Use of laryngeal sensors to monitor talk time in people with aphasia

Research Objectives: To investigate the feasibility of using laryngeal sensors to monitor the amount of time people with aphasia talk in day-to-day life.

Design: Feasibility study.

Setting: Data was collected by the participants during an average day at home and in the community.

Participants: 10 participants with aphasia participated. Participants (mean [SD] age = 57.3 [5.5] years, 9 male) were diagnosed with aphasia following a left hemisphere stroke (Mean [SD] time post-onset = 57.2 [40.44] months).

Interventions: Participants were provided with all necessary equipment and given a training session by a speech language pathologist. Equipment included a small laryngeal sensor, adhesives, and an iPhone with a custom app to record the sensor data. Participants were trained to apply the sensor and connect to the app. Participants wore the sensor over the laryngeal notch of the throat for 8 hours a day for 1-3 days. Participants completed a structured interview about their experience with the sensors and activity during the data collection period.

Main Outcome Measures: Seconds of talk time per hour.

Results: Mean talk time per hour was 54.97 seconds (SD = 76.29 seconds). Sensor data was collected for a total of 22, 8 hour days. Participants were successful in setting up and using equipment in their home environment. Results of the structured interview reflect that the equipment was easy to use.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring talk time in people with aphasia using a laryngeal sensor. The resulting data provides information about real world communication in this population and highlights their limited talk time. We discuss potential factors that may drive variability in talk time including aphasia characteristics (i.e., type, severity), demographic and environmental factors (gender, living arrangement, time spent at home).

Author(s) Disclosures: The authors have no conflicts to disclose.