Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Technique to increase self-monitoring skills

Many children with articulation problems have an underdeveloped auditory feedback mechanism thus it makes it hard for them to "hear" the difference in their speech to know correct from incorrect (distortions).

The palatometer provides another modality "the visual" modality to facilitate the underdeveloped self-monitoring process.
Here is a simple technique.
1. Record the child or adult saying a word three times in a row. Save the recording.
2. Play back the recording and have the client listen to each word again and judge each word by putting a mark on a written visual acoustic arrow as to how close to the correct target they were or how far from the correct target sound they were.
3, Then go back find the worst sound display and click through the visual display/target sound to see what went on, do the same clicking process of the display with the correct target sound.
4. Let the child tell you what happened. One mother said "I really don't believe HE can hear the difference" and the child said, " I sound the same as all the other kids not in speech." After going through the visual check of each sound, he said "I didn't get to a correct /s/ placement and it went into a different position which was incorrect placement for 3 msec., while the other good /s was held in the correct placement for 4 msec." He liked to use numbers. Wow, he was totally accurate with the description after visually seeing the difference once. After this process, he self-corrected incorrect /s/ words two times in a row in his connected speech. His mom just smiled big at him and he smiled back. He realized he made the correct adjustment and carryover from what he had just learned.
A video display of this techniques is coming soon.