From the time Caroline began preschool she had a severe speech sound disorder. She had a lisp along with difficulty producing what she referred to as harsh sounds, such as the sound /r/. The lisp caused difficulty in producing /th/ which was produced in the form of /s/. The sounds that gave her the most trouble were the lingua-dental. There was extreme difficulty in the articulation of her tongue to produce the sounds, and in order to compensate for not being able to say the words properly she began to omit the sounds she could not produce. Her speech language pathologist explained to her that she had a lazy tongue. It was described to her that she did not know how to properly move her tongue in the specific ways to produce the specific sounds. When Caroline was asked what she thought had caused her speech disorder, she thought it was because she had a delay in her verbal abilities and poor mouth structure as her mouth was narrow, and teeth were very crooked. However, the underlying cause was not known. Caroline’s speech sound disorder started when she was very young so recollection of a speech language pathologist doing assessments was unknown. …show more content…
She remembered the rigorous and weekly therapy she received. She underwent speech therapy three times a week for many years. Originally it started in senior kindergarten until she reached grade three when she had improved immensely. When she reached grade five she began therapy again as the difficulty with sounds and the lisp was gradually coming back. During this time her crooked teeth had been fixed, but her tongue continued to do the articulation it had done prior to her teeth being corrected. She received therapy until grade eight. The lisp became subtle, and the difficulty with other specific sounds dissipated. Caroline’s therapy was a full hour, consisting of half an hour dedicated to practising words and sounds she had difficulty with. The following half hour she played games and participated in natural conversation with the sounds she had just practised and learned. Caroline was never prescribed speech equipment, however she was given tongue exercises to do, and a book of words that she would practise pronouncing properly at home and with her teacher during class. Reflecting back on her speech sound disorder and lisp Caroline realized how much it caused her to be aware and understanding of others around her. She endured a great deal of bullying for “talking funny” and this made her self-conscious of her speech. She still gets asked to this day if she has an accent, the most frequent question being is if she is British. Having this disorder allowed her to use her own struggle with speech to help her friend feel comfortable with talking. She gave the friend confidence to speak, showing her that it was okay to struggle with words and sounds. Aetiology, Typical Speech Characteristics & Impact on Quality of Life Aetiology: Caroline’s communication disorder would be classified as a phonological disorder or more specifically a speech sound disorder.
A speech sound disorder is the deviation in the articulation of phonemes that occurs past the age that it should have been acquired (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2015). This means that the individual has difficulty in the pronunciation of sounds. Caroline struggled with the sound /th/ due to her frontal lisp, as well as struggled with the articulation of other phonemes such as /r/ due to an unknown cause. A lisp is a type of distortion. A distortion error is when the sound produced is in the same phoneme category but the phonetic accuracy is off (Gillam & Ford, 2012). This means the individual is pronouncing the sound incorrectly, but it is not changing the meaning of the
word. The causes of speech sound disorders are not always known. This unknown cause would be categorised as a functional disorder. The identified explanations of speech sound disorders can be caused by structural, organic, and neurological influences, for example if the individual has orofacial difference (Gillam & Ford, 2012). If there is a differentiation between the upper teeth and lower teeth this is known as an occlusion (Robb, 2014, p. 141). Therefore the arrangement of teeth in an individual’s mouth can also affect articulation of speech sound. Typical Speech Characteristics: According to Caroline Bowen (2009) typical characteristics that can be seen in a speech sound disorder would be: • Consonant and vowel limitations • Omissions of consonants, vowels, and syllable shapes • Vowel errors such as replacements and distortions • Atypical intonation • Errors in utterance length and complexity • Use of simple, syllables and word shapes and not using complex ones Impact on Quality of Life: Speech sound disorders influence multiple domains of a person ‘s life, whether it is directly through their speech, or through social aspects and the workforce. Social characteristics that McLeod, Daniel and Barr (2013) found could be experienced are: • Friendships • Teasing • Bullying • Withdrawing from public communication • Inappropriate behaviour The above life experiences can have a direct affect on the individual’s life, leaving them discouraged and with lowered self-esteem. Those who had a speech sound disorder felt that it interfered with their lives and created insecurity (Lipetz & Bernhardt, 2013). Friendships and public communication are crucial to the ability to socialize as human beings, and with the lack of socialization it can then have a mental impact on the individual. Consequently the speech sound disorder can have an affect not only physically through the person’s speech but also mentally. Assessment and Intervention: When assessing the type of a phonological disorder the classification can vary. Structural and neurological classifications can be called an articulation disorder because they are related to the motor movements, while a functional disorder does not have a specific known cause (Robb, 2014, p. 141). Therefore it depends on what the individual is experiencing and if the causation is known or not. Individuals are distinct, but there are similar elements of human development. Speech sound disorders can be difficult for a speech language pathologist to identify because verbal testing can be difficult to score and interpret (Gillam & Ford, 2012). Therefore because each person differs it is important to consider different perspectives of intervention. A type of intervention commonly used is articulation treatment where the speech language pathologist may show how to produce a sound correctly and then teach the client how to tell the difference between when they are saying the sound correctly or incorrectly (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2015). Gillam and Ford described the different perspectives and approaches that a speech language pathologist can take toward speech sound disorders, which are as follows: • The Normative Perspective → refers to typical development of speech, however this approach can be difficult because most children with speech delays do not have typical development of speech (Kamhi, 2006) • Oral Motor Approach → focuses on oral movements to reinforce the muscles used for speech • Traditional Motor Approach → focuses on speech sounds independently • Language Based Approach → focuses on both how speech is created and the language produced • Broad Based Approach → focuses is on a gradual development combing traditional speech therapy and perceptual mechanisms together • Complexity Approach → focuses on more complex sounds These approaches are not the only factors in intervention. The speech language pathologist has to consider the client’s environment, the amount of support the individual has, and the client’s values (Kamhi, 2006). Consideration of all these different factors helps to give the individual a comprehensive therapy. Comparison: Comparing Caroline’s speech sound disorder experience to what is described as typical, she presented many of the same indicators. She had limitation in the pronunciation of her consonants, especially with fricatives and liquids. This was partially because of the distortion of her frontal lisp, but also due to her speech sound disorder. She would replace the consonants she had trouble with pronouncing. For example a word such as “rabbit” would be pronounced as “wabbit”. Caroline would omit difficult consonants as well. She had distortions of words due to her lisp. Caroline would also avoid words that had the specific consonants she had trouble with. The characteristics that Caroline differed in from the typical speech characteristics, is she did not have abnormal intonation or atypical prosody. Caroline differed from the norm more in her quality of life features. Caroline did experience bullying and teasing, which did cause feelings of insecurity about her speech. However, instead of withdrawing from people and social situations she did the opposite. She used her speech disorder to help one of her friends. Caroline had a similar speech disorder as her friend. Therefore she was able to understand what her friend was experiencing and empathize with her. Caroline used her speech sound disorder to help make others feel comfortable. Caroline did not demonstrate any inappropriate behaviour, and physically she did not allow her speech disorder to impede on her athletic abilities or activities of everyday life. Listening to Caroline’s description of her speech therapy, I can infer it was a language based approach that was used. Caroline was quite young when she received her therapy, so details were harder to recollect. However, during her therapy she received specific sound focalization, and had to apply what was learned in conversation and games, giving a practical feature to her therapy. She also described how she would practise specific sounds leading me to infer that an articulation approach was used to help facilitate the learning of these sounds. With speech therapy, Caroline was able to get rid of her lisp and speech sound disorder. Although she still struggles with speech occasionally, she does not let it stop her whatsoever, and always takes immeasurable consideration of others during conversation.
Marie Jean Philip was born on April 20, 1953, in Worchester, Massachusetts. She was the first-born child. Although she was born to deaf parents, Marie’s deafness came as a surprise for her parents. She had two sisters whom were also deaf. Deafness was hereditary in her family, however not everyone in her family was deaf. Marie’s father had one sister who was deaf and her mother had two siblings who were also deaf. When Marie was 11 months her parents noticed that she wasn’t responding to all noises. Her parents decided to test her hearing one day by creating noises behind Marie to see if she would respond. When Marie responded only to the loudest of noises, such as pots banging together, they found that at times she could hear with her right ear, but she could not hear anything out of her left.
(Table 1. In the left column are characteristics or other vocal anomalies expressed by each individual. On the top row indicates the individual.)
Establishment consisted of teaching the children correct placement of articulators to produce the targeted speech sound across all word positions. The randomized-variable practice began once the child could produce the sound 80% of the time in certain syllables. It usually took children 1-5 sessions to complete the establishment phase. Random teaching tasks such as imitated single syllables, imitated single words, nonimitated single words, imitated two-to-four word phrases, nonimitated two-to-four word phrases, imitated sentences, nonimitated sentences, and storytelling or conversations were selected in the second phase. Participants remained in this phase until they obtained 80% mastery across two
My CDA education and experience, along with my excellent communication skills as a caring, empathetic professional will make me an ideal candidate to take on the challenges offered with this position as a Communicative Disorders Assistant for Audiology. Please feel free to contact me by phone at 905.985.2950(h) or 289.314.2256(c) or by email at colleen.brian.brown@gmail.com to discuss my credentials. Thank you for your time and consideration of my
The role of a speech-language pathologist (SLP) is a challenging but imperative role to society. When there is pathology present in an individual’s communication, either language-based or speech-based, serious adverse effects can impact the quality and functionality of their lives. This is why I am perusing a career as an SLP. The ever-changing profession as an SLP allures me to the field because the learning never ends. As an academic, I am always prepared to absorb new information, and SLP’s must stay updated on the most current research, to ensure that they are providing the most appropriate services for their clients. Also, because every client is unique with diverse
As most people know speech and language issues would only happen with children just learning to talk and tennagers in middle school to high school. The reasoning behind this is because most people don’t correct their children’s speech when they are first learning due to the fact that the parents or grandparents think it is to cute to correct, which only hurts the children more th...
Over seven million people just in the US have some sort of speech disorder. Just think about how many it is around the world! There are many different types of speech disorders, such as: stuttering, lisping and, mumbling, to name a few. Many of these disorders become noticeable during early childhood, however, this is not the only time a speech disorder may occur. Many people that suffer from strokes or other traumatic accidents encounter struggles with speech through their recovery. Those who struggle with speaking after an accident, though, have more access to treatments than children that are born with speech impediments. The treatments that are most known for children include: phonology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. There are speech
A phoneme that may be affected /θ/. For example, a person with a Class III Malocclusion would potentially say “sree” for “three” because they are not able to correctly articulate /θ/ in “three”. With a Class III Malocclusion, the articulation would be off, but speech is likely intelligible.
"Speech Development." Cleft Palate Foundation. Cleft Palate Foundation, 25 Oct 2007. Web. 10 Mar 2014.
Her phonetic inventory is well developed. She has no troubles creating the age-appropriate speech sounds. The child is just above normal because she can produce more adult-like sounds than her peers. She has control over her articulators and she knows how to manipulate her oral cavity to produce the correct sounds.
Lynn Kolofske visited the Costco Hearing Aid Center 4 years ago complaining of difficulty hearing and understanding speech. Once tested I discovered an asymmetrical hearing loss. Lynn had a 55.8% pure tone average on the left ear and a 15% PTA on the right ear. Due to the difference between ears I sent Lynn out with a medical referral before discussing hearing aids. After seeing an ENT Lynn was diagnosed with an Acoustic Neuroma with surgery being the only treatment available.
Lubinski R. 2010. Speech Therapy or Speech-Language Pathology. In: JH Stone, M Blouin, editors. International Encyclopedia of Rehabilitation. Available online: http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/encyclopedia/en/article/333/
There comes a time in our life when we know what we want to say, but it does not come out the way we thought it would. Such as being worried about reading out loud in class, going up to an employee in a fast food restaurant to order a simple meal, or making a presentation in class can be terrifying for most individuals with an articulation disorder. An articulation disorder consist of having difficulties producing sounds, substituting sounds, leaving out letters in a word, or adding or changing letters in a word. In most cases when individuals have trouble articulating words he/she might have problems with the main articulators which include: the jaw, lips, teeth, tongue, velum, alveolar ridge, and hard/soft palate. These articulators play
Garrett (1975) represented four characteristics of slips of the tongue. The first one is that the exchange exists between linguistic units of the same positions. For example, initial linguistic segments are replaced by another initial linguistic segment. The same generalization is applied to the middle and final linguistic segments. Additionally, slips appear in similar phonetic units. This means that that the consonants are replaced by consonants and vowels are replaced by vowels. Furthermore, the slips occur in similar stress patterns, which signifies that stressed syllables are replaced by stressed syllables and unstressed syllables are replaced by unstressed syllables. Finally, slips of the tongue follow the phonological rules of a language (cited in Carroll, 2007, p. 195).
Communication is very crucial in life, especially in education. Whether it be delivering a message or receiving information, without the ability to communicate learning can be extremely difficult. Students with speech and language disorders may have “trouble producing speech sounds, using spoken language to communicate, or understanding what other people say” (Turkington, p10, 2003) Each of these problems can create major setbacks in the classroom. Articulation, expression and reception are all essential components for communication. If a student has an issue with articulation, they most likely then have difficulty speaking clearly and at a normal rate (Turkington, 2003). When they produce words, they may omit, substitute, or even distort sounds, hindering their ability to talk. Students who lack in ways of expression have problems explaining what they are thinking and feeling because they do not understand certain parts of language. As with all types of learning disabilities, the severity can range. Two extreme cases of expression disorders are dysphasia and aphasia, in which there is partial to no communication at all (Greene, 435, 2002). Individuals can also have a receptive disorder, in which they do not fully comprehend and understand information that is being given to them. They can experience problems making sense of things. “Children may hear or see a word but not be able to understand its meaning” (National Institutes of Health, 1993, p1). Whether children have difficulty articulating speech, expressing words, receiving information, or a combination of the three, there is no doubt that the tasks given to them in school cause frustration. These children experience anxiety when...