Speech Pathologist

What is Speech Pathology?

• Specific Language Impairment such as language delay.
• Difficulties in forming sentences that are grammatically correct also known as Structural Language Impairment.
• Difficulties involving social communication.
• Voice difficulties like raspy voice or a very faint voice that can affect the child's social performance.

Reasons to Visit a Speech Pathologist:

• Articulation Skills:

• Stuttering:

• Receptive Language:

• Voice and Resonance :

• Social/Pragmatic Language:

1. Abiding by the rules of conversation- Where your child will be taught to take turns in conversation, to understand the verbal and non-verbal cues etc.
2. Changing the use of language according to the change in place or even people- It's important for your child to know the difference between the way they talk to elders and the way they communicate with other kids of the same age.
3. Using language in different ways- Here the child is exposed to the correct usage of language while requesting, greeting, protesting, asking questions etc.

Speech Pathologist

Language Delay

Identify Speech and Language Delay for Child and Evaluate Appropriate Treatment

• Speech Delay: Firstly, speech is the form of verbal expression that includes language expression and articulation. When a child has speech delay issues, he might use the phrases and words but could not express it into the meaningful sentence. In other words, they know how to express their ideas, but the listener would fail to understand what he wants to say.
• Language Delays: Language is the entire system of expressing and receiving information in a quite meaningful manner. The child with language delay can easily pronounce the words but they might fail to put into the sentences. At a very early stage, it is quite difficult to identify speech and language delay for child.

• Age Group of the Child: There are different age groups at which the problem differs. Though the basic problem remains yet the age of such disorders might vary. To identify the speech and language delay for child, it is very important to understand the verbal pattern which the child of age group understands and how they relate it to their environment. The child with hearing problem does not respond to the vocal sound. In such a case, one should immediately rush to the doctor.
  
  

Common symptoms related with speech and language delay for child

• When the child does not babble at all at the age of 15 months.
• Does not talk by the age of 2 years.
• When he is unable to speak even the short sentences by the age of 3.
• Poor pronunciation, difficulty in following the directions, articulation issues.
• Difficulty in putting the words appropriately in a sentence etc.

Language Delay

Symptoms of Auditory Process Disorder

• Problems related to hearing.
• Remembering and paying attention.
• Problems related to carrying out a deep list of directions.
• Need more time for information processing.
• Low performance when the standards are considered.
• Problems related to behavior.
• Problems related to understanding certain types of language, like grammar and vocabulary.
• Problems related to spelling, comprehension, and reading.
  

auditory processing

How can Students with Auditor Process Disorder be helped to attain their Study Potential?

Some of the Tips for Effective Auditory Processing Disorder Treatment are:

• Reduce the amount of noise when the seating is rearranged. Here, the user might want to use ear plugs.

• Directions should be provided in small segments like using visual cues wherever possible.

• Taking the help of multimedia presentation.
• Ensuring that the unwanted things are not discussed which might create an auditory overload.

Functional Behaviour

More on FBA

Steps of Functional Assessment

1. It is important to get information on the behavior of the child to start intervention. But just by expressing the behavior in vague words cannot make any sense to the practitioner. Hence it is significant to describe the critical behavior in the most specific and clear way.
2. A chart needs to be created on antecedent or what happens before the behavior, behavior itself and consequences or things that happen after it. This involves collection of information from person as well as people living around them. Questionnaires and interviews are made and records from other sources are gathered.
3. The information collected is compared and analyzed to understand the cause behind the critical behavior. The one way is to create hypothesis based on the gathered information. The aim is to identify the functions of the behavior using the hypothesis.
4. The team of specialists work together to find out whether the hypothesis made is correct or not after they have got an idea on reasons behind the unusual behavior. This is done by deliberately changing some things in the environment to find out the effects of it.
5. Intervention plan is designed based on the results of hypothesis to change the wrong behavior. Teaching ways to correct or control the inappropriate behavior is done by motivating them and rewarding them for good actions.
   

Methods of FBA

1. Functional Analysis:
   Functional Behaviour Assessment and functional analysis are two separate terms where the later one is a type of the assessment. Here in this method the practitioner intentionally tries to alter the antecedents and consequences of behavior to understand the results. Unlike other methods this actually tests the hypothesis to understand what’s causing the behavior.

2. Direct Observation:
   Here the observer observes the daily activities of the person suffering from critical behavior. The observer then notes down happenings of before and after the unusual behavior to mark the cause of it. This method is used to create hypothesis on the function.

3. Informant Methods:
   This method also helps creating hypothesis for the function of behavior. Here questionnaires and interviews are carried out of the person, family members, and teachers etc. to understand what happens before and after the critical behavior.

Intellectual Disability

What Are The Reasons Of Mental Disabilities?

1. Down syndrome
2. Fetal alcohol spectrum disease (FASD)
3. Fragile X syndrome

1. Phenylketonuria (PKU) – a genetic sickness caused because of a missing or defective enzyme. Kids with PKU cannot process a protein referred to as phenylalanine. Without proper care and cure, phenylalanine builds up within the blood causing mental disability.
2. Down syndrome – a chromosomal sickness. These illnesses occur randomly and too many or too few chromosomes cause these conditions. Sometimes, a metamorphosis in the structure of a chromosome can lead to these problems.
3. Fragile X syndrome – a gene disease located on the X chromosome. Fragile X syndrome represents one of the main causes of mental incapacity.
4. Pregnant disorders – pregnant moms who use alcohol or drugs throughout pregnancy put their developing babies at risk for intellectual incapacity. Actually, one of the vital high-quality ways to reduce the threat of intellectual disabilities includes wholly avoiding alcohol for the duration of pregnancy. Smoking while being pregnant can also increase the threat that a little one may have a mental disability. Different danger factors for the duration of being pregnant include:

1. Malnutrition
2. Environmental toxins (i.e. Mercury, lead)
3. Infections of the mum
4. Toxoplasmosis
5. Cytomegalovirus
6. Rubella
7. Syphillis
   

1. Issues after Birth: Generally, childhood illnesses can injure the brain, causing traits of mental disabilities. Additionally, injuries such as a head injury or near drowning can increase a child’s risk of developing intellectual disability signs.

2. Poverty and Cultural Reasons: Kids who reside in poverty have a lot higher risk of exposure to environmental toxins, illnesses and experiencing malnutrition. These things all broaden the risk that a youngster may develop traits of mental disabilities. Additionally, those living in poverty may just fail to spot crucial cultural and educational experiences available to other kids and therefore miss them out when absent in their own kids.

• Conceptual: Includes issues with talent in language, reading, writing, mathematics, reasoning, memory, abilities retention.
• Social: Refers to issues with empathy, judgment, verbal exchange, making and maintaining acquaintances, and different social services.
• Functional: Include especially problems with self-care, akin to individual hygiene, job obligations, private finance and institution.

Speech Therapist

• As the name of the job role suggests, the main function of a speech-language pathologist or speech therapist is to diagnose the exact reason for the problem in the speech of a person and address any kind of communication problem recognized in that patient. Many people stammer while speaking and cannot communicate fluently with others, either due to any biological fault in their voice or may be because of psychological nervousness or fear. The speech pathologist also needs to cure any language disorder in an otherwise healthy person, who feels too shy to speak out and express himself/herself in public and also often this individual does not seem to understand what others are telling, in his/her own mother tongue. This language disorder can also be found in case of written languages, for both reading and writing the written scripts.
• A fully trained speech pathologist is well versed in Phonology, morphology of syntax or the formation of sentence structure, Semantics and Pragmatics. Hence, he can successfully apply all the knowledge in the treatment of people suffering from different manners of non-verbal or writing problems.
• Social communication problem is another important disorder handled by the speech pathologist, as this specific problem is seen mainly in the patients suffering from autism spectrum disorder; or who have undergone any mental trauma or physical injury on the brain. Hence, it is the duty of the speech-language pathologist to help these people and cure their problems in verbal and non-verbal communication with other people around them.
• The speech-language pathologist also work in curing several cognitive disorders; like inability of thinking in an organized way, being inattentive in listening to others, not remembering important incidents or matters, not having reasoning power, as well as facing difficulties in solving any simple problem in life.
• A competent speech-language pathologist also cures the swallowing problems of a patient, which is medically termed as dysphagia. This type of patients faces great difficulties in swallowing food and even water, for which they cannot be fed easily. This ailment is often caused due to any other serious disease or a surgery, or may be the aftermath of an injury. Hence, any adult or child can be affected with this problem and need the urgent attention from an experienced speech pathologist.
• Besides the speech development, the speech-language pathologist can also help the patients suffering from hearing disabilities, by providing them proper aural treatments.
• The speech therapist may apply voice therapy for curing the ailments related to the voice resonance, due to which the patient speaks in very hoarse voice, called dysphonia; or may speak in an extremely low voice, called hypophonia; or have too rough or strained vocal tone.
• Apart from the ill patients, these speech therapists can also help any person with sound physical and mental health, who wish to learn better communication skills, through the betterment of his/her language accent or the improvement of other types of communication skills.

Speech Pathologists

Working Memory

1. Train your Brain: There are many ways to train your brain. Practicing some simple to complex tasks in daily life will surely improve your brain to a great extent. For instance, working on math problems, playing video games, focusing on complex short films, listening to audio conversations, and memorizing certain things will help you begin learning course effectively. In technical terms, you can involve core training and strategic training in your daily life, both of them will enhance your memory power in a way that you can figure out a change in your concentration level.
2. Make Connections with the Emotions and Feelings: Try to be more imaginative. There are many people who stay blank, and they neither think nor imagine making their brain less or more dead. On the contrary, you should start imagining situations and have pictures and scenes in mind. For instance, suppose you are reading a story, try to imagine the background setting, situations, scenes and everything that you are reading. This will help your brain work faster and in the meantime you will also fall in love with what you are doing. Sometimes, even negative emotions such as anger, frustration, and getting scared are good for one's brain.
3. Understanding limitations of the Brain: It has been understood that when improving working memory skills, some may experience behavioural problems. However, this can be reduced by limiting some of the limitations. Functional limitations and also the stretching limitations are two aspects that have to be learnt. This can look complicated, but taking help or guidance from the psychologist or any expert in the field will surely give you a boost in life.
4. Teach others and learn in the Course: Teaching people or explaining others about the concept will naturally benefit you and help you focus more. Primarily, it has been said time and again that teaching is all about learning two times. Make sure that whatever you are learning, you are doing it with dedication and after all you have to prove it while explaining others.
5. Make your Brain Happy: All of this is easy and fun. All that you got to do is to drink more water and more juices, eat healthy foods and which you like the most. Try to add more nutritious elements in your diet.

• Several kids are victim of social problems like high risk sexual behavior, substance abuse, etc.
• Bullying other kids or being a victim of excessive amount of bullying.
• Kids who have issues like divorce of parents or illness, family related problems.
• In fact apart from the diagnosis and assessment there are a host of psychological and personality tests that they administer as well.
• In fact, treating delaying in learning, speech, toilet training or even attention problems can also be done through a child psychologist.
• Behavioral issues like excessive amount of frustration or anger, eating disorders among others.
• Social isolation or withdrawal.
• Insomnia or excessive amount of sleepiness.
• Bereavement problems.
• Disorders like anxiety, mood swings and depression.

• Routines responsibility like that of assessment and diagnostic are a given. There will be several mental health tests after which the psychologist will understand the disorder. Some of the common ones include anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, substance abuse, autism among others.
• Treatment is the role of the psychologist which comes next. The nature of the treatment of course varies. This could include basic skills to handle the emotional difficulties which crop up, counseling, medical rehabilitation, psychotherapy, medication among others. In fact the child psychologist will have to work very closely with the child and the parents as well.
• In fact along with the basic services, the psychologist will also deal with circumstances in which the child might have been abused. These situations make the role rather dynamic since the abuser could be anyone. In this case, the psychologist needs to understand what the safety of the child is at home, if family group therapies can take place. In fact, one of the parents might be the abuser or the child might have aggressive or violent tendencies. Thus there are a host of factors to consider.
• Custody situations are also a field in which they delve in and understand the dynamics of one’s home.
• Preventative services like development and implementation programs in order to prevent teen pregnancy or substance abuse is also a responsibility which lies with them.
• Research on certain issues related the mental health and well-being of children is also done by child psychologist.

• It focuses on the kid’s behavior, perception and emotions of how to deal with the things around them. In addition parents also get adept with tools which they can use with the child in varying circumstances and behaviors.
• There are several things which have a profound impact on the precious minds of the child. It is sometimes hard for the parents to understand these.
• Provides love, comfort and security to the child.