Archive for the ‘Speech Therapy’ Category

Imagine the next time you join a discussion about Speech Therapy. When you start sharing the fascinating Speech Therapy facts below, your friends will be absolutely amazed.

There are a variety of tools and materials, which are designed for speech therapy in the market right now, thus giving the therapist much more options when it comes to choosing the equipments that could best maximize his services. One variety of materials are toys. And there are various reasons for the rise in its use.

The Toys and Their Functions

Before the therapy starts, an evaluation of the patient’s oral motor structures is usually done. This is where the therapist inspects the various structures that are inside and around the patient’s mouth that are used for speech. Some of these are the lips, tongue, teeth, jaw and cheeks.

For the structures to be seen more accurately, a penlight is usually used. The only problem with it is that the child may not find it very pleasant to have a flashlight in his mouth. This is now why there already is the colorful and jelly-like oral light system, which gives the same amount of light minus the metallic appearance.

The examination of these muscles also usually requires gloves and tongue depressors; in which kids do not appreciate both of whose smell and taste. This is now the reason why colorful and fruit flavored gloves and tongue depressors are already available.

After the said oral motor examination has been performed, the therapist may find a weakening in one or some of the structures. Some seemingly ordinary materials and toys may aid the strengthening of these muscles. One of them is the straw, which can come in all colors and designs. It serves two purposes.

Those of you not familiar with the latest on Speech Therapy now have at least a basic understanding. But there’s more to come.

The first purpose is for the rounding of the lips. This activity is important for the articulation of vowels and the semi-vowel /w/. Another function is the act of sipping. In this activity, the velum, the muscle right above the throat is exercised. This muscle is used when producing vowels and back consonants like /k/ and /g/.

Another commonly used material is a toy, which has to be blown. An example would be the whistle. The whistle is considered a difficult blow toy. It means that among the toys that work when blown, it is one of those, which requires more effort for it to perform its function.

The whistle, like the straw, aids in the exercise of the muscles of the lips. Another structure, which it strengthens, is the cheeks. It maximizes the capacity of the cheeks to hold in air and to gradually blow it out.

Other materials that are more commonly used are picture cards and interactive books. They usually contain pictures of words, which represent all the speech sounds. When these cards are used, all the therapist has to do is to show the picture and have the child produce the word together with the speech sound within the word.

Why Play?

If the patient sees the materials they have for therapy are colorful and fun toys, he will come to think that the reason he is in the clinic is to play and have fun. And having the child thinking this, will allow the child to cooperate with the therapist.

Play is a universal activity that blends social, cognitive, linguistic, emotional, and motor components. It is an integration of the many aspects of a child. Play serves as a representation of the thoughts and abilities of a child. Through play, the therapist will be able to know how to approach the concerns of his patient.

Now that wasn’t hard at all, was it? And you’ve earned a wealth of knowledge, just from taking some time to study an expert’s word on Speech Therapy.

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One of the main categories of speech problems in need for speech therapy are fluency disorders. However, there are different types of fluency disorders, even though they may all seem the same. Each type has its own cause, and defining characteristics that make them stand out from one another.

There are basically six main types of fluency disorders, while some are considered to be other conditions that are related to fluency disorders.

Normal Developmental Disfluency

Normal developmental disfluency, is a fluency disorder that is a lot of times mistaken to be stuttering. This condition occurs with children from ages 1:6- 6 years old, although the peak of the condition is considered to be 2-4 years of age.

A lot of parents may be concerned of the way their child speaks, but in reality, this is a normal condition that every child goes through. Normal developmental disfluency is a normal part of a child’s development. So there is really no need to worry at all.

A child would normally get over this stage as his speech skills develop. However, a proper environment, and interaction is needed for that to happen. If a child is pressured by his parents or people around him about his speech, the higher the probability that his disfluency would become a problem in the future and could develop to stuttering.

Stuttering

Stuttering is a disorder of childhood (developmental) that is characterized by an abnormally high frequency or duration of stoppages in the forward flow of speech. Although normal developmental disfluency has its own share of stoppages, stuttering on the other hand has some extra characteristics that normal developmental disfluency doesn’t have.

What makes stuttering different, from normal developmental disfluency, is that stuttering has escape behaviors, avoidance behaviors, and other secondary behaviors. These so called behaviors are also called physical concomitants. Some examples are eye blinks, head nods, jaw tremors and total body gyrations.

Neurogenic Disfluency

Most of this information comes straight from the Speech Therapy pros. Careful reading to the end virtually guarantees that you’ll know what they know.

This kind of disfluency is a result of an identifiable neuropathology in a person that has no history of fluency problems prior to occurrence of the pathology. People who have accidents that caused brain problems, which induced their disfluency, fall into this category.

Neurogenic disfluency has similar characteristics as stuttering, including the physical behaviors like eye blinks and tremors. The thing is that, the main problem in conditions like these is not fluency at all, but the lesser control of muscles needed in speech production.

Psychogenic Disfluency

A disfluency with no found evidence of neurological dysfunction and no history of developmental stuttering. It is of sudden onset and attributed to an identifiable emotional crisis. Can be grouped into three categories namely: emotionally based, manipulative, and malingering disfluencies

An example of this kind of disfluency is when a person starts to stutter when a specific other is around. For instance, a student who is afraid of her teacher, starts to stutter every time her teacher is around but speaks fluently when around her friends and family.

Language Bases Disfluency

This is a disfluency that is attributed to the development of linguistic sophistication. The main root of the problem here would be language problems, which would require language based therapy rather than fluency-based therapy.

Mixed Fluency Failures

These are fluency failures that are characterized by overlapping causative factors. Speech pattern observed is the result of a blend of two or more factors/disfluency.

Cluttering

This is a condition that is related to fluency disorders. It is considered to be the extreme of stuttering. It is a disorder of timing and rhythm of speech where the person speaks too fast that his speech can’t be comprehended. The thing is, a clutterer isn’t aware that he is cluttering, while a stutterer is very much aware that he stutters.

Now that wasn’t hard at all, was it? And you’ve earned a wealth of knowledge, just from taking some time to study an expert’s word on Speech Therapy.

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Are you looking for some inside information on Speech Therapy? Here’s an up-to-date report from Speech Therapy experts who should know.

There are six main types of fluency disorders namely: normal developmental disfluency, stuttering, neurogenic disfluency, psychogenic disfluency, language based disfluency, and mixed fluency failures. Due to the uniqueness and difference of each case, all of them require a different kind of management approach in speech therapy.

Management For Normal Developmental Disfluency

Developmental disfluency occurs during the critical period of speech and language development. A child is considered to have this condition if 5% or less of his overall speech-sample are repetitions and 1% or less are prolongations.

Etiologies of this condition could be: excitement while speaking, demands of Language Acquisition, Speech-Motor control is lagging, environmental factors like stress in the family (e.g. separation of parents) and the situations they are in, and daily pressures of competition.

Concerned parents still make their children with this kind of disfluency undergo therapy even if this could still possibly decline. These children are taught how to: decrease the rate of their speech, relieve other pressures that the therapist and parents mutually agree to change, and simplify their language.

Management For Stuttering

The onset of stuttering may occur between ages 1 ?- 11 years old but it mostly occurs during early childhood stage, which ranges from 2-6 years old. A condition is diagnosed to be stuttering when the speech has 5% or greater repetitions and 1% or greater prolongations.

There are several approaches to therapeutic intervention for early stuttering namely: environmental manipulation, direct work with the child, psychological therapy, desensitization therapy, parent-child interaction therapy, fluency-shaping behavioral therapy, and parent and family counseling

Management For Neurogenic Disfluency

Once you begin to move beyond basic background information, you begin to realize that there’s more to Speech Therapy than you may have first thought.

The onset of neurogenic disfluency is varied. It can occur at any age but it usually appears during adulthood or among the geriatric population. The neurological events that can trigger the onset of neurogenic disfluency are as follows: strokes, head trauma, extrapyramidal diseases, tumors, dementia, drug usage, anoxia, cryosurgery, viral meningitis, and vascular disease.

Self-monitoring program is one of the most suggested modes for the management of this kind of disfluency.

Management For Psychogenic Disfluency

The onset of psychogenic disfluency is also varied. A condition is said to be under this category when 90% of the patient’s utterances have become disfluent when the emotional stimuli is present. This condition originates in the mind. The etiology could be acute or chronic psychological disturbances. Stress is another factor that may also cause the disorder.

Psychologists, psychiatrist and counselors can only provide treatment of this kind of fluency disorder. Speech pathologists prioritize treatment only of the bad speech habits, which may still be present after resolving the emotional issues of the patient.

Management For Language Based Disfluency

This kind of fluency disorder may arise in a child as soon as any newly introduced language skill emerges, specifically during the toddler to preschool stage. The fluency failure may be due to linguistic or motor immaturity. It can also be a result of the child’s struggle to acquire newly introduced and more complex language rules.

The management of this kind of disfluency usually focuses on improving the child’s language skills to increase his/her linguistic and motor maturity.

Management For Mixed Fluency Failures

The onset of this condition cannot be exactly determined, since it is an overlap pf two or more causative factors. No specific age for identification since onset may be sudden. Therapists must prioritize the most debilitating and/or the most correctable aspect of the disfluency.

That’s the latest from the Speech Therapy authorities. Once you’re familiar with these ideas, you’ll be ready to move to the next level.

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The following article includes pertinent information that may cause you to reconsider what you thought you understood. The most important thing is to study with an open mind and be willing to revise your understanding if necessary.

The terminal goal of speech therapy is for the client to spontaneously use the appropriate speech sounds of his or her linguistic culture in connected speech. In this context, therapy becomes a continuum of short-term goals designed to meet the terminal goal. And therapy procedures may either use the motor or traditional approach or the cognitive-linguistic approach.

Motor or Traditional Approach

This approach is structure-based and uses drills more. Drills are activities that have rapid rates of stimulus presentation and which puts much stress on accuracy of the patient’s response to the stimulus and the said response reaching various set criteria.

Under this approach is auditory training. Its proponent is Charles Van Riper. This procedure uses pictures and games as motivational events or events that serve as a way of presenting stimuli. Activities are mainly about speech sound discrimination. It highlights the awareness and detection of sound.

Another procedure is the exercise of the oral motor structures. It is used when an oral motor assessment shows muscle weakness or spasticity. For children, it should be made fun and functional. It also uses mirrors for visual feedback.

One other procedure under this approach is phonetic placement. Van Riper was also the proponent of this procedure. It provides clients with verbal descriptions or instructions regarding articulatory position and movements for target sound. It is usually used together with visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic cues.

Weiner’s contribution to this field is his modified sensory motor approach. It is where a word in which the target sound is correct in the final position is paired with a word in which the same sound is in error in the initial position. The words are produced without a pause to facilitate assimilation of the incorrectly produced sound.

The information about Speech Therapy presented here will do one of two things: either it will reinforce what you know about Speech Therapy or it will teach you something new. Both are good outcomes.

In this line also is syllabication. It uses the syllable-by-syllable production of words. It is used in addressing weak syllable deletion or the deletion of the syllable in a word which is the least stressed.

One procedure that is closely related to syllabication is chaining. The client is first asked to say the whole word. If he says a syllable incorrectly, the therapist instructs the patient to look at his lips while he produces the word syllable by syllable with the patient following him after every syllable until he produces the word the same way that the therapist did.

Cognitive-Linguistic Approach

The first procedure under this approach is auditory bombardment, also known as cycles approach. There are treatment cycles which have their designated phonemes, taught in a span of 2-4 weeks. Auditory bombardment requires that the patient be bombarded with the phonemes that he needs to learn without him being aware of it.

Another procedure is auditory bombarding with PACT (Parents and Children Together). Here, production should not be over-emphasized. It may use funny, perceptually salient make-up words like ker-plunk, boing, shilly-shally or kaboom. All that matters is that the words contain the phonemes that are being targeted.

Modified cycles approach is also under this group. It requires the clinician to make purposeful and obvious lexical errors in words that contain target phonemes to make the patient correct the clinician, thus producing the target sound. Parental involvement is important for explanations of goals, procedures, and assignments.

Minimal contrast therapy, on the other hand, contrasts presence and absence of phonemes, establishing also the difference between phonemes. This procedure can be utilized in addressing perceptual or production difficulties when it comes to final sounds of words, establishing the difference between words like fee and feet.

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The best course of action to take sometimes isn’t clear until you’ve listed and considered your alternatives. The following paragraphs should help clue you in to what the experts think is significant.

Before a child could undergo speech therapy with the diagnosis of Autism, he should pass a criteria of characteristics first that is given by the DSM-IV. So here are the criteria for a child to be diagnosed with such conditions.

Autistic Disorder Criteria: Social Interaction

First off, a child should have impairment in social interaction. This could be manifested by at least two of the following behaviors. First is a marked impairment with the use of different non-verbal behaviors like facial expression, eye-to-eye gaze, and body posture.

Second is the child’s failure to develop peer relationship that is appropriate for his developmental level. In this case the child may seem to have difficulty gaining friends, or even just relating to other children within his age.

The child may also have the lack of spontaneity to share his emotions and thoughts. He may not share enjoyment, achievements, or interests to other people. In this case, the child doesn’t usually bring or point to objects that interest him.

The lack of emotional reciprocity is also possible. No matter how hard you try to connect or show your emotions and feelings to the child, he wouldn’t care less.

Autistic Disorder Criteria: Communication

The child also has communication impairment. Having at least one of the following conditions manifests this.

First is having a delay, or even total lack of spoken language development or expressive language. In this case, the child doesn’t even try to use of compensatory strategies to communicate or other means of communication like gestures.

Is everything making sense so far? If not, I’m sure that with just a little more reading, all the facts will fall into place.

For children that have adequate speech, the communication impairment is manifested by not being able to initiate or sustain a conversation with other people.

The child can also have stereotyped and repetitive use of language. This phenomenon is actually called idiosyncratic language, where what the child keeps on saying seems to me meaningless. He may keep on saying the word ?blue? for countless of times, even for the whole duration of the day.

He can also lack the ability to have varied, spontaneous make-believe play or social imitative play that is appropriate for his developmental level. Play is one of the notable things that differentiate a child with Autism with normal children. For an Autistic child, play does not exist. The main concern is that play is an important factor for language development since it is a prerequisite or co-requisite of inner language.

Autistic Disorder Criteria: Repetitive And Stereotype Behavior Patterns

An Autistic child also manifests repetitive behavior. This criteria is judged by having at least one of the following conditions.

The child may have an encompassing preoccupation with one or more restricted and stereotyped patterns of interests that may seem abnormal in respect to focus and intensity. For example the child can sit and look at the ceiling fan for the whole day, and doesn’t care what is happening in his environment, all that matters is the fan.

The child also has fetish with routines and rituals. If he passes by a certain way to school, it has to be the same way. If you use the main stairs going to his classroom, then taking a different route like the elevator would definitely agitate him, make him angry and have tantrums.

The child may also have repetitive behaviors or mannerisms. Hand flapping, finger twisting, and complex body movements are examples of these.

Lastly, he can also be preoccupied with object parts like buttons, screws and other small details.

The day will come when you can use something you read about here to have a beneficial impact. Then you’ll be glad you took the time to learn more about Speech Therapy.

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When you’re learning about something new, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of relevant information available. This informative article should help you focus on the central points.

Aphasia can bring about a lot of speech and language problems that are to be treated for speech therapy. The kind of speech and language problems brought by Aphasia would highly depend on the kind of Aphasia that you may have.

Broca’s Aphasia

Broca’s Aphasia is also known as motor aphasia. You can obtain this, if you damage your brain’s frontal lobe, particularly at the frontal part of the lobe at your language-dominant side.

If Broca’s Aphasia is your case, then you may have complete mutism or inability to speak. In some cases you may be able to utter single-word statements or a full sentence, but constructing such would entail you great effort.

You may also omit small words, like conjunctions (but, and, or) and articles (a, an, the). Due to these omissions, you may produce a “telegraph” quality of speech. Usually, your hearing comprehension is not affected, so you are able to comprehend conversation, other’s speech and follow commands.

Difficulty in writing is also evident, since you may experience weakness on your body’s right side. You also get an impaired reading ability along with difficulty in finding the right words when speaking. People with this type of aphasia may be depressed and frustrated, because of their awareness of their difficulties.

Wernicke’s Aphasia

When your brain’s language-dominant area’s temporal lobe is damaged, you get Wernicke’s aphasia. If you have this kind of aphasia, you may speak in uninterrupted, long, sentences; the catch is, the words you use are usually unnecessary or at times made-up.

You can also have difficulty understanding other’s speech, to the extent of having the inability to comprehend spoken language in any way. You also have a diminished reading ability. Your writing ability may be retained, but what you write may seem to be abnormal.

In contrast with Broca’s Aphasia, Wernicke’s Aphasia doesn’t manifest physical symptoms like right-sided weakness. Also, with this kind of Aphasia, you are not aware of your language errors.

You can see that there’s practical value in learning more about Speech Therapy. Can you think of ways to apply what’s been covered so far?

Global Aphasia

This kind of aphasia is obtained when you have widespread damage on language areas of your brain’s left hemisphere. Consequently, all your fundamental language functions are affected. However, some areas can be severely affected than other areas of your brain.

It may be the case that you have difficulty speaking but you are able to write well. You may also experience weakness and numbness on the right side of your body.

Conduction Aphasia

This kind is also known as Associative Aphasia. It is a somewhat uncommon kind, in which you have the inability to repeat sentences, phrases and words. Your speech fluency is reasonably unbroken. There are times that you may correct yourself and skip or repeat some words.

Even though you are capable of understanding spoken language, you can still have difficulty finding the right words to use to describe an object or a person. This condition’s effect on your reading and writing skills can also vary. Just like other types of aphasia, you can have sensory loss or right-sided weakness.

Nominal Or Anomic Aphasia

This kind of aphasia would primarily influence your ability to obtain the right name for an object or person. Consequently, rather than naming an object, you may resort to describing it. Your reading skills, writing ability, hearing comprehension, and repetition are not damaged, except by this inability to get the right name.

Your may have fluent speech, except for the moments that you pause to recall the correct name. Physical symptoms like sensory loss and one-sided body weakness, may or may not be present.

Transcortical Aphasia

This kind is caused by the damage of language areas on your left hemisphere just outside your primary language areas. There are three types of this aphasia: transcortical sensory, transcortical motor, and mixed transcortical. All of these types are differentiated from others by your ability to repeat phrases, words, or sentences.

Now that wasn’t hard at all, was it? And you’ve earned a wealth of knowledge, just from taking some time to study an expert’s word on Speech Therapy.

Do you ever feel like you know just enough about Speech Therapy to be dangerous? Let’s see if we can fill in some of the gaps with the latest info from Speech Therapy experts.

PROLAM-GM is an acronym for the various intervention and transfer strategies used in the management of stuttering. PROLAM, which stands for physiological adjustments, rate manipulation, operant controls, length and complexity of utterance, attitude changes, and monitoring, are the intervention strategies. GM, which stands for generalization and maintenance, are the transfer strategies.

Physiological Adjustments

Physiological adjustment strategies include tactics that manipulate bodily components known or thought to be involved in the production of stuttered speech. An example of this would be the attempt to use gentle contact between the articulators when talking.

The rationale behind this approach is that the physiological components necessary for the production of normal fluent speech are in some way used inappropriately when stuttering occurs. Therefore, the therapy tactics used will result in a ?readjustment? of the disordered component, or in use of compensatory behaviors and strategies.

Rate of Speech Manipulations

Use of a reduced speech rate to modify stuttering operates in the belief that: (a) reduction of rate results in simplification of the physiological speech processes, thus allowing easier synchronization or; (b) reduction in the rate of speech prevents the stutterer from anticipating feared stimuli that result in the production of the stuttering response.

The rate of the stutterer’s speech may be reduced by: prolongation, combining prolongation with continuous phonation, and using an instructional rate control method.

Operant Controls

Use of operant controls in the management of stuttering believes that if stuttering is an operant behavior (behaviors whose frequency or probability of occurrence are influenced by the consequences they generate), then its frequency will increase if it is reinforced, and its frequency of occurrence will decrease if it is punished.

Two of the most frequently used operant procedures for treating stuttering are positive reinforcement of fluency and punishment of stuttering.

Once you begin to move beyond basic background information, you begin to realize that there’s more to Speech Therapy than you may have first thought.

Length and Complexity of Utterance

Controlling the length and complexity of the stutterer’s utterance reduces stuttering and increases fluency. This technique is often used to increase fluent speech. Most of the approaches utilizing this technique combine manipulation of length and complexity of the client’s language with operant controls (punishment of stuttering and reinforcement of fluency).

Attitude

There are two components of stuttering namely: the feelings accompanying it and the speaking behaviors that are resulted from it. It is believed by some that to have a successful therapy, a balance of treating both factors should be done. That’s why attitude manipulation is done in some approaches while in other approaches it can be optional depending on the case of the client.

Monitoring

In the science of Speech Pathology, especially in the field of stuttering, there are a lot of meanings for the term ?monitoring’. Some say it’s a process in which the PWS becomes aware of what he is doing at the time he is doing it. Some say it is a specific form of consciousness where the act of speaking is raised from an automatic level to a purposeful level. Basically, it has three key components: self-awareness, deliberate control and self-feedback.

Generalization

The technical term for generalization is ?the occurrence of a relevant behavior under different nontraining conditions.? The term generalization is usually interchanged with ?transfer’ or ?carryover’.

Maintenance

Sometimes, when clients are able to achieve fluency, they think the fight is over. They forget to maintain their skills and in result they have a relapse with their stuttering. Maintenance refers to different after-treatment activities to help clients keep the skills they learned from therapy intact.

Some activities to help maintain skills are daily self-monitoring activities, regular clinic contacts, refresher programs and having self-help groups.

Those who only know one or two facts about Speech Therapy can be confused by misleading information. The best way to help those who are misled is to gently correct them with the truths you’re learning here.