Episode #53 - Aphasia, Games, and Behavioral Adaptation: A Conversation with Will Evans

Janet Patterson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, Chief of the Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology Service at VA Northern California, speaks with Will Evans, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, about Aphasia Games for Health, a project at the intersection of aphasia rehabilitation, adaptation deficit, gaming design, and community connectivity. Dr. Evans is an assistant professor and aphasia rehabilitation researcher in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2020 Will was named a Tavistock Trust for Aphasia Distinguished Scholar, USA. Will is spearheading a new project, Aphasia Games for Health, which is a collaborative effort among members of the aphasia community, professional game designers, and aphasia rehabilitation researchers. Together, they are seeking to 1) develop therapeutic games to help people with aphasia to continue to improve and connect long-term, and 2) help build and empower a broader aphasia games movement by providing resources for community groups, clinicians, and professional game designers to make games more aphasia friendly and accessible.  This summer Will and his team are working on three prototype group aphasia card games that can be played in person or through group video chat, and which will be shared with the community for free through a creative commons license. Once their first prototype games are developed, they will be looking for people with aphasia and community groups to do playtesting, which is trying out the games and providing feedback to the team to improve the games. In today’s episode you will learn: about adaptation deficit, and how games can be used to support behavioral adaptation how games developed for use in video chat format can help persons with aphasia interact in each other’s space to create rich communication context how a team of aphasia rehabilitation experts, people with aphasia, and professional game developers are working to build the vision of an Aphasia Game Library   Download the Full Show Notes