FAQ's

What is the cost? 

It's free! Nobody will ask for your email, credit card, your phone number or your name.  

Why is it free? 

The authors and researchers of the SUGAR have generously shared their work for free on their website.  As developers of our AI tool, we want to follow their lead and make this great form of language analysis accessible to all.  

I have used the SUGAR a lot, how is it this different from what I am doing now? 

It saves you loads of time! You just need to prepare your transcript according to the author's guidelines then pop It Into the calculator.  Don't worry about separating morphemes, clauses, or counting words or utterances.  AI Is doing all that for you.  You just give It the most robust transcript that you can.  It will tell you where the child falls (meets criterion or not, based on the SUGAR norms).  

I have never used the SUGAR, how is it this different from what I am doing now? 

It's a way of thinkng about language samples with the strength of comparing to norms.  We SLP's can spend hours analyzing a language sample but the SUGAR gives you valuable Information on complexity in a quick and reliable tool.  You certainly can do deeper sub analysis, and the SUGAR website has all that Information.  The website you are on (languagesamples.com) Is simply a way to make the SUGAR calculations easier, quicker and consistently accurate.  

You just need to prepare your transcript according to the author's guidelines then pop It Into the calculator.  Don't worry about separating morphemes, clauses, or counting words.  AI Is doing all that for you.  You just give It the most robust and cleanest transcript that you can.  It will tell you where the child falls (meets criterion or not, based on the SUGAR norms).  

Why use this tool? 

1. save loads of your time and aggravation.  I estimate that it has cut down my language sample processing time from 1.5-2 hours to 1/2 hour, and sometimes less.  

2. get accurate, consistent and trustworthy results

3. using the SUGAR website, develop goals for treatment based on results 

What does it mean when it says the child "meets criterion" ?

The calculator uses the published norms to tell you whether or not the child is above 2 standard deviations below the mean.  Soon we hope to have It broken down more precisely where they fall, but many districts use the 2 SD cutoff for qualification so this is what we started with.  So If the child meets criterion, you know they are above 2 SD's below the mean. 

Additionally, the handy bell curves which the calculator gives you will Indicate to you where the student score falls in relation to the mean.  

What if I see something that looks like an error? 

While the developers of this tool have tried to cover all the bases, AI Is still in its infancy and does make errors.  Also there are words that break the rules.  PLEASE contact us at digitalmetricsfortheslp@gmail.com and send us your transcript and a photo If possible of what the calculator results were.  If this Is Indeed an error we will fix It.  We love the feedback.