Articles

nMES works to 're educate' the swallowing muscles to increase airway protection.  If you place your hands on your neck during the swallow you can feel your 'adam's apple' rise and move slightly forward in the neck.  In short, this is done so that food can pass over the airway and into the esophagus. It has been found to be very effective with patients, especially those with dementia, as these patients often cannot participate in following the steps for traditional exercises....

Working to strengthen and coordinate vocal folds, these exercises are in a sense , physical therapy for your vocal cords. Designed to promote natural wave, and regain balance among airflow, muscles, and resonance. Credit: These are a combination of exercises adopted from Joseph Stemple and the PhoRTE program. *It is recommended that you check with your physician and/or ENT before engaging in these exercises. Naples Speech Therapy is not liable for any injury or pain resulting from the below exercises.* Pitch glides: goal- no voice breaks. Using “knoll” or “whoop” going from lowest to highest pitch and then from highest to lowest pitch in order to promote vocal fold stretching, muscular control, and flexibility. Try to feel a “half yawn” in your...

Recent studies from ASHA news are telling us that the Preschool Language Scale – 5th Edition (PLS-5), may be inflating a scores of a child’s true language capacity. The preschool language scale is a widely used test for children ages birth to 7 years, 11 months. It evaluates and compiles standard scores, age equivalencies, and percentile ranks based on a child’s performance in: expressive and receptive (auditory comprehension) language. The PLS-5 uses an interactive materials set including toys and manual manipulables to encourage child participation. A recent ASHA study by Kristin K Smith, MA CCC-SLP was conducted to compare PLS-5 results to those of the CELF-P2.  The overall results show that the PLS-5 had a greater tendency to over qualify participant’s actual...

Speech, Language, and Social Skills at 1-Year *engages in peek-a-boo type play *follows simple 1-step directive i.e. “pick up the toy” *changes in intonation i.e. use inflection to indicate a question or exclamation. *speech babble such as ‘mama’, ‘dada’, ‘uh-oh!’ *has 1 or 2 words around 1st birthday **Note: comprehension should clearly supersede production at this point (i.e. s/he know what ‘toy’ references; but does not use it in speaking vocabulary). Speech, Language, and Social Skills at 2-Years *imitates others behaviors *becomes excited about the presence of other children *understands simple questions and commands *identifies body parts *uses names of things, actions, persons *repeats words heard in conversation *asks “what’s this” or “what’s that” *able to find objects ‘hidden’ during play *produces phrases of 2-3 words *has around 200 words in speaking vocabulary *listens to stories and points to pictures when...

May Is better Speech and Hearing Month! Working in a SNF, oral care is a huge part of my staff training. Below is a handout with some interesting facts and “how-to’s” to get your staff started on providing patients with good oral care.  Original word file (so you can customize  ) available via email- see contact page. ...

Recently, our facility is requiring us to stage dementia (early, mid, late).  Following, Speech and OT are to role out a program to engage these patients in activities, according to their stage, in order to maximize the quality of life and keep them at the highest level of functioning.  Since this is now a state law for Florida, I will be outlining the process as I go through it, for anyone else who is also in the process  For starters, it is most definitely a dignity issue to outwardly label one as early, mid, and late; therefore, I recommend using some more… abstract titles: sun: early moon: mid stars: late Our facility is requesting 2 screening methods.  As this population can be tricky to assess, and when evaluating...

As we age, a lot of things change, and some may say they’re ‘not as sharp’ as they once were.  But what types of changes are ‘normal’, what changes aren’t?  There is evidence to show that there are certain changes that may be signaling a greater decline in cognitive functioning than is typical....

Dementia can be a challenging area for caregivers; the behaviors can be difficult to manage, not to mention understand their underlying meaning, because they DO have an underlying meaning.  Through a 3 stage division of dementia, behaviors (both adverse and preserved) we can better understand the symptoms and behaviors and increase the success and positivity of our interactions. In the mild stage we see an increase in word finding difficulty. You may hear them utilize vague descriptors such as, “that thing” or, “over there”.  In a test sub component, this could be measured using a generative naming task such as naming as many animals as they can think of within a minute.  Often at this stage individual are in denial of any short term memory (STM) loss; however word finding difficulty frequently parallels...

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