Overview and demonstration of the technology of a project investigating the use and efficacy of delivering conversation therapy in an on-line 3-D world to people with acquired language difficulties following stroke and brain injury. The project is currently running jointly between the schools of Human Computer Interaction and Language and Communication Science, here at City University London.

1. Evaluating the Effects of a Virtual
Communication Environment for
People with Aphasia
Richard Talbot
Speech and Language Therapist|Researcher

2. The Project
• 3 year project funded by the stroke
association
• Jointly run between HCID and LCS
• Investigating the benefits and use of a virtual
world for people with aphasia
• Will it benefit language?
• Will it benefit patients wellbeing?
• How will participants feel about and use the
technology?

3. EVA Park
• An enclosed virtual 3D island for people with
aphasia (uses Open Sim)
• Developed through participatory design involving
consultants who have aphasia
• Contains distinct regions, e.g.:
– Houses
– A Cafe
– A Tropical Bar
– A Versatile Counter (e.g. for booking a holiday)
– A Health Centre
– A Hair Dressers

8. What happens in EVA Park?
• Participants represented by avatars
• Also populated by communication support workers
who are qualified SLTs running a conversation therapy
program
• Communication is speech based, with optional text
support, and minimal gesture
• Open for 4 ‘live periods’ (2013 – 2015)
• Each live period is 5 weeks and will involve 5
participants
• Participants will be paired with the support (key)
workers
• Of course participants can interact with anyone in-
world

9. What happens in EVA Park?
• Focus on social uses of language
• Functional communication activities, e.g.:
– Order coffee
– Get a haircut
– Instruct a plumber
– Book a holiday
• Opportunities for fun
– Night club
– Yacht
– Fantastical
• Election narrative

11. Fun Day

12. Coffee group

13. How will we evaluate EVA Park?
• Conversation
• Word retrieval
• Narrative
• Functional Communication
• Social Isolation
• Social Network Analysis
• Confidence communicating
• HCI Observation and analysis
• Participant and carer interviews

14. The Project
• 5 weeks access to the virtual world
• Testing at 3 time points
Group 1:
Language
tests
Practice in the virtual world Language
tests
Rest Language
tests
 5 weeks   5 weeks 
Group 2:
Language
tests
Rest Language
tests
Practice in the virtual world Language
tests
 5 weeks   5 weeks 

15. What next?
• Have so far met with 31 people with aphasia.
11 are suitable to take part.
• 1st tranche complete
• 2nd tranche currently ‘live’ (T1 and T2
complete)
• Still recruiting! Participants must be within 1.5
hours travel from the university

16. The future
• At the end of the project, we hope to
demonstrate the positive effects of EVA park
for both language and social isolation.
• If we can, we hope this will enable funding to
make EVA park openly available for people
with aphasia.
www.soi.city.ac.uk/eva/