Speech Language Therapy
What is a speech and language pathologist?
A speech therapist or speech-language pathologist (SLP) has a master degree or higher in the field and should be licensed by the state in which they work. National certification is obtained through the American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA.) Speech Language Pathologists are trained to work with people of all ages and often specialize in specific ages or areas of the field.
FAQ about speech and language therapy.
Speech Lanague Therapy consists of:
- Language intervention activities: The SLP will interact with a child by playing pointing, talking and signing. The therapist may use pictures, books, objects, or ongoing events to stimulate language development. The therapist may also model correct pronunciation and use repetition exercises to build speech and language skills.
- Articulation Therapy: Articulation or sound production therapy involves having the therapist model correct sounds and syllables for a child, often during play activities. The level of play and materials presented are age-appropriate and related to the child's specific needs. The SLP will physically show the child how to make certain sounds, such as the "l" sound, and may demonstrate how to move the tongue and lips to produce specific sounds.
- Oral motor and feeding therapy: The SLP uses a variety of oral exercises and equipment to provide facial massage and various tongue, lip, and jaw exercises, to strengthen the muscles and increase awareness. The Speech Language Pathologist may also work with different food textures and temperatures to increase a child's oral awareness during eating and swallowing. SLP's also work with children having difficulty with swalllowing while eating and drinking to help them do it safely and efficiently.
A helpful list of terminology often used by SLP's. Don’t hesitate to ask your therapist questions if you hear unfamiliar terminology.
Some terms are used loosely so ask questions.
Auditory: The process of hearing, it refers to the neurological pathways and structures for sound perception.
Articulation: The physiological process of producing sounds. Sometimes children have difficulty saying particular consonants and vowels. The reason for this may or may not be known.
Augmentative Communication: Non-speech communication techniques that are uses to encourage or supplement a child speech.
Babbling: Meaningless syllables or strings of sounds that babies produce as they verbally play with sounds.
Cognition: What babies know or know how to learn about their immediate environmental contexts. Bloom, 1993) writes that cognition also includes the mental plans for acting and provides the basis for constructing speech and understanding the acts of others. Cognitive development and language development support and interact with one another.
Communication: The transmission and reception of information between two people. There are many forms of communication including gestures, sign language, spoken and written language.
Communication Disorder: An individual having disability in any of the areas of speech, language, fluency, swallowing or hearing has a Communication Disorder.
Developmental: The term "developmental" as in "developmental delay” or “developmental apraxia” denotes that the disorders occur in children.
Emergent Language: Understanding spoken language and the development of speech skills that develop during infancy and early childhood.
Expressive language: How we express our thoughts and ideas to others. Using speech, sign language or gestures to get ones needs met.
Fluency therapy: The focus on working with individuals who stutter to teach strategies for smoother speech.
Jargon: A specialized language that a baby uses that includes strings of unintelligible speech sounds with into national patterns of adult speech. Jargon include inflection that approximate meaningful connected
speech. It is often directed toward objects, people and animals.
Language therapy: Focuses on two areas, expressive and receptive language. Language therapy in these areas would work on such things as learning new vocabulary, organizing thoughts and ideas clearly, correct syntax or word order, and social language or how we interact with others socially.
Morpheme: The smallest meaningful unit of language including words, their inflections and their derivations. Ones can contain one or more morphemes. The use of morphemes and their rules indicate language development such as acquiring the rules to use prefixes, suffixes, plurals and past tense.
Phoneme: The smallest unit of the sound system that provides the contrast to differentiate one word or segment from another such as rag vs. rat.
Phonology or phonological disorder: The child has difficulty organizing their speech sounds into a system of sound contrasts. It is considered to be at the cognitive or language level.
Pragmatics: Uses of language, usually defined by the social or educational expectations of a situation.
Receptive language: How well a child understands what is spoken by others.
Speech therapy: Treatment by a licensed and certified speech-language pathologist of speech production, vocal production, swallowing difficulties and language needs in a variety of different contexts schools, hospital clinics, private practices and in the home.
Syntax or Grammar: Meaningful word combinations and sentence structures.
Swallowing therapy (dysphagia): Teaching a child how to coordinate the muscles of the mouth, throat and tongue to swallow safely and efficiently.
Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP): A Speech-Language Pathologist diagnoses disorders and provides treatment in the areas of speech, language, fluency, voice, and swallowing. A Speech-Language Pathologist has a Masters and/or Doctoral degrees from colleges and universities accredited by the American Speech-Language Association (ASHA).
Speech-Language Pathology Assistant (SLPA): A Speech-Language Pathology Assistant would work under the direction of the Speech-Language Pathologist. An SLPA has completed the required coursework and must be licensed.
True words: Words that are phonetic approximations of adult words and are used consistently by the child to refer to a specific person, event or object. They often occur around 12 months of age.
Vocabulary: Words the child understands or uses.
Voice therapy: Teaching good vocal use techniques.