Articulation disorders are treated through a variety of approaches such as developmental approaches which forget individual phonemes in a developmental manner.
Depending on the nature and severity of the articulation disorder, other approaches that may be indicated are approaches that target oral motor sequencing for childhood apraxia of speech or the use of smart palate which targets phonemes that have not responded to traditional articulation therapy.
- Issues with speech clarity/intelligibility
- Leaving out consonants in words, ex: cu for cup
- Substitution of consonants, ex: wun for run
- Distortion of consonants, ex: tsun for sun
- Difficulty producing sounds in the correct order in a word, ex pasketti for spaghetti
SmartPalate
Using the SmartPalate in Therapy
The SmartPalate System empowers SLPs with real-time visual feedback of tongue-to-palate contact throughout all stages of therapy. By eliminating the guesswork commonly associated with speech therapy, SLPs and their clients can rapidly identify trouble areas, demonstrate and develop proper production, and effectively practice and implement proper speech into everyday use.
Treatment:
- Create custom targets from scratch or capture them during live speech recordings.
- Match tongue to custom tongue targets for proper placement.
- Demonstrate proper place, manner & voicing simultaneously.
- Record and isolate trouble area(s) (e.g. work on placement without the voice).
- Increase client self-awareness by seeing substitutions, omissions, distortions & additions.
- Maintain engagement of clients through voiced & non-voiced practice activities.
- Motivate repetitions & progression with a real-time quantifiable measuring tool.