Archive for the ‘Speech Therapy Info’ Category

Speech Therapy: Cognitive-Linguistic Approach

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

Another popular procedures used for speech therapy is the cognitive-linguistic approach.

Cycles Approach. This procedure is actually auditory bombardment. Treatment cycles having their designated phonemes are taught in a span of 2-4 weeks. The child/ patient will be bombarded with the phonemes that he needs to learn without him being aware of it.

Auditory bombarding with PACT (Parents and Children Together). In this approach, production is not the over-all emphasis. Funny, perceptually salient make-up words like ker-plunk, boing, shilly-shally or kaboom are used. The purpose is that the words containing the phonemes  are being targeted.

Modified cycles approach. The therapist makes purposeful and obvious lexical errors in words containing the target phonemes so that the child/ patient will correct the clinician, thus producing the target sound. The parents, however, must be involved for explaining the  goals, procedures, and assignments.

Minimal contrast therapy. In this procedure, the child/patient contrasts the presence and absence of phonemes, also establishing the difference between phonemes. This procedure is effectively used in addressing perceptual or production difficulties when it comes to final sounds of words. For example the difference between words like fee and feet is contrasted.

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Motor Approach in Speech Therapy

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Speech therapy procedure uses a traditional approach or motor approach. It is structure-based and involves various drills. These drills includes  stimulus presentation to test the accuracy of the patient’s response to the stimulus .

Auditory training. This is one aspect of the motor approach and the proponent is Charles Van Riper. Auditory training uses pictures and games as motivational events or events; this are the stimuli. Activities are more about speech sound discrimination to achieve awareness and detection of sound. 

Oral motor structures.  This is used when muscle weakness or spasticity is shown in the oral motor assessment . It is a fun activity for children and uses mirrors for visual feedback. The patient can see himself as he tries to produce the sounds/words.

Phonetic placement. Another procedure developed by Van Riper  which provides clients with verbal descriptions or instructions regarding articulatory position and movements for target sound. It is usually used accompanied by  visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic cues.

Modified sensory motor approach. Weiner’s modified sensory motor approach makes use of a word in which the target sound is correct in the final position and is paired with a word in which the same sound is in error in the initial position. The child/patient must produce the  words without a pause to facilitate assimilation of the incorrectly produced sound.

Syllabication. This procedure uses the syllable-by-syllable production of words. The goal of this procedure is to address weak syllable deletion or the deletion of the syllable in a word which is the least stressed.

Chaining. This is a closely related to syllabication where the child/patient is first asked to say the whole word. If he produces a syllable incorrectly, the therapist instructs the patient to look at his lips was he produces the word syllable by syllable with the patient following him after every syllable. This the child/patient does until he produces the word the same way as the therapist did.

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Speech Therapist

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

Who gives speech therapy?

Having a speech problem causes a lot of embarrassment and discomfort, even miscommunication. Therefore any one with a speech problem must see a speech therapist. A highly trained professional, called a SLP or a Speech and Language Pathologist, gives Speech Therapy. Speech and Language Pathologists are more popularly known as Speech Therapists. They are professionals who have finished a degree and training with human communication development and disorders.

What do speech therapists do?

The Speech and Language Pathologist (SLP) assesses, diagnoses and treats people with speech, communication and language disorders. They are specialists and not doctors. As specialists they have been trained on the field of medical rehabilitation.

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Kinds of Speech Problems

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

What speech problems needs therapy?

Speech problems are of three kinds. These are articulation disorders, resonance or voice disorders,  and fluency disorders.

  • Articulation Disorders. Articulation disorders are problems with physical features used for articulation such as the lips, tongue, teeth, hard and soft palate, jaws and inner cheeks. Any one with articulation disorder experiences problem producing words or syllables properly.
  • Resonance or voice disorders. Voice Disorders cover problems regarding phonation or the production of the raw sound itself. An example of this is  when the sound produced by the larynx or voice box seems to be muffled, nasal, intermittent, weak, too loud or any other characteristic not pertaining to normal.
  • Fluency Disorders. Fluency Disorders include problems like stuttering.This is a speech problem where your speech is constantly interrupted by blocks, fillers, stoppages, repetitions or sound prolongations.Talking too fast such that people can’t understand you is another fluency disorder called cluttering.

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Speech Therapy

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

What Speech Therapy Is

If you have problems dealing with speech, then you have to undergo speech therapy. Speech therapy is a a treatment dealing with speech problems that an individual may encounter. But Speech Pathology encompasses more than speech problems, it also includes language and other communication problems. these problems may have been congenital (due to birth) or acquired (due to accidents or other misfortunes.)

Speech therapy, thus is a treatment that individuals can undergo through in order to fix their speech problems. It  would focus on fixing speech related problems. Problems related to vocal pitch, volume, tone, rhythm and articulation may be resolved through speech therapy.

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