Yvo is available for free in the App Store.
Platforms: iOS (iPad).
Support: Check the Frequently Asked Questions first.
Yvo in the app store (over 500 downloads)
Yvo in the press
Magazines and websites
Radboud University (Vox)
NEMO Kennislink
Radio
De Taalstaat (9m:10s)
NPO Radio 1
2. TicTacTeam (iOS): Playfully develop a new communication system together
TicTacTeam is een puzzelspel waarbij spelers met elkaar samenwerken zonder dat ze met elkaar praten. Elke speler ziet aTicTacTeam is a puzzlegame where players collaborate without talking to each other. Each player only sees his or her own tablet screen. Each player controls a different object, such as a square or a triangle. The player has to manage to communicate to the other player about whereto he or she has to move his or her object and in what orientation, without the coplayer being able to discover this on his own. The players gradually learn to communicate using different strategies that spontaneously emerge during the process. There are a number of starting levels eliminating the need for an elaborate instruction. TicTacTeam is available for free in the App Store.
Platforms: iOS (iPad)
Support: Check the Frequently Asked Questions first.
TicTacTeam in the iTunes app store (over 500 downloads)
TicTacTeam in the press
Magazines and websites
Radboud University
NEMO Kennislink
Volkskrant
Demos
Drongo festival (view video / photos)
Nijmeegse Taalmiddag
3. LingQuest (iOS / Browser): Listen and recognize similar samples of languages worldwide
LingQuest is a game that helps the player discover the similarities and differences in the world’s languages. Players listen to recordings and must match speakers of the same language. They find out about where languages are spoken and how many speakers a language has. The game includes over 70 languages from the most common to endangered languages from the DOBES Archive (Documentation of Endangered Languages) from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. LingQuest is available for free in the App Store and online — click here to start playing immediately.
Platforms: iOS (iPad en iPhone), web.
Support: Check the Frequently Asked Questions first.
LingQuest in the iTunes app store (over 500 downloads)
LingQuest in the press
Magazines and websites
NEMO Kennislink
Radboud University
De Gelderlander
Demos
Drongo festival (view video / photos)
Nijmeegse Taalmiddag
4. SynQuiz (iOS / Android / Browser): Discover if you associate colors with letters, numbers, days, or months
Synesthesia is an interesting trait occurring in about 4% of the general population. For people with synesthesia two or more senses appear to be interconnected; for example someone with synesthesia perceives certain concepts, such as letters or numbers, as inherently colored. This app contains four playful quizzes to find out whether you may have this type of synesthesia, i.e. for letters and numbers, days of the week, or months. If you take the fourth longer test for letters & numbers you can directly apply for genetic studies at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. SynQuiz is available for free in the App Store and in the Google Play Store.
Platforms: iOS en Android (smartphones en tablets), web.
Support: Check the Frequently Asked Questions first.
SynQuiz in the iTunes app store en de google play store (over 3000 downloads)
SynQuiz in the press
Magazines and websites
NEMO Kennislink
Radboud University
De Gelderlander
Radio
Demos
Drongo festival (view video / photos)
Nijmeegse Taalmiddag
5. Woordwolk (iOS): Browse through word clouds and discover words almost on your mind
It is on the tip of your tongue. You want to say something, but the right word doesn’t pop up from your memory. This is the daily experience of patients with aphasia. The new app WoordWolk (word cloud) helps such patients if they are still able to read. They browse through clouds of associated words until they reach the word they had in mind. The app has a clear and simple interface, but underneath clever techniques are being used to enable the user a fast and effective search. WoordWolk is available for free in the App Store.
Platforms: iOS (iPad).
Support: Check the Frequently Asked Questions first.
Woordwolk in the iTunes app store (over 3500 downloads)
WoordWolk in the press
Magazines and websites
Radboud University
De Gelderlander
NEMO Kennislink
De Morgen
VoxMagazine
Nederlands Dagblad
Hersenletsel / AVN
Hersenstichting
Onze Taal
TV
Tijd voor MAX
Hart van Nederland
TV Gelderland
Radio
EenVandaag
Nieuwe feiten
BNR
Radio Gelderland
Gezond en wel
Demos
Publieksdag Hersenstichting 2014
Drongo festival (bekijk video / foto’s)
Nijmeegse Taalmiddag
6. Vowel Space Travel (iOS): Learn to recognize and discriminate vowels from British English
This game was made for you to explore British English vowels and to learn to perceive them better. Each vowel is a planet and you travel through a galaxy of these planets, trying to hear the differences between the vowels in different words and learning to do that better.
You will discover that hearing the difference between two vowels will sometimes be easy and sometimes more difficult. So you can find out which vowels you need to work on, and focus on them. A native speaker of Spanish may end up on missions in a different part of vowel space from a native speaker of Japanese. Native speakers of other varieties of English can have a go at distinguishing among the vowels of British English.
Vowel Space Travel is available in the App Store (free).
Platforms: iOS (iPad)
Vowel Space Travel in the iTunes app store
Vowel Space Travel in the press
Magazines and websites
7. SIMPTELL: Language therapy for persons with chronic Broca’s aphasiachronische Broca-afasie
The web app SimpTell aims to support speech and language therapists in teaching Dutch-speaking persons with chronic Broca’s aphasia to produce reduced utterances (i.e., ellipses) to compensate for their sentence production difficulties. Ellipses resemble telegraphic style (e.g., Stroke last year. Speaking difficult. Producing short sentences only). A previous version of SimpTell, called the Dutch and adapted Reduced Syntax Therapy (eREST, Ruiter et al., 2010; Ruiter et al., 2016), was found to significantly enhance elliptical style in Dutch-speaking persons with chronic agrammatism and to improve daily communication. Similar to eREST, SimpTell seeks to support the repetitive drill practices that people with chronic aphasia need to create a new language production routine (i.e., elliptical style). That is, despite the language disorder, the tendency to start a full sentence is typically preserved, and the app helps to overcome this tendency. SimpTell is based on the newest insights on the role of executive functions in compensatory language production (e.g., Roelofs, 2014; Piai et al., 2016).
SimpTell is available for free at https://simptell.nl
Platforms: Web (tablet and pc)
Support: Manuals are available in Dutch for language therapists and persons with chronic Broca’s aphasia.