Posts Tagged ‘speech therapy’

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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Speech Therapy Diagnosis

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

A criteria of characteristics must first be given to children who may have autism. This should be done before the child undergoes speech therapy.

  1. Autistic Disorder Criteria: Social Interaction. An impairment  in social interaction and be manifested by at least two of the following behaviors.
    a. Use of different non-verbal behaviors like facial expression, eye-to-eye gaze, and body posture.
    b. Failure to develop peer relationship appropriate for his developmental level and may seem to have difficulty gaining friends, or  relating to other children within his age.
    c. Lack of spontaneity to share his emotions and thoughts. This means that he may not share enjoyment, achievements, or interests to other people. Sometimes, the child doesn’t usually bring or point to objects that interest him.
    d. Lack of emotional reciprocity that is why he seems not to care about what you do or tell him
  2. Autistic Disorder Criteria: Communication. A communication impairment  manifested by one of  these:
    a. A delay, or even total lack of spoken language development or expressive language. He doesn’t even try to use of compensatory strategies to communicate or other means of communication like gestures.
    b. Stereotyped and repetitive use of language actually called idiosyncratic language. In this case, the child keeps on saying what seems to be meaningless.
    c. Lack the ability to have different spontaneous make-believe play or social imitative play appropriate for his developmental level.
  3. Autistic Disorder Criteria: Repetitive And Stereotype Behavior Patterns.Repetitive behavior manifested by having at least one of the following conditions.
    a. 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,  all that matters is the fan.
    b. Fetish with routines and rituals. If he passes by a certain way to school, it has to be the same way. If you  take a different route, it would agitate him, make him angry and have tantrums.
    c. Repetitive behaviors or mannerisms like hand flapping, finger twisting, and complex body movements .
    d. Preoccupied with object parts like buttons, screws and other small details.

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