Conveying Ideas
Schools sometimes make parents believe that speech and language issues disappear by 4th or 5th grade when they no longer want to provide specialized speech and language services; however, that is not true. Language needs increase and change in complexity over time, so in fourth and fifth grade the increase in complex language demands are […]
Following directions: Where do I go?
I recently completed jury duty, and it was interesting watching people follow directions, or maybe I should say not follow directions. Jury duty begins when you arrive at the court house and are assigned a number. At 8:30am a court officer greets the awaiting jurors and shows a video. On my day of service after […]
Lazy is sometimes a strategy
Working with people that have had traumatic brain injury and/or stroke was my first work experience as a speech pathologist. I feel lucky to have acute rehabilitation as my foundation because it helped me understand that there are many reasons why people do not perform, and many times it is not because they do not want […]
Communicating Acceptance
“What is it like to make mistakes at your old school,” I ask my daughter. she states, “in class when you made a mistake kids would snicker and laugh. I hate that,” she states emphatically. then I asked her, “What is it like when you make a mistake at your new school?” She states in […]
To change or not to change…
I love foreign accents. The lyrical sounds of different languages are beautiful to hear, but there are times when heavy accents interfere with effective communication. I once took a class and I could not understand the professor. It was hard, and it was difficult for every person in that room. In high pressured business or […]
Speech therapy and motherhood
As a speech therapist, becoming a mom has been the second greatest learning experience of my career. Motherhood helped me understand, the far reaching impact of poor verbal expression and the role of speech therapy. It’s not just about whether you acquire vocabulary, but about learning to use language in a flexible way in order […]
AANE conference: Functional Implications of Adaptive Behavior Deficits
Functional Implications of Adaptive Behavior Deficits in Higher Functioning ASD’s: Eye Tracking Paradigms to Screen for Infants at Risk for ASD by Celine Saulnier Ph.D ( notes by Kai Long, MS SLP CCC from AANE conference on Current Autism Research) Researchers are looking for a way to screen infants at risks for ASD so they […]
Autism: Lower preference to attend?
Current research: Implication for the Asperger Community, a conference hosted by AANE in March presented quite a few speakers. The research that struck me as the most relevant to what I see in my practice was given by Nancy Kanwisher, Ph.D. Her presentation was called Attention in Autism: Different Preferences, Not Different Abilities. Her research was intriguing […]
Skip the 2nd Language: Language impairments and 2nd languages
I have wondered about the practice of saying that language disabled students cannot learn a foreign language. Middle schools and high schools routinely release language disabled students from the requirements of a second language which is a prerequisite for admission to many colleges. Although I have been a part of the teams that have dismissed […]
Reading words or learning to read? Part III
It is a fact that students with language-based learning disability require more intense structured instruction over a longer period of time in order to acquire many aspects of language.