Dr. Maria Klawe Delivers Welling Lecture

SEAS was proud to host Dr. Maria Klawe, the president of Harvey Mudd College and a former dean of Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, for a Welling Lecture here at GW on April 24. In a talk entitled “Can Mobile Devices Improve the Quality of Life for People with Aphasia?” Klawe discussed a project that she and her colleagues and graduate students have worked on over several years to adapt mobile devices such as PDAs to assist communication in people with aphasia.

Aphasia is a partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language, and it most often happens as the result of a stroke or trauma to the head. It is the impairment of the cognitive functions of speech, reading, writing, or some combination of the three, but it is sometimes misunderstood by others as the loss of intelligence. Because of this misunderstanding and the stigma attached to their impaired ability to communicate, many people with aphasia withdraw from society. According to Klawe, approximately one million Americans have aphasia.

To try to help people with aphasia complete common daily tasks and remain more connected to society, Klawe’s group developed a PDA enhanced with sounds and images. It is used in much the same way that others use a PDA, but the sounds and images are available to help trigger recollections that might otherwise not be recalled from text alone. Klawe’s group has tested this device, as well as a PDA without the sounds and images, with separate groups of subjects with aphasia to determine how it is used by them and how it needs to be adapted to be more useful.

The project is on-going and is showing some good results, and according to Klawe, the next step will be a longer term study that the group will conduct in conjunction with Kessler Institute.