Functional Conversation app for iPhone and iPad

This app will help you improve conversation skills in older students who have a variety of disorders including autism, social language, and auditory processing.

Your students will learn to engage in and create natural conversations through prompted conversation simulation. Students make choices and have the freedom to select topics, responses, order of turns, and how long the conversation should last for each topic. Hundreds of conversation topics and prompts are included. Each can be inserted into a conversation as is or edited to reflect personal expression and preference. All topics and prompts (even edited ones) are read aloud when tapped using the iPad’s internal speech engine.

First the user chooses from three options to start the conversation:
•Talk About Me
•Ask Someone a Question
•Choose a Conversation Topic

Additional choices show the student the logic of conversation and a list of options. For example, if a student chooses Talk About Me, he selects from options like these:
•Today, I…
•Im going to see…
•I have something unusual to tell you.
•I have an idea.
•I saw…
•I need to...
•Im planning to…

Other options lead the student to make a comment, ask a question, or change the conversational topic. The student chooses what to add or how to respond. Each partner takes a conversation turn by tapping the button with her name on it. You can take a picture of a student to display as a prompt when it’s her turn, and a partner can take several turns in succession.

Conversations are automatically saved and dated, and can be recalled, edited, and emailed as a text file. The student can use the script
created to practice the conversation with another partner later.

The author of this app, Larry I. Kleiman, M.A., CCC-SLP, has both a keen interest and extensive experience in improving communication skills of individuals of all ages and abilities. He’s a private practitioner in southern California and specializes in serving individuals with developmental delays in residential, community, and clinical settings, including program development, consultation, assessment, and therapeutic intervention. In recent years, services have expanded to early intervention and adult neurological disorders (acute and rehabilitative); however, a prime interest for more than 30 years has been individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Larry is the author of the Functional Communication Profile (originally published in 1994), as well as the Functional Communication Profile Revised and the Functional Communication Profile Reporting Software. All are published by LinguiSystems, Inc.