Language Therapy

Early Intervention

Early speech intervention focuses on diagnosing and treating speech disorders in young children—from infancy to age three. Early intervention speech therapy goals include addressing a child's sound repertoire, word repertoire, phrase and sentence development, and functional play skills.  

 

School-Age Language Intervention

School-age children may also benefit from language services. School-aged children with language disorders may have difficulty formulating complex sentences, answering questions, organizing a narrative, understanding what is being said in the classroom or at home, and understanding what they read. 

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Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) describes a variety of ways to communicate that can augment (assist) or alternate (compensate), either temporarily or permanently,  for a severe expressive language disorder. No-tech AAC (pictures, communication boards), low-tech AAC (big mack buttons, voice output boards) and high-tech AAC (computerized devices and tablet applications) can all be used to aid in communication.

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Pragmatic Language

An individual may be diagnosed with a pragmatic language disorder if he/she presents challenges with both nonverbal and verbal communication skills used in social settings. 

Pragmatic language skills include:

Use and understanding of body language (gestures, facial expressions, eye contact), conversational turn-taking, topic maintenance, using the appropriate volume, speed, intonation and body distance.

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Aphasia

Aphasia is a language disorder caused by damage to a specific area of the brain that is responsible for understanding and using language. Aphasia leaves a person unable to communicate effectively with others.  Aphasia is often a result of stroke or Traumatic Brain. 

Some characteristics of a language disorder secondary to Aphasia include:

• using substitutes for words (for example, “the thing you wear on your head” rather than “hat”). 

• not finding any word at all

• Using words that have no meaning, or that are jumbled up in the wrong order

 

Dementia

A person diagnosed with dementia can have problems with language. Dementia, although not localized as a stroke, can damage the language centers of the brain. For those diagnosed with dementia, language problems can vary from day to day and could be dependent on a variety of circumstances (fatigue, illness, pain).