Frederick F. Weiner, Ph.D.

Background

Frederick F. Weiner is a speech-language pathologist who taught speech pathology at The Pennsylvania State University, where he was Professor in Charge of Speech Pathology, and at the University of Maryland and Ohio University.

He founded Parrot Software in 1981 with a single speech rehabilitation program, at a time when almost nobody was building therapy software at all. The idea then is the idea now: give people recovering from stroke and brain injury a way to practise between sessions, at their own pace, on tasks that resemble what a clinician would actually do with them.

Forty-five years of computer-based therapy

The earliest Parrot programs ran on the Apple II. A manual for Aphasia II, written by Dr. Weiner in the 1980s, survives in public Apple II software archives — a small piece of evidence that this work predates essentially every product it is now compared against.

The software has been rebuilt several times since: from floppy disk to CD-ROM, from CD-ROM to a Windows download, and most recently to a browser-based application that runs on any computer, tablet, or phone. The current version includes 94 programs across speech, reading, memory, vocabulary, function, and cognition, in English and Spanish.

Research using Parrot Software

Independent researchers at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Dominican University of California have published peer-reviewed studies in which the software was the intervention. Dr. Weiner was not an author on either study, and the Texas Tech authors state that they purchased the software themselves and have no financial agreements with Parrot Software.

Both studies are small and neither had a control group. Full texts, with their methods and limitations set out, are on the research page.

Selected publications

Before founding Parrot Software, Dr. Weiner published on the assessment and treatment of phonological disorders and on speech perception. The work is indexed under Frederick F. Weiner in Google Scholar and Crossref; DOIs below link to the publisher’s record.

• Weiner, F. F. (1979). Phonological Process Analysis. Baltimore: University Park Press.

  A widely used clinical procedure for describing children’s speech-sound errors as patterns (processes) rather than isolated sounds.

• Weiner, F. F. (1981). Treatment of phonological disability using the method of meaningful minimal contrast: Two case studies. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 46(1), 97–103. doi:10.1044/jshd.4601.97

  Introduced minimal-contrast (minimal pairs) treatment, still a standard approach in speech-sound therapy.

• Weiner, F. F. (1981). Systematic sound preference as a characteristic of phonological disability. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 46(3), 281–286. doi:10.1044/jshd.4603.281

• Weiner, F. F. (1982). Pragmatic treatment for phonological disability: Rationale and procedures. Seminars in Hearing, 3(2), 138–148. doi:10.1055/s-0028-1094182

• Weiner, F. F., & Ostrowski, A. A. (1979). Effects of listener uncertainty on articulatory inconsistency. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 44(4), 487–493. doi:10.1044/jshd.4404.487

• Weiner, F. F., & Bankson, N. (1978). Teaching features. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 9(1), 29–34. doi:10.1044/0161-1461.0901.29

• Weiner, F. F., & Singh, S. (1974). Multidimensional analysis of choice reaction time judgments on pairs of English fricatives. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 102(4), 615–620. doi:10.1037/h0036084

• Weiner, F. F. (1984). Microcomputers: A look before you leap. NSSLHA Journal, 11, 88–94. doi:10.1044/jnsshla_11_88

  Written three years after Parrot Software’s first program, on what clinicians should expect of computers in therapy.

Writing on this site

Clinical guidance on parrotsoftware.com is written and reviewed by Dr. Weiner. Where the evidence is thin or does not support a claim we would like to make, the pages say so.

• How much aphasia practice is enough?

  What the RELEASE meta-analysis of 959 people found about total hours, weekly frequency, and why dosage research on clinician-delivered therapy does not transfer directly to practice with software.

• Speech recognition in aphasia therapy: what it can and cannot do

  How recognition feedback works during practice, and the specific situations where it fails — severe aphasia, apraxia of speech, dysarthria, background noise, and accents.