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Alternative Therapies, Herbs, Pills, and Snake Oils or “What’s the Harm in That?”

I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time and have finally decided to do it now due to an increased prevalence of “non-traditional” treatment options available to parents of language impaired children.

More and more unscrupulous or misguided individuals are offering fantastical cures to children diagnosed with the wide variety of disorders including but not limited to: Autism (ASD), Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS), language disorders, “Auditory Processing Deficits (APD)“, Dyslexia, and much much more.

What are some examples of controversial products and therapies you may ask?

Below I cite several links (which are in no way exhaustive) for your convenience.

Controversial Autism Treatments: 

In 2013, Dr. Emily Willingham, guest writer for Forbes magazine wrote a post on the topic of “The 5 Scariest Autism ‘Treatments.  In it she described some pretty horrifying methods (e.g., chelation, chemical castration, hyperbaric oxygen therapy) which purportedly promised to “cure” autism. For more information on other controversial treatments in autism click to read this keynote address entitled Evidence-Based Practices for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders by Dr. Tristram Smith for The Society for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (SCCAP).

Controversial Speech Sound Disorder Treatments 

Dr. Caroline Bowen respected Speech Language Researcher from Australia has a delightfully edifying page on her website (http://speech-language-therapy.com/) entitled: “Controversial Practices in Children’s Speech Sound Disorders – Oral Motor Exercises, Dietary Supplements, Auditory Integration Training”.  On it she thoroughly reviews non-research supported practices to improve children’s sound production including the use of oral motor/mouth exercises, dietary supplements (Apraxia Diet, Nourish Life Speak, Nutri Veda, etc.), as well as Auditory Integration Training (AIT).

Parent‐Friendly Information about Nonspeech Oral Motor Exercises (HERE)

Controversial Treatments for Children with Developmental and Learning Disabilities 

Macquarie University Special Education Centre in Sydney Australia has even developed concise one-page briefings of a vast number of controversial treatments for children with developmental and learning disabilities (selected briefing links are below; the full list of briefings is available HERE):

How to Spot Controversial Practices? 

In her 2012 post entitled: “10 Questions To Distinguish Real From Fake Science“, Dr. Emily Willingham wrote that “science consumers need a cheat sheet … when considering a product, book, therapy, or remedy”. She advised consumers to consider some of the following criteria:

  • Consider the source
  • Determine their agenda
  • Do they use highly emotionally charged language or meaningless jargon?
  • Are they relying on testimonials vs. evidence?
  • Are they claiming to be exclusive?
  • Do they mention words like ‘conspiracy’?
  • Is their treatment promising to cure multiple unrelated disorders?
  • What does the money trail reveal?

The truth is that there’s a lot of pseudoscience out there and as such it is very important for both parents and professionals not to fall into its trap.  In 2012, Dr. Gregory Lof presented the following poster at the ASHA’s Atlanta Convention:  “Science vs. Pseudoscience in CSD: A Checklist for Skeptical Thinking” to “help clinicians evaluate claims made by promoters of products or services to help determine if they are based on scientific principles or on pseudoscience”. An interactive version of the checklist is available HERE, and for the summary based on the checklist,  written by Mary Huston,  fellow SLP and author of the Speech Adventures, click HERE. 

So what do pseudoscientific practices/claims look like?

  • People place heavy emphasis on beliefs and opinions vs. data, when it comes to therapeutic claims
    • SLPs: “You are wrong! I’ve seen ________ work with my clients!”
    • Parents: “Who cares about your research this _______worked for us so HOW DARE YOU question it?
  • The presented data is based on “expert opinions”, testimonials, and isolated case studies
    • “These ridiculously expensive ‘speech sticks’ at $120 a pop worked for us, Yay!”
  • Data is disseminated via self-published books, popular press, proprietary websites lacking research sections, as well as non-peer reviewed conferences.
    • You might want to review the list of predatory publishers HERE, review the guide of how to spot a bogus scientific publication HERE,  and if you ever find yourself reading anything on this website, I suggest you close your laptop as fast as you can and possibly put it into another room for a while (Read Why – HERE).
  • Treatment sounds like a magic potion since it works on a wide range of disabilities, appeals to fears and wishful thinking, preys on the desperate and uses hyperboles (“miracle cure”)
  • Use of disdainful comments against researchers because “only clinicians do real clinical work”coupled with over reliance on clinician’s experience and subjective judgment since it’s the “best way” to determine effectiveness
    • “I’ve found ___________ to be highly effective with gazillion clients”.
  • Lack of change in practices despite a veritable mountain of evidence to the contrary
    • “Your child NEEDS oral-motor exercises, NOW, for his speech to get better”
  • New terms are created to mask use of disproven pseudoscientific practices

Why do we keep believing when all the evidence points to the contrary?

Because our brains become emotionally attached to ideas. This is further supported by the construct of two biases.

Confirmation bias – our tendency to look for/interpret information in a way that confirms our beliefs by “cherry picking” the evidence that supports what we believe in and ignoring the evidence that argues against it.

Disconfirmation bias – when facing with evidence which directly contradicts our beliefs we will criticize and reject it because we do not want to be wrong.

So now let’s get back to talk about the title of this post: “What’s the harm in that?” 

While I am accustomed to seeing the variation of this statement on parent forums, I was surprised when I learned that it’s popping up quite often in some unexpected places such as during IEP meetings or during doctor visits (as reported to me by some of my client’s parents).

So I wanted to take this opportunity to explicitly point out what the harm in these alternative practices could be, ranging from the obvious to the hidden.

For starters some of these ‘therapies’ could kill!

  • Over the years there has been a number of reports regarding deaths from controversial autism treatments including chelation and GcMAF injections.

Even if they don’t kill you they can cause some nasty side effects!

  • To illustrate, Nourish Life Speak Nutrients, which were prescribed to children to “increase their language output or to make them speak better”, were so loaded with vitamin E (way above the legal amount), that a number of children who were taking them experienced significant seizure activity.

It’s going to cost you!

They create false hope!  

They can create a sense of  bitterness and hopelessness!

  • Ever spoken to parents who have tried every alternative treatment possible and have subsequently given up? If you haven’t, I assure you it’s not a pleasant or productive conversation.  At best you will hear a lot of vitriol and accusations and at worst they may actually start a forum thread or a website bashing effective treatments such as speech language therapy because of their negative experiences.  When you believe that you have tried everything and it’s still not helping, you feel defeated and lost and as a result tend to attack blindly anyone who attempts to assist you because you’ve stopped perceiving it as assistance but rather as just another scam.

They delay effective research-proven treatments! 

They affect self-esteem and self-efficacy! 

  • Now enough about parents and professionals. Let’s actually take a moment to talk about effect of these alternative practices on the most important people in question: the children who are on the receiving end of it! Let’s talk about all the negative effects that can be incurred by them by undergoing these useless treatments time after time.  And no I am not actually talking about the hugely dangerous treatments, which can cause physical harm or awful side effects.  I am talking about the relatively benign treatments of “vision therapy”, “memory training”, etc.
  • To illustrate, I work with are very bright 11-year-old boy with significant reading deficits and an extensive history of reading disabilities in the family.  This boy’s deficit is in the area of reading, there is no doubt about it! He knows it and it’s very acutely aware of it.  However, at the advice of well-meaning professionals he was taken to a behavioral optometrist, who told his mother that his issues with reading are due to visual processing deficits (despite the fact that his ophthalmologist ruled out any vision difficulties and declared his vision to be 20/20).    It was then recommended that he undergo a costly vision therapy program in order to improve his “visual processing”.  Guess, what his first words were, when I saw him in my office for reading intervention?  ‘I went to the doctor who told me that I have problems in my eyes and that I need to stop reading!  So I can’t do any more reading because of my eye problems.’   Imagine how he will feel when after several months of costly therapies there will be no functional improvement in his reading skills, since the only thing which can improve his reading abilities is the actual targeted reading instruction!
  • Our students are very acutely aware when something is not working. Just like us they get increasingly frustrated after being dragged from one professional to another, after ‘suffering’ through one controversial treatment after another with no respite in sight.  Imagine what havoc it begins to wreak on their self-esteem and their self-efficacy (belief in own abilities to complete tasks and reach goals), when they keep undergoing these treatments without any improvement? All the negative self-talk they will use? Here are just a few statements I’ve heard over the years: “I am so stupid”; “There’s something wrong with my brain”, “I am not good at this, etc.) Instead of building them up these alternative therapies and treatments will not just tear them back down but may potentially cause behavioral and psychiatric effects to boot.

There you have it: that’s what the harm is!  The toll of these quack practices can be very significant and can go far beyond the financial.  So the next time someone utters the statement: “What’s the Harm in That?” consider the above information in order to make the informed decisions regarding the treatment for the most vulnerable parties involved: the children in your care!

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Why (C) APD Diagnosis is NOT Valid!

Today’s post will make a number of people quite angry and is intended to be controversial!  Why? Because controversy promotes critical thinking, broadens perspectives, allows to acquire better knowledge of the construct in question as well as ultimately guides better decision making on the part of the parties in question. So why the lengthy disclaimer? Because today via the use of the latest research publications, I would like discuss the fact that the diagnosis of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) or what some may know as Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) is NOT valid!

Here are just a few reasons why:

  1. There is a strong desire for the (C)APD label on the part of those encountering processing difficulties, yet once the label is given no direct/specific auditory interventions are provided by the audiologist. Subsequent to the diagnosis, confusion ensues regarding the type, frequency, and duration of service provision (typically performed by the SLP) as well as what those services should actually constitute 
  2. Recommendations for training deficits specific areas such as working memory, auditory discrimination, auditory sequencing, etc., do not functionally transfer into practice and fail to create generalization affect
  3. Recommendations for specific costly auditory training programs such Auditory Integration Training (AIT), The Listening Program (TLP), Fast ForWord® (FFW) at the exclusion of all others, without the provision of a detailed breakdown of the child’s deficit areas often cause an incursion of unnecessary expenses for parents and professionals and are found to be INEFFECTIVE or limitedly effective in the long run
  4. General audiological recommendations for accommodations (e.g., FM systems, etc.) are frequently unnecessary, and may actually exacerbate the isolation effect while in no way alleviating the student’s deficits, which require direct and targeted intervention
  5. Auditory deficits don’t cause speech, language, and academic learning difficulties
  6. Numerous non-linguistic based disorders can be misdiagnosed as (C)APD without differential diagnosis
  7. (C)APD testing is hugely influenced by non-auditory factors grounded in higher order cognitive and linguistic processes
  8. Presently there’s no no clear performance criteria to make the (C)APD diagnosis
  9. The diagnosis of (C)APD is appealing because it presents a more attractive explanation than the diagnoses of language and learning disabilities for children with processing deficits
  10. The diagnosis of (C)APD may often detract from identifying legitimate language based deficits in the areas of comprehension, expression, social communication and literacy development, as the result of which these areas will not get adequate therapeutic attention by relevant professionals

A few words on (C)APD popularity, well sort of:

(C)APD  is currently rampantly diagnosed in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and is even beginning to be diagnosed in the United Kingdom (Dawes & Bishop, 2009). However, presently, (C)APD is not a mainstream diagnostic classifications in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) nor is part of an actual educational classification in United States.  Already many of you can see the beginnings of the controversy.  If this diagnoses is so popular and so prevalent why is that major psychological and educational governing bodies such as American Psychiatric Association and the US Department of Education still do not officially recognize it?

(C)APD symptomology:

A. Student presents with difficulty processing information efficiently

  • Requires increased processing time to respond to questions
  • Presents like s/he are ignoring the speaker
  • May request frequent repetition of presented information from speakers
  • Difficulty following long sentences
  • Difficulty keeping up with class discussions in group settings
  • Poor listening abilities under noisy conditions may be interpreted as “distractibility”

B. Student has difficulty maintaining attention on presented tasks

  • Frequent loss of focus
  • Difficulty completing assignments on their own

C. Student has poor short term memory – difficulty remembering instructions and directions or verbally presented information

D.Student has difficulty with phonemic awareness, reading and spelling

  • Poor ability to recognize and produce rhyming words
  • Poor segmentation abilities (separation of sentences, syllables and sounds)
  • Poor sound manipulation abilities (isolation, deletion, substitution, blending, etc)
  • Poor sound letter identification abilities
  • Poor vowel recognition abilities
  • Poor decoding
  • Poor comprehension
  • Spelling errors
  • Limited/disorganized writing

E. The combination of above factors may result in generalized deficits across the board, affecting the child’s social and academic performance:

  • Poor reading comprehension
  • Poor oral and written expression
  • Disorganized thinking (e.g., disjointed narrative production)
  • Sequencing errors (recalling/retelling information in order, following recipes, etc)
  • Poor message interpretation
  • Difficulty making inferences
  • Misinterpreting the meaning of abstract information

I do not know what you see when you read the above description but to me those are the classical signs of a language impairment which has turned into a learning disability masking under the ambiguous label of  (C)APD. 

That is exactly what Dawes & Bishop, stated in 2009, when they asserted that “a child who is regarded as having a specific learning disability by one group of experts may be given an APD diagnosis by another.” They concluded that: “APD, as currently diagnosed, is not a coherent category, but that rather than abandoning the construct, we need to develop improved methods for assessment and diagnosis, with a focus on interdisciplinary evaluation“.

Let us now deconstruct each of the above statements with the assistance of direct quotes from current research.

1. (C)APD – what is it good for? Child goes to an audiologist and receives an ambiguous battery of (C)APD  testing with unclear qualification criteria (more on that below). There are some abnormal findings, so the audiologist states that the child has (C)APD, recommends accommodations and modifications, services in the form of speech language therapy with a focus on auditory training (more below) and/or some form of program similar to Fast ForWord®, and doesn’t see the child again for some time (maybe even years).  Since the child is now being seen by an SLP, who by the way frequently has no idea what to do with that child based on the ambiguous audiological findings, what exactly did the diagnosis of (C) APD just accomplish?

2. Processing Skills Training – Say What? In 2011 Fey and colleagues  (many notable audiologists and speech language pathologists) conducted a systematic review of  25 journal articles on the efficacy of interventions for school-age children with auditory processing disorder (C)APD. Their review found no compelling evidence that auditory interventions provided any unique benefit to auditory, language, or academic outcomes for children with diagnoses of (C)APD or language disorder.

Presently there is no valid evidence that targeting specific processing skills such as auditory discrimination, auditory sequencing, phonological memory, working memory, or rapid serial naming actually improves children’s ‘auditory processing’, language or reading abilities (Fey et al., 2011).

To illustrate further, Melby-Lervåg & Hulme, 2013 performed a meta analysis  of 23 working memory training studies. They found no evidence that memory training was an effective intervention for children with ADHD or dyslexia as it did not lead to better performance outside of the tasks presented within the memory tests. They concluded: “In the light of such evidence, it seems very difficult to justify the use of working memory training programs in relation to the treatment of reading and language disorders.” Further adding: “Our findings also cast strong doubt on claims that working memory training is effective in improving cognitive ability and scholastic attainment.” (Melby-Lervåg, 2013, p. 282).

3. The trouble with prescriptive programs.  (C)APD assessments often yield recommendations for a number of specific costly prescriptive programs such as AIT, FFW, etc.. As humans we are “attracted to interventions that promise relatively rapid improvements in language and academic skills. Interventions that target processing abilities are appealing because they promise significant improvements in language and reading without having to directly target the specific knowledge and skills required to be a proficient speaker, listener, reader, and writer.” (Kamhi and Wallach, 2012)

These programs claim to improve the child’s processing abilities through music, phonics, hearing distortions, etc. When such recommendations are made parents and professionals are urged to carefully review evidence-based research supported information regarding these prescribed programs in order to determine their effectiveness. Presently, there’s no research to support the use of any of these programs with children presenting with processing difficulties. 

Let’s take a look at Fast ForWord®, which is a highly costly program frequently recommended for children with auditory processing deficits. It is designed to help children’s reading and spoken language by training their memory, attention, processing, and sequencing by training 3 to 5 days per week, for 8 to 12 weeks. However, systematic reviews found no sign of a reliable effect of Fast ForWord® on reading or on expressive or receptive spoken language. 

Now some of you may legitimately tell me: “How dare you? I’ve tried it with my child and seen great gains”. And that is terrific! However, it is important to note that ANY intervention is better than NO intervention! And there is currently no scientific proof out there that this program works better than other programs aimed directly at improving the children’s reading abilities and listening skills.  Furthermore, if the child needs assistance with reading rather than spending the money  on Fast ForWord® it would be far more effective to select a systematic Orton-Gillingham (OG) (or similar) reading based program to teach her/him reading!

4. The dreaded FM system! FM systems have become an almost automatic recommendation for children diagnosed with (C)APD but are they actually effective?

Here is what one notable audiologist had to say in the subject. “An FM system brings the speaker’s voice via the mic to the listener via loudspeakers or earphones through an amplifier. Only personal systems appropriate for children with TRUE APD-based auditory distractibility problems (understanding speech in the presence of background noise)”.  However, when he did his testing he found that only ~25% of children with (C)APD had issues with hearing speech in noise, the other ~75% didn’t. 

Guess what… a recent meta-analysis showed? Lemos et, al, 2009 did a systematic literature review of articles recommending the use of FM systems for APD. They concluded that: “Strong scientific evidence supporting the use of personal FM systems for APD intervention was not found. Since such device is frequently recommended for the treatment of APD, it becomes essential to carry out studies with high scientific evidence that could safely guide clinical decision making on this subject.“

5. (C)APD diagnosis does NOT Language Disorder Make. “There little evidence that auditory perceptual impairments (not referring to hearing deficits) are a significant risk factor for language and academic performance (e.g., Hazan, Messaoud-Galusi, Rosan, Nouwens, & Shakespeare, 2009; Watson & Kidd, 2009)” (Kamhi, 2011, p. 265).  

  • Watson et al., 2003 found that measures of auditory processing (NOT hearing) had no impact on children’s reading or language abilities in Grades 1 through 4.
  • Sharma, Purdy, and Kelly (2009)  found that having auditory processing difficulties did not increase the likelihood that a child would have a language or reading disorder.
  • Hazan et al., 2009; Ramus et al., 2006) found that despite poor phonological processing abilities, individuals with dyslexia perform within normal limits on measures of speech perception. 

(From Kamhi, 2011, p. 268)

6. Are you sure it’s (C)APD?

—Without a careful differential diagnosis, numerous non-linguistic based medical, psychiatric neurological, psychological, and cognitive conditions can be misdiagnosed as (C)APD including (but not limited):

  • —Respiratory Disorders
    • —Adenoid hypertrophy, asthma, allergic rhinitis
  • —Metabolic/Endocrine Disorders
    • —Diabetes  hypo/hyperthyroidism
  • —Hematological Disorders
    • —Anemia
  • —Immunological Disorders
    • —Acquired and congenital immune problems
  • —Cardiac Disorders
    • —Congenital and acquired heart disease, syncopy
  • —Digestive  Disorders
    • —Irritable bowel syndrome, GERD
  • —Neurological Disorders
    • —Traumatic Brain Injuries, Tumors, Encephalopathy
  • Genetic Disorders
    • —Fragile X Syndrome
  • —Toxin Exposure
    • —Lead, Mercury, Drug Exposure
  • —Infections and Infestations
    • —Yeast overgrowth , intestinal worms/parasites
  • —Sleep Disorders
    • Sleep Apnea
  • —Mental Health Disorders
    • —Trauma, Anxiety, mood disorders, adjustment disorders
  • ——Sensory Processing Disorders
    • —Vision, hearing, auditory, tactile
  • —Acquired Disorders
    • —FASD

7. (C)APD testing is NOT so PURE 

(C)APD testing does not simply consists of pure tone audiometry and is heavily comprised of higher order linguistic and cognitive tasks. Testing requires that the listeners attend to given directions, remember and label the presented auditory sequences, etc, in other words participate in tasks aimed to task their linguistic system and executive functions  (DeBonis, 2015)

So what does the research show?

  • Wallach (2011) has indicated that  (C) APD ‘symptomology’ “reflects broader underlying problems in language comprehension and metalinguistic awareness.
  • Dawes and Bishop (2009)  compared children with a CAPD to children diagnosed with dyslexia and found similar attention, reading, and language deficits in both groups.
  •  Kelly et al. (2009)  found that 76% of a sample of 68 children with suspected auditory processing disorder also had language impairment with 53% demonstrating decreased auditory attention and 59% demonstrated decreased auditory memory.
  • Ferguson et al. (2011)  concluded that “the current labels of CAPD and SLI [specific language impairment] may, for all practical purposes, be indistinguishable” (p. 225).

(From DeBonis, 2015 pgs. 126-127)

8. What to Test and How to do it – That IS the Question? 

“Despite lofty claims to the contrary, there is no clear consensus concerning the battery of tests that lead to a diagnosis of CAPD.”  (Burkard, 2009, p. vii) Presently, neither the American Academy of Audiology nor the American Speech Language Hearing Association have a clear criteria on what testing to administer, how many standard deviations the client has to be in order to qualify, as well as even who is a good candidate for (C)APD testing.  (DeBonis, 2015 pg. 125)

As such, presently children diagnosed with (C)APD are diagnosed purely in an arbitrary fashion rather than based on a specific widely accepted standard.  To illustrate W. J. Wilson and Arnott (2013) found that “in a sample of records of 150 school-aged children who had completed at least four CAPD tests, rates of diagnosis ranged from 7.3% to 96% depending on the criteria used” (DeBonis, 2015 pg. 125). Are you “processing” what I am saying? 

9. Looking for the “Right” Label 

As an SLP, I frequently hear the following statement from parents: “We were searching for what was wrong with our child for such a long time; we are so happy that we were finally able to identify that it’s (C)APD.

The above comment is certainly understandable.  After all (C)APD sounds manageable!  The appeal to it is that presumably if the child undergoes specific auditory interventions to improve deficit areas, s/he will get better and all the problems will go away.  In contrast, finding out that the child’s processing difficulties are the result of linguistic deficits in the areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing can be incredibly overwhelming especially because what we know about the nature of language impairments and that is that more often than not they turn into lifelong learning disabilities.

Some parents and professionals may disagree.  They might point out that many children with (C)APD test just fine on generalized language testing and only present with isolated deficits in the areas of attention, memory, as well as phonological processing. Yet here is the problem! General language testing in the form of administration of tests such as the CELF-5 or the CASL does not complete language assessment make!

The same children who test ‘just fine’ on these assessments often test quite poorly on the measures of social communication, executive function, as well as reading.  In other words if the professionals dig deep enough they often find out that something which outwardly presents as (C)APD is part of much broader language related issues, which require relevant intervention services. This leads me to my final point below.

10. Missing the Big Picture

“The primacy given to auditory processing abilities has resulted at times in neglect of other cognitive factors” (Cowan et al. 2009, p. 192). Focusing on the diagnosis of (C)APD obscures REAL, language-based deficits in children in question. It forces SLPs to address erroneous therapeutic targets based on AuD recommendations. It makes us ignore the BIG Picture and  “Consider non-auditory reasons for listening and comprehension difficulties, such as limitations in working memory, language knowledge, conceptual abilities, attention, and motivation and consequently targeting language, literacy, and knowledge-based goals in therapy.” —(Kamhi &Wallach, 2012)

Conclusion:

So what will happen next? Well, I can tell you with certainty that the controversy will certainly not end here!  Presently, not only is that there is a fierce academic debate between speech language pathologist and audiologists but there is also a raging debate among audiologists themselves!  This controversy will continue for many years among some highly educated people.  And SLPs? Well, we will continue seeing numerous children diagnosed with (C)APD.  Except, I do hope something will change and that is our collective outlook on how we view ambiguously defined and assessed disorders such as (C)APD.

I sincerely hope that we do not blindly defer to other professions and reject current valid research regarding this controversial diagnosis without first spending some time reflecting and critically reviewing these findings in order to better assist us with making informed and educated decisions regarding our clients’ plan of care.

Click HERE to read the second part of this post, which describes how SLPs SHOULD assess and treat children diagnosed by audiologists with (C)APD. 

References:

  • Burkard, R. (2009). Foreword. In A. Cacace & D. McFarland (Eds.), Controversies in central auditory processing disorder (pp. vii-viii). San Diego, CA: Plural.
  • Cowan, J., Rosen, S., & Moore, D. (2009). Putting the auditory back into auditory processing disorder in children. In Cacace, A., & McFarland, D. (Eds.),Controversies in central auditory processing disorder(pp. 187–197). San Diego, CA: Plural Publishing.
  • Dawes, P., & Bishop, D. (2009). Auditiory processing disorder in relation to developmental disorders of language, communication and attention: A review and critique. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 44, 440–465.
  • DeBonis, D. A. (2015) It Is Time to Rethink Central Auditory Processing Disorder Protocols for School-Aged Children. American Journal of Audiology. v. 24, 124-136.
  • Ferguson, M. A., Hall, R. L., Moore, D. R., & Riley, A. (2011). Communication, listening, cognitive and speech perception skills in children with auditory processing disorder (APD) or specific language impairment (SLI). Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54, 211–227.
  • Fey, M. E., Richard, G. J., Geffner, D., Kamhi, A. G., Medwetsky, L., Paul, D., Schooling, T. (2011). Auditory processing disorder and auditory/language interventions: An evidence-based systematic review. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 42, 246–264.
  • Hazan, V., Messaoud-Galusi, S., Rosen, S., Nouwens, S., Shakespeare, B. (2009). Speech perception abilities of adults with dyslexia: Is there any evidence for a true deficit?. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. 52 1510–1529
  • Kamhi, A. G. (2011). What speech-language pathologists need to know about auditory processing disorder. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 42, 265–272.
  • Kamhi, A & Wallach, G (2012) What Speech-Language Pathologists Need to Know about Auditory Processing Disorders. ASHA Convention Presentation. Atlanta, GA.
  • Kelly, A. S., Purdy, S. C., & Sharma, M. (2009). Comorbidity of auditory processing, language, and reading disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 706–722.
  • Lemos IC, Jacob RT, Gejao MG, et al. (2009) Frequency modulation (FM) system in auditory processing disorder: An evidence-based practice? Pró-Fono Produtos Especializados para Fonoaudiologia Ltda. 21(3):243-248.
  • Melby-Lervåg, M., & Hulme, C. (2013). Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review. Developmental Psychology, 49, 270–291.
  • Ramus, F., White, S., Frith, U. (2006). Weighing the evidence between competing theories of dyslexia.Developmental Science. 9 265–269
  • Sharma, M., Purdy, S. C., Kelly, A. S. (2009). Comorbidity of auditory processing, language, and reading disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. 52 706–722
  • Wallach, G. P. (2011). Peeling the onion of auditory processing disorder: A language/curricular-based perspective. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 42, 273–285.
  • Watson, C., Kidd, G. (2009). Associations between auditory abilities, reading, and other language skills in children and adults. Cacace, A., McFarland, D.Controversies in central auditory processing disorder.  218–242 San Diego, CA Plural.
  • Wilson, W. J., & Arnott, W. (2013). Using different criteria to diagnose (central) auditory processing disorder: How big a difference does it make? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 56, 63–70.
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Show me the Data or Why I Hate the Phrase: “It’s Not So Bad”

KEEP CALMA few days ago I was asked by my higher-ups for a second opinion on a consult regarding a psychological evaluation on an 11-year-old boy, which was depicting a certain pattern of deficits without a reasonable justification as to why they were occurring. I had a working hypothesis but needed more evidence to turn it into a viable theory.  So I set out to collect more evidence by interviewing a few ancillary professionals who were providing therapy services to the student.

The first person I interviewed was his OT, whom I asked regarding the quality of his graphomotor skills. She responded: “Oh, they are not so bad”.

I was perplexed to say the least. What does that mean I asked her. She responded back with: “He can write.”

“But I am not asking you whether he can write”, I responded back.  “I am asking you to provide data that will indicate whether his visual perceptual skills, orthographic coding, motor planning and execution, kinesthetic feedback, as well as visual motor coordination,  are on par or below those of his grade level peers.”

Needless to say this student graphomotor abilities were nowhere near those of his peers.  The below “sample” took me approximately 12 minutes to elicit and required numerous prompts from myself as well as self-corrections from the student to produce.

FullSizeRenderThis got me thinking of all the parents and professionals who hear litotes such as “It’s not so bad”, or overgeneralized phrases such as: “Her social skills are fine“,  “He is functioning higher than what the testing showed“,”He can read“, etc., on daily basis, instead of being provided with detailed data regarding the student’s present level of functioning in a particular academic area.

This has to stop, right now!

If you are an educational or health professional who has a habit of making such statements – beware! You are not doing yourself any favors by saying it and you can actually get into some pretty hot water if you are ever involved in a legal dispute.

Here’s why:

SIGNIFY NOTHING

These statements are meaningless! 

They signify nothing!  Let’s use a commonly heard phrase: “He can read.”  Sounds fairly simple, right?

Wrong!

In order to make this “loaded” statement, a professional actually needs to understand what the act of reading entails.  The act of reading contains a number of active components:

In other words if the child can decode all the words on the page, but their reading rate is slow and labored, then they cannot read!

If the child is a fast but inaccurate reader and has trouble decoding new words then they’re not a reader either!

If the child reads everything quickly and accurately but comprehends very little then they are also not a reader!

Let us now examine another loaded statement, I’ve heard recently for a fellow SLP: “His skills are higher than your evaluation depicted.” Again, what does that mean? Do you have audio, video, or written documentation to support your assertion?   No professional should ever make that statement without having detailed data to support it. Otherwise, you will be hearing: “SHOW ME THE DATA!“

These statements are harmful!

They imply to parents that the child is doing relatively well as compared to peers when nothing could be further from the truth! As a good friend and colleague, Maria Del Duca of Communication Station Blog has stated: [By making these comments] “We begin to accept a range of behavior we believe is acceptable for no other reason than we have made that decision. With this idea of mediocrity we limit our client’s potential by unconsciously lowering the bar.”

You might as well be making comments such as: “Well, it’s as good as it going to get”, indicating that the child’s genetic predestination “imposes limits on what a child might achieve” (Walz Garrett, 2012 pg. 30)

These statements are subjective!

They fail to provide any objective evidence such as type of skills addressed within a subset of abilities, percentage of accuracy achieved, number of trials needed, or number of cues and prompts given to the child in order to achieve the aforementioned accuracy.

These statements make you look unprofessional! 

I can’t help but laugh when I review progress reports with the following comments:

Social Communication:  Johnny is a pleasant child who much more readily interacted with his peers during the present progress reporting period.

What on earth does that mean?  What were Johnny’s specific social communication goals? Was he supposed to initiate conversations more frequently with peers? Was he supposed to acknowledge in some way that his peers actually exist on the same physical plane? Your guess is as good as mine!

Reading:  Johnny is more willing to read short stories at this time.

Again, what on earth does that mean? What type of text can Johnny now decode? Which consonant digraphs can he consistently recognize in text? Can he differentiate between long and short vowels in CVC and CVCV words such as /bit/ and /bite/? I have no clue because none of that was included in his report.

These statements can cause legal difficulties! 

I don’t know about your graduate preparation but I’m pretty sure that most diagnostics professors, repeatedly emphasized to the graduate SLP students the importance of professional record-keeping.  Every professor in my acquaintance has that story – the one where they had to go to court and only their detailed scrupulous record-keeping has kept them from crying and cowering from the unrelenting verbal onslaught of the plaintiff’s educational attorney.

Ironically this is exactly what’s going to happen if you keep making these statements and have no data to support your client’s present level of functioning! Legal disputes between parents of developmentally/language impaired children and districts occur at an alarming rate throughout United States; most often over perceived educational deprivation and lack of access to FAPE (Free and Appropriate Education). I would not envy any educational/health related professional who is caught in the middle of these cases lacking data to support appropriate service provision to the student in question.

Conclusion: 

So there you have it! These are just a few (of many) reasons why I loathe the phrase: “It’s Not So Bad”.  The bottom line is that this vague and subjective statement does a huge disservice to our students as individuals and to us as qualified and competent professionals.  So the next time it’s on the tip of your tongue: “Just don’t say it!” And if you are on the receiving end of it, just calmly ask the professional making that statement: “Show me the data!”

 

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Preventing Learned Helplessness in Students with Language Impairments

A few weeks ago in one of my private speech language therapy sessions, I was reviewing the homework  of an 11-year-old student,  part of which involved  synonym and  antonym production describing abstract feelings (e.g., disinterested, furious, etc.). These words were in the client’s lexicon as we had been working on the concept of abstract feelings for a number of weeks. I was feeling pretty confident that the student would do well on this assignment, especially because prior to assigning the homework we had identified the exact emotion which required the generation of antonyms and synonyms. So all was going swimmingly,  until she made the following comment when explaining one of her answers: “I was thinking that this word ____ is not really an appropriate synonym for _________ but I put it anyway because I couldn’t think of any others.”

That gave me a pause because I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. So I asked: “I completely understand that you might not have remembered some words but what could you have done to help yourself in this situation?” Without any prompting, the student readily identified a number of strategies including: looking up the words in a thesaurus/dictionary, “Googling” them, or even asking an adult to help her with choosing the best answers from a number of choices.

My follow-up question to her was: “Why didn’t you?” The student just shrugged her shoulders and looked at me in surprise, as though this concept had never occurred to her.

This incident got me thinking regarding the pervasive influence of learned helplessness, and how our students continue to be impacted by it long after they begin receiving the necessary therapies to improve their academic performance.

For those of you unfamiliar with this term, here is a brief overview. This phrase was coined by a US based psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier in 1967. In a series of experiments they exposed dogs to electric shocks that they were unable to escape. After a little while the dogs stopped trying to avoid the aversive stimuli because they became conditioned to the fact that they were helpless to change the situation. However, the most fascinating aspect in these series of experiments was the fact that even after the opportunity to escape became clearly available, the animals still failed to take any action and continue to behave as though they were still helpless.

How does this apply to students with learning disabilities? 

Many students with language impairments and learning disabilities struggle significantly in school setting due to failing academic performance. The older they get, the more academic demands are placed on them.  This includes but is not limited to the amount of homework they asked to complete, the number of long-term projects they’re expected to write, as well as the number of tests they are expected to study for.

Because they are unable to meet the ever increasing academic demands, their parents begin to actively micromanage their academic life by scheduling the times when the students are expected to perform homework, study for tests, do projects, and much much more. As a result, many of the students do not know how to do any of the above activities/tasks independently because they are conditioned  by their parents/teachers to tell them what to do, how to do it, and how to lead their academic life at any given moment.

The students begin believing they they are helpless  to change even the most basic situations (e.g., take an extra step during the homework assignment and look up a vocabulary word without anyone telling them to do it) and continue to behave in this fashion long after they begin receiving the necessary therapies, coaching, or in school assistance. This is especially true of students whose language/learning disabilities are not identified until later in their school career (e.g., late elementary years, middle school, or even high school).

What are the Symptoms of Learned Helplessness in Children?  

The below poster from Dragonfly Forest Blogspot/Forest Alliance Coaching summarizes it quite nicely.

Other symptoms of learned helplessness include:

  • Lack of motivation/task initiation
  • Poor critical thinking abilities
  • Reluctance to make independent choices
  • Low self-esteem
  • Depression
  • Blaming a disability: “I act like this because I have _________”

It is important to note that the above symptoms are most applicable to students with learning disabilities and average cognition.  However, learned helplessness is equally pervasive (if not more so) in students with developmental disabilities (e.g., ASD, genetic syndromes, etc.)

Below are just a few examples of learned helplessness in students with developmental disabilities, which were inadvertently (and/or deliberately) reinforced by the adults in their lives(e.g., family members, educational staff, etc.).

  • Spoon feeding a three-year-old with ASD who has already mastered this particular ADL skill
  • Having a non-verbal eight-year-old correctly identify the PECS card for “open” but then always opening the door for him without giving him an opportunity to do so himself
  • Keeping a 12-year-old with ASD on puréed diet despite multiple MBS and FEES studies indicating that there are no structural abnormalities which would prevent this student from successfully trialing solid foods
  • Not placing basic expectations such as cleanup of toys on a verbal seven-year-old with Down Syndrome, simply because of her condition

Changing the Patterns of Learned Behavior:

According to available literature, when psychologists had tried to change learned helplessness in animal subjects it took them between 30 – 50 times of physically moving the dogs across the barrier before they proceeded to do so independently. Thus, it stands to reason that the process of rewiring the brain in humans with learned helplessness will be a lengthy one as well.

The first task on the part of adults  is active analysis of all the things  we may be doing  as  parents and educators,  which inadvertently  reinforces learned helplessness in our children/students.   Some  things may surprise you.   For example, I frequently ask the  parents of the students on my caseload what chores and responsibilities  they give their children at home.   In an overwhelming majority of the cases  my clients have  very few chores/responsibilities at home.  This  is especially apparent in families  of language  impaired children  with typically developing siblings. Conversations with parents  frequently reveal that many typically developing siblings (who are sometimes younger than my clients)  have far greater responsibilities  when it comes to chores,  assignment completion,  etc.

Did you know that an average 8-9 year-old is expected to remember to do chores for 15-20 min after school (“prospective memory”), independently, plan school projects (select book, do report, present in school), keep track of changing daily schedule, do homework for 1 hour independently as well as keep track of personal effects when away from home? (Peters, 2013)

Did you know that an average —12-14 year old is expected to demonstrate adult level planning abilities, have daily chore responsibilities for 60-90 minute in length, babysit younger siblings, follow complex school schedule, as well as plan and carry out multiple large semester-long school projects independently? (Peters, 2013)

While our language impaired children of the same age may not be capable of some of the above responsibilities they are capable of  more then we give them credit for given appropriate level of support (strategies vs. doing things for them).

Where do we begin?

It is important to recognize the potential of the children that we work with without letting their disabilities to color our subjective perceptions of what they can and cannot do. In other words, just because there are significant physical/cognitive handicaps, it does not mean that given appropriate accommodations, therapies, resources, as well as compensatory strategies that our student will not be able to reach their optimal potential.

Working with Physically/Cognitively Impaired Children: 

  • Uphold accountability 
    • You wouldn’t let a typical four-year-old get away with leaving a mess and not cleaning up their toys, so why would you let a four-year-old with Down syndrome or ASD slide?  It might take a tad longer to teach them what to do and how to do it but it certainly is more then doable
  • Do not excuse inappropriate behaviors and attribute it to a disability
  • Assign responsibility
    • Even in the presence of physical and cognitive disabilities students are still capable of performing a number of tasks and chores. This may include but not be limited to cleaning up own room, making up one bed, loading and unloading the dishwasher, taking out the garbage, vacuuming the floor, pushing the grocery cart in the store, loading and unloading food at the cash register, and much much more.
  • Encourage Hobbies 
  • Explore Adapted Sports 
    • Similar to hobbies adaptive sports can be incredibly beneficial to children with developmental disabilities. Movement helps to rewire the brain! Adaptive sports participation increases the child’s independence as well as fosters socialization with others.  Engagement in adaptive sports can also combat learned helplessness.
  • Support Quality of Life Experiences
    • Unfortunately the quality of life of the children with developmental disabilities that we work with is often compromised. Because there is inordinate focus placed on “just existing” and fitting in all the therapies, frequently joyful experiences are few and far between. If the situation allows it needs to change! There are so many simple activities we take for granted, which can bring true happiness to the children that we work with.
      • Swimming in the pool
      • Visiting a museum
      • Going into an amusement park
      • Picking berries or mushrooms in the woods
      • Going to the beach
      • Bird watching
      • Taking a vacation (if financially doable)
  • Expect more
    • Don’t let the child’s cognitive and/or physical limitations  stop them from reaching their true potential.
      • This may mean disagreeing with well-meaning but limitedly knowledgeable school-based professionals, who may tell you that your child with genetic syndrome such as Down Syndrome or Fragile X will never learn how to read (see Case C) 
      • This may mean finding accommodations and compensatory strategies for a student’s severe disabilities to make that person’s life more meaningful and enjoyable.  To illustrate, many years ago when I just started working for a school for severely medically fragile children, I’ve worked with severely physically impaired nonverbal young adult  (21) who had a limited use of his right arm (gross motor movements]only).  That did not stop us from ‘discussing’ works of literature, studying SAT level vocabulary, as well as learning Greek and Latin Roots of English.   It also didn’t stop his parents from exposing him to a variety of life experiences, aimed to make him feel like an average young adult, such as allowing him to taste a few drops of sake even though he was NPO (lat. for nothing by mouth)

Working with Language Impaired and Learning Disabled Children with Average IQ:

  • Increase their accountability in own education
    • Teach useful compensatory strategies
      • Have the children wear a watch to be more mindful of the passage of time (a child 6+ years of age could be an appropriate candidate)
      • Use of schedules, planners, and timers to be more mindful of time spent on homework, assignments, and test studying
      • Use charts listing various strategies of asking for help to teach children to increase ownership of their learning (FREE HERE)
  • Teach them to speak up regarding needed accommodations
    • Use of software applications
    • Time to prepare for oral responses
    • Use of choices when answering questions of increased complexity
    • Audio recording of newly taught information in the classroom
  • Develop their critical thinking skills and problem solving abilities
  • Change your outlook
    • Replace doing everything for them attitude or finger-pointing and blame attitude with solution- focused constructive criticism by teaching specific strategies which will help the student succeed
  • Encourage perseverance
    • Teach the students positive strategies of not giving up and persisting through the difficult situations

Changing the ingrained patterns of learned helplessness is no easy feat.  It requires time, perseverance, and patience. But it can be done even in children with significant developmental and learning disabilities.  It is a difficult but much needed process, which is instrumental in helping our students/children attain their optimal potential.

References:

  1. Seligman, M. E. P. (1975) Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death. San Francisco : Freeman.
  2. Peterson, C., S. Maier, and M. Seligman. (1993). Learned Helplessness. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Special Education Disputes and Comprehensive Language Testing: What Parents, Attorneys, and Advocates Need to Know

Image result for evaluationSeveral years after I started my private speech pathology practice, I began performing comprehensive independent speech and language evaluations (IEEs).

For those of you who may be hearing the term IEE for the first time, an Independent Educational Evaluation is “an evaluation conducted by a qualified examiner who is not employed by the public agency responsible for the education of the child in question.” 34 C.F.R. 300.503. IEE’s can evaluate a broad range of functioning outside of cognitive or academic performance and may include neurological, occupational, speech language, or any other type of evaluations  as long as they bear direct impact on the child’s educational performance.

Independent evaluations can be performed for a wide variety of reasons, including but not limited to:

  • To determine the student’s present level of functioning
  • To determine whether the student presents with hidden, previously undiscovered deficits (e.g., executive function, social communication, etc.)
  • To determine whether the student’s educational classification requires a change
  • To determine if the student requires additional, previously not provided, related services (e.g., language therapy, etc.) or an increase in related services
  • To determine whether a student might benefit from an application of a particular therapy technique or program (e.g, Orton-Gillingham)
  • To determine whether a student with a severe impairment (e.g., severe emotional and behavioral disturbances, genetic syndrome, significant intellectual disability, etc.) is a good candidate for an out of district specialized school

Why can’t similar assessments be performed in school settings?

There are several reasons for that.

Why are IEE’s Needed?

The answer to that is simple:  “To strengthen the role of parents in the educational decision-making process.” According to one Disability Rights site: “Many disagreements between parents and school staff concerning IEP services and placement involve, at some stage, the interpretation of evaluation findings and recommendations. When disagreements occur, the Independent Educational Evaluation (IEE) is one option lawmakers make available to parents, to help answer questions about appropriate special education services and placement“.

Indeed, many of the clients who retain my services also retain the services of educational advocates as well as special education lawyers.  Many of them work on determining appropriate level of services as well as an out of district placement for the children with a variety of special education needs. However, one interesting reoccurring phenomenon I’ve noted over the years is that only a small percentage of special education lawyers, educational advocates, and even parents believed that children with autism spectrum disorders, genetic syndromes, social pragmatic deficits, emotional disturbances, or reading disabilities required a comprehensive language evaluation/reevaluation prior to determining an appropriate out of district placement or an in-district change of service provision.

So today I would like to make a case, in favor of comprehensive independent language evaluations being a routine component of every special education dispute involving a child with impaired academic performance. I will do so through the illustration of past case scenarios that clearly show that comprehensive independent language evaluations do matter, even when it doesn’t look like they may be needed.

Case A: “He is just a weak student”.

Several years ago I was contacted by a parent of a 12 year old boy, who was concerned with his son’s continuously failing academic performance. The child had not qualified for an IEP but was receiving 504 plan in school setting and was reported to significantly struggle due to continuous increase of academic demands with each passing school year.  An in-district language evaluation had been preformed several years prior. It showed that the student’s general language abilities were in the low average range of functioning due to which he did not qualify for speech language services in school setting. However, based on the review of available records it very quickly became apparent that many of the academic areas in which the student struggled (e.g., reading comprehension, social pragmatic ability, critical thinking skills, etc)  were simply not assessed by the general language testing. I had suggested to the parent a comprehensive language evaluation and explained to him on what grounds I was recommending this course of action.  That comprehensive 4 hour assessment broken into several testing sessions revealed that the student presented with severe receptive, expressive, problem solving and social pragmatic language deficits, as well as moderate executive function deficits, which required therapeutic intervention.

Prior to that assessment the parent, reinforced by the feedback from his child’s educational staff believed his son to be an unmotivated student who failed to apply himself in school setting.  However, after the completion of that assessment, the parent clearly understood that it wasn’t his child’s lack of motivation which was impeding his academic performance but rather a true learning disability was making it very difficult for his son to learn without the necessary related services and support. Several months after the appropriate related services were made available to the child in school setting on the basis of the performed IEE, the parent reported significant progress in his child academic performance.

Case B: “She’s just not learning because of her behavior, so there’s nothing we can do”.  

This case involved a six year old girl who presented with a severe speech – language disorder and behavioral deficits in school setting secondary to an intellectual disability of an unspecified origin.

In contrast to Case A scenario, this child had received a variety of assessments and therapies since a very early age; however, her parents were becoming significantly concerned regarding her regression of academic functioning in school setting and felt that a more specialized out of district program with a focus on multiple disabilities would be better suitable to her needs. Unfortunately the school disagreed with them and believed that she could be successfully educated in an in-district setting (despite evidence to the contrary).  Interestingly, an in-depth comprehensive speech language assessment had never been performed on this child because her functioning was considered to be “too low” for such an assessment.

Comprehensive assessment of this little girl’s abilities revealed that via an application of a variety of behavioral management techniques (of non-ABA origin), and highly structured language input, she was indeed capable of significantly better performance then she had exhibited in school setting.  It stood to reason that if she were placed in a specialized school setting composed of educational professionals who were trained in dealing with her complex behavioral and communication needs, her performance would continue to steadily improve.  Indeed, six months following a transfer in schools her parents reported a “drastic” change pertaining to a significant reduction in challenging behavioral manifestations as well as significant increase in her linguistic output.

Case C: “Your child can only learn so much because of his genetic syndrome”.  

This case scenario does not technically involve just one child but rather three different male students between 9 and 11 years of age with several ‘common’ genetic syndromes: Down, Fragile X, and Klinefelter.  All three were different ages, came from completely different school districts, and were seen by me in different calendar years.

However, all three boys had one thing in common, because of their genetic syndromes, which were marked by varying degrees of intellectual disability as well as speech language weaknesses, their parents were collectively told that there could be very little done for them with regards to expanding their expressive language as well as literacy development.

Similarly to the above scenarios, none of the children had undergone comprehensive language testing to determine their strengths, weaknesses, and learning styles. Comprehensive assessment of each student revealed that each had the potential to improve their expressive abilities to speak in compound and complex sentences. Dynamic assessment of literacy also revealed that it was possible to teach each of them how to read.

Following the respective assessments, some of these students had became my private clients, while others’s parents have periodically written to me, detailing their children’s successes over the years.  Each parent had conveyed to me how “life-changing”a comprehensive IEE was to their child.

Case D: “Their behavior is just out of control”

The final case scenario I would like to discuss today involves several students with an educational classification of “Emotionally Disturbed” (pg 71).  Those of you who are familiar with my blog and my work know that my main area of specialty is working with school age students with psychiatric impairments and emotional behavioral disturbances.  There are a number of reasons why I work with this challenging pediatric population. One very important reason is that these students continue to be grossly underserved in school setting. Over the years I have written a variety of articles and blog posts citing a number of research studies, which found that a significant number of students with psychiatric impairments and emotional behavioral disturbances present with undiagnosed linguistic impairments (especially in the area of social communication), which adversely impact their school-based performance.

Here, we are not talking about two or three students rather we’re talking about the numbers in the double digits of students with psychiatric impairments and emotional disturbances, who did not receive appropriate therapies in their respective school settings.

The majority of these students were divided into two distinct categories. In the first category, students began to manifest moderate-to-severe speech language deficits from a very early age. They were classified in preschool and began receiving speech language therapy. However by early elementary age their general language abilities were found to be within the average range of functioning and their language therapies were discontinued.   Unfortunately since general language testing does not assess all categories of linguistic functioning such as critical thinking, executive functions, social communication etc., these students continued to present with hidden linguistic impairments, which continued to adversely impact their behavior.

Students in the second category also began displaying emotional and behavioral challenges from a very early age. However, in contrast to the students in the first category the initial language testing found their general language abilities to be within the average range of functioning. As a result these students never received any language-based therapies and similar to the students in the first category, their hidden linguistic impairments continued to adversely impact their behavior.

Students in both categories ended up following a very similar pattern of behavior. Their behavioral challenges in the school continued to escalate. These were followed by a series of suspensions, out of district placements, myriad of psychiatric and neuropsychological evaluations, until many were placed on home instruction. The one vital element missing from all of these students’ case records were comprehensive language evaluations with an emphasis on assessing their critical thinking, executive functions and social communication abilities. Their worsening patterns of functioning were viewed as “severe misbehaving” without anyone suspecting that their hidden language deficits were a huge contributing factor to their maladaptive behaviors in school setting.

Conclusion:

So there you have it!  As promised, I’ve used four vastly different scenarios that show you the importance of comprehensive language evaluations in situations where it was not so readily apparent that they were needed.  I hope that parents and professionals alike will find this post helpful in reconsidering the need for comprehensive independent evaluations for students presenting with impaired academic performance.

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Friend or Friendly: What Does Age Have To Do with It?

In my social pragmatic language groups I target a wide variety of social communication goals for children with varying levels and degrees of impairment with a focus on improving their social pragmatic language competence.  In the past I have written blog posts on a variety of social  pragmatic language therapy topics, including strategies for improving students’ emotional intelligence as well as on how to teach students to develop insight into own strengths and weaknesses.  Today I wanted to discuss the importance of teaching students with social communication impairments, age recognition for friendship and safety purposes.

Now it is important to note that the focus of my sessions is a bit different from the focus of “teaching protective behaviors”, “circles of intimacy and relationships” or “teaching kids to deal with tricky people“. Rather the goal is to teach the students to recognize who it is okay “to hang out” or be friends with, and who is considered to be too old/too young to be a friend.

Why is it important to teach age recognition?

There are actually quite a few reasons.

Firstly, it is a fairly well-known fact that in the absence of age-level peers with similar weaknesses, students with social communication deficits will seek out either much younger or much older children as playmates/friends as these individuals are far less likely to judge them for their perceived social deficits. While this may be a short-term solution to the “friendship problem” it also comes with its own host of challenges.  By maintaining relationships with peers outside of their age group, it is difficult for children with social communication impairments to understand and relate to peers of their age group in school setting. This creates a wider chasm in the classroom and increases the risk of peer isolation and bullying.

Secondly, the difficulty presented by friendships significantly outside of one’s peer group, is  the risk of, for lack of better words, ‘getting into trouble’. This may include but is not limited to exploring own sexuality (which is perfectly normal) with a significantly younger child (which can be problematic) or be instigated by an older child/adolescent in doing something inappropriate (e.g, shoplifting, drinking, smoking, exposing self to peers, etc.).

Thirdly, this difficulty (gauging people’s age) further exacerbates the students’ social communication deficits as it prevents them from effectively understanding such pragmatic parameters such as audience (e.g., with whom its appropriate to use certain language in a certain tone and with whom it is not) and topic (with whom it is appropriate to discuss certain subjects and with whom it is not).

So due to the above reasons I began working on age recognition with the students (6+ years of age) on my caseload diagnosed with social communication and language impairments.   I mention language impairments because it is very important to understand that more and more research is coming out connecting language impairments with social communication deficits. Therefore it’s not just students on the autism spectrum or students with social pragmatic deficits (an official DSM-5 diagnosis) who have difficulties in the area of social communication. Students with language impairments could also benefit from services focused on improving their social communication skills.

I begin my therapy sessions on age recognition by presenting the students with photos of people of different ages and asking them to attempt to explain how old do they think the people in the pictures are and what visual clues and/or prior knowledge assisted them in the formulation of their responses. I typically select the pictures from some of the social pragmatic therapy materials packets that I had created over the years (e.g., Gauging Moods, Are You Being Social?, Multiple Interpretations, etc.).

I make sure to carefully choose my pictures based on the student’s age and experience to ensure that the student has at least some degree of success making guesses.  So for a six-year-old I would select pictures of either toddlers or children his/her age to begin teaching them recognition of concepts: “same” and “younger” (e.g., Social Pragmatic Photo Bundle for Early Elementary Aged Children).

Kids playing in the room

For older children, I vary the photos of different aged individuals significantly.  I also introduce relevant vocabulary words as related to a particular age demographic, such as:

  • Infant (0-1 years of age)
  • Toddler (2-3 years of age)
  • Preschooler (3-5 years of age)
  • Teenager (individual between 13-19 years of age)
  • Early, mid and late 20s, 30s, 40s
  • Middle-aged (individuals around 50 years of age)
  • Senior/senior citizen (individuals ~65+ years of age)

I explain to the students that people of different ages look differently and teach them how to identify relevant visual clues to assist them with making educated guesses about people’s ages.  I also use photos of my own family or ask the students to bring in their own family photos to use for age determination of people in the presented pictures.  When students learn the ages of their own family members, they have an easier time determining the age ranges of strangers.

My next step is to explain to students the importance of understanding people’s ages.  I present to the students a picture of an individual significantly younger or older than them and ask them whether it’s appropriate to be that person’s friend.   Here students with better developed insight will state that it is not appropriate to be that person’s friend because they have nothing in common with them and do not share their interests. In contrast, students with limited insight will state that it’s perfectly okay to be that person’s friend.

This is the perfect teachable moment for explaining the difference between “friend” and “friendly”. Here I again reiterate that people of different ages have significantly different interests as well as have significant differences in what they are allowed to do (e.g., a 16-year-old is allowed to have a driver’s permit in many US states as well as has a later curfew while an 11-year-old clearly doesn’t).  I also explain that it’s perfectly okay to be friendly and polite with older or younger people in social situations (e.g., say hello all, talk, answer questions, etc.) but that does not constitute true friendship.

I also ask students to compile a list of qualities of what they look for in a “friend” as well as have them engage in some perspective taking (e.g, have them imagine that they showed up at a toddler’s house and asked to play with him/her, or that a teenager came into their house, and what their parents reaction would be?).

Finally, I discuss with students the importance of paying attention to who wants to hang out/be friends with them as well as vice versa (individuals they want to hang out with) in order to better develop their insight into the appropriateness of relationships. I instruct them to think critically when an older individual (e.g,  young adult) wants to get particularly close to them.  I use examples from an excellent post written by a colleague and good friend, Maria Del Duca of Communication Station Blog re: dealing with tricky people, in order to teach them to recognize signs of individuals crossing the boundary of being friendly, and what to do about it.

So there you have it. These are some of the reasons why I teach age recognition to clients with social communication weaknesses. Do you teach age recognition to your clients? If so, comment under this post, how do you do it and what materials do you use?

Helpful Smart Speech Resources Related to Assessment and Treatment of Social Pragmatic Disorders 

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Improving Emotional Intelligence of Children with Social Communication Disorders

Our ability to recognize our own and other people’s emotions, distinguish between and correctly identify different feelings, as well as use that information to guide our thinking and behavior is called Emotional Intelligence (EI) (Salovey, et al, 2008).

EI encompasses dual areas of: emotion understanding, which is an awareness and comprehension of one’s and others emotions (Harris, 2008) and emotion regulation, which are internal and external strategies people use to regulate emotions (Thompson, 1994).

Many students with social communication challenges experience problems with all aspects of EI, including the perception, comprehension, and regulation of emotions (Brinton & Fujiki, 2012).

A number of recent studies have found that children with language impairments also present with impaired emotional intelligence including impaired perception of facial expressions (Spackman, Fujiki, Brinton, Nelson, & Allen, 2005), prosodic emotions (Fujiki, Spackman, Brinton, & Illig, 2008) as well as abstract emotion comprehension (Ford & Milosky, 2003).

Children with impaired emotional intelligence will experience numerous difficulties during social interactions due to their difficulty interpreting emotional cues of others (Cloward, 2012).  These may include but not be limited to active participation in cooperative activities, as well as full/competent interactions during group tasks (Brinton, Fujiki, & Powell, 1997)

Many students with social pragmatic deficits and language impairments are taught to recognize emotional states as part of their therapy goals. However, the provided experience frequently does not go beyond the recognition of the requisite “happy”, “mad”, “sad” emotions. At times, I even see written blurbs from others therapists, which state that “the student has mastered the goals of emotion recognition”.  However, when probed further it appears that the student had merely mastered the basic spectrum of simple emotional states, which places the student at a distinct disadvantage  as compared to typically developing peers who are capable of recognition and awareness of a myriad of complex emotional states.

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That is why I developed a product to target abstract emotional states comprehension in children with language impairments and social communication disorders. “Gauging Moods and Interpreting Abstract Emotional States: A Perspective Taking Activity Packet” is a social pragmatic photo/question set,  intended for children 7+ years of age, who present with difficulty recognizing abstract emotional states of others (beyond the “happy, mad, sad” option) as well as appropriately gauging their moods.

Many sets contain additional short stories with questions that focus on making inferencing, critical thinking as well as interpersonal negotiation skills.  Select sets require the students to create their own stories with a focus on the reasons why the person in the photograph might be feeling what s/he are feeling.

There are on average 12-15 questions per each photo.  Each page contains a photograph of a person feeling a particular emotion. After the student is presented with the photograph, they are asked a number of questions pertaining to the recognition of the person’s emotions, mood, the reason behind the emotion they are experiencing as well as what they could be potentially thinking at the moment.  Students are also asked to act out the depicted emotion they use of mirror.

Activities also include naming or finding (in a thesaurus or online) the synonyms and antonyms of a particular word in order to increase students’ vocabulary knowledge. A comprehensive two page “emotions word bank” is included in the last two pages of the packet to assist the students with the synonym/antonym selection, in the absence of a thesaurus or online access.

Students are also asked to use a target word in a complex sentence containing an adverbial (pre-chosen for them) as well as to identify a particular word or phrase associated with the photo or the described story situation.

Since many students with social pragmatic language deficits present with difficulty determining a person’s age (and prefer to relate to either younger or older individuals who are perceived to be “less judgmental of their difficulties”), this concept is also explicitly targeted in the packet.

This activity is suitable for both individual therapy sessions as well as group work.  In addition to its social pragmatic component is also intended to increase vocabulary knowledge and use as well as sentence length of children with language impairments.

Intended Audiences:

  • Clients with Language Impairments
  • Clients with Social Pragmatic Language Difficulties
  • Clients with Executive Function Difficulties
  • Clients with Psychiatric Impairments
    • ODD, ADHD, MD, Anxiety, Depression, etc.
  • Clients with Autism Spectrum Disorders
  • Clients with Nonverbal Learning Disability
  • Clients with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders
  • Adult and pediatric post-Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) clients
  • Clients with right-side CVA Damage

Areas covered in this packet:

  1. Gauging Age (based on visual support and pre-existing knowledge)
  2. Gauging Moods (based on visual clues and context)
  3. Explaining Facial Expressions
  4. Making Social Predictions and Inferences (re: people’s emotions)
  5. Assuming First Person Perspectives
  6. Understanding Sympathy
  7. Vocabulary Knowledge and Use (pertaining to the concept of Emotional Intelligence)
  8. Semantic Flexibility (production of synonyms and antonyms)
  9. Complex Sentence Production
  10. Expression of Emotional Reactions
  11. Problem Solving Social Situations
  12. Friendship Management and Peer Relatedness

This activity is suitable for both individual therapy sessions as well as group work.  In addition to its social pragmatic component is also intended to increase vocabulary knowledge and use as well as sentence length of children with language impairments. You can find it in my online store (HERE).

Helpful Smart Speech Resources:

References:

  1. Brinton, B., Fujiki, M., & Powell, J. M. (1997). The ability of children with language impairment to manipulate topic in a structured task. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 28, 3-11.
  2. Brinton B., & Fujiki, M. (2012). Social and affective factors in children with language impairment. Implications for literacy learning. In C. A. Stone, E. R. Silliman, B. J. Ehren, & K. Apel (Eds.), Handbook of language and literacy: Development and disorders (2nd Ed.). New York, NY: Guilford.
  3. Cloward, R. (2012). The milk jug project: Expression of emotion in children with language impairment and autism spectrum disorder (Unpublished honor’s thesis). Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
  4. Ford, J., & Milosky, L. (2003). Inferring emotional reactions in social situations: Differences in children with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46(1), 21-30.
  5. Fujiki, M., Spackman, M. P., Brinton, B., & Illig, T. (2008). Ability of children with language impairment to understand emotion conveyed by prosody in a narrative passage. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 43(3), 330-345
  6. Harris, P. L. (2008). Children’s understanding of emotion. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, & L. Feldman Barrett, (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (3rd ed., pp. 320–331). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
  7. Salovey, P., Detweiler-Bedell, B. T., Detweiler-Bedell, J. B., & Mayer, J. D. (2008). Emotional intelligence. In M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of Emotions (3rd ed., pp. 533-547). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
  8. Spackman, M. P., Fujiki, M., Brinton, B., Nelson, D., & Allen, J. (2005). The ability of children with language impairment to recognize emotion conveyed by facial expression and music. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 26(3), 131-143.
  9. Thompson, R. (1994). Emotion regulation: A theme in search of definition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59(2-3), 25-52

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Teaching “Insight” to students with language, social communication, and executive functions impairments

One common difficulty our “higher functioning” (refers to subjective notion of ‘perceived’ functioning in school setting only) language impaired students with social communication and executive function difficulties present with – is lack of insight into own strengths and weaknesses.

Yet insight is a very important skill, which most typically developing students exhibit without consciously thinking about it. Having insight allows students to review work for errors, compensate for any perceived weaknesses effectively, and succeed with efficient juggling of academic workload.

In contrast, lack of insight in students with language deficits further compounds their difficulties, as they lack realization into own weaknesses and as a result are unable to effectively compensate for them.

That is why I started to explicitly teach the students on my caseload in both psychiatric hospital and private practice the concept of insight.

Now some of you may have some legitimate concerns. You may ask: “How can one teach such an abstract concept to students who are already impaired in their comprehension of language?” The answer to that is – I teach this concept through a series of concrete steps as well as through the introduction of abstract definitions, simplified for the purpose of my sessions into concrete terms.

Furthermore, it is important to understand that the acquisition of “insight” cannot be accomplished in one or even several sessions. Rather after this concept is introduced and the related vocabulary has been ‘internalized’ by the student,  thematic therapy sessions can be used to continue the acquisition of “insight” for months and even years to come.

"The Beginning" Road Sign with dramatic blue sky and clouds.

How do we begin? 

When I first started teaching this concept I used to explain the terminology related to “insight” verbally to students. However, as my own ‘insight’ developed in response to the students’ performance, I created a product to assist them with the acquisition of insight (See HERE).

Intended Audiences:

  • Clients with Language Impairments
  • Clients with Social Pragmatic Language Difficulties
  • Clients with Executive Function Difficulties
  • Clients with Psychiatric Impairments
    • ODD, ADHD, MD, Anxiety, Depression, etc.
  • Clients with Autism Spectrum Disorders
  • Clients with Nonverbal Learning Disability
  • Clients with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders
  • Adult and pediatric post-Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) clients
  • Clients with right-side CVA Damage

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This thematic 10 page packet targets the development of “insight” in students with average IQ, 8+ years of age, presenting with social pragmatic and executive function difficulties.

The packet contains 1 page text explaining the concept of insight to students.

It also contains 11 Tier II vocabulary words relevant to the discussion of insight and their simplified definitions. The words were selected based on course curriculum standards for several grade levels (fourth through seventh) due to their wide usage in a variety of subjects (social studies, science, math, etc.)

Language activities in this packet include:

  • Explaining definitions
  • Answering open-ended comprehension questions
  • Sentence construction activity
  • Crossword puzzle
  • Two morphological awareness activities
    • Define prefixes and suffixes
    • Change word meanings by adding prefixes and suffixes to words
  • Self-reflection page in written format contains questions for students to assist them with judging their own strengths and weaknesses related to academic performance

And now a few words regarding the lesson structure…

I introduce the concept of “insight” to clients by writing down the word and asking them to identify its parts: ‘in‘ and ‘sight‘. Depending on the student’s level of abilities I either get to the students to explain it to me or explain it myself that it is a compound word made up of two other words.

I then ask the students to interpret what the word could potentially mean. After I hear their responses I either confirm the correct one or end up explaining that this word refers to “looking into one’s brain” for answers related to how well someone understands information.

I have the students read the text located on the first page of my packet going over the concept of insight and some of its associated vocabulary words.  I ask the students to tell me the main idea of each paragraph as well as answer questions regarding supporting text details.

Once I am confident that the students have a fairly good grasp of the presented text I move on to the definitions page. There are actually two definition pages in the lesson: one at the beginning and one at the end of the packet. The first definitions page also contains word meaning and what parts of speech the definitions belong to.  The definition page at the end of the packet contains only the targeted words. It is now the students responsibility to write down the definition of all the vocabulary words and phrases in order for me to see how well they remember the meanings of pertinent words.

The packet also includes comprehension questions, a section on sentence construction several morphological awareness activities, a crossword puzzle and a self-reflection page.

The final activity in the packet requires the student to judge their own work performance during this activity.  I ask students questions such as:

  • How do you think you did on this task?
  • How do you know you did ________?
  • How can you prove to me you understood ________?

If a student responds “I know I did well because I understood everything”, I typically ask them to prove their comprehension to me, verbally. Here the goal is to have the student provide concrete verbal examples supporting their insight of their performance.

 This may include statements such as:

  • I know I did well because you said: “Nice Work!”
  • I know I did well because you didn’t correct me too much
  • I know I did well because you  kept smiling and showed me thumbs up as I was talking

As mentioned above this activity is only the beginning. After I ensure that the students have a decent grasp of this concept I continue working on it indirectly by having the students continuously judge their own performance on a variety of other therapy related activities and assignments.

You can find the complete packet on teaching “insight” in my online store (HERE).  Also, stay tuned for Part II of this series, which will describe how to continue solidifying the concept of “insight” in the context of therapy sessions for students with social pragmatic and executive function deficits.

Helpful Smart Speech Resources:

 

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Designing RTI-Based Vocabulary Interventions

Image result for rti vocabulary interventions

Smart Speech Therapy LLC is celebrating #BHSM2015  ASHA Better Hearing and Speech Month. So without further ado, below you will find my recommendations for designing effective vocabulary interventions for struggling students.

This past academic year  I have been delivering vocabulary intervention once a week for an hour in my setting to 5 different classrooms of low achieving students.   This allowed me to research quite a bit regarding the principles of vocabulary teaching as well as  gave me an opportunity to adapt and design my own vocabulary intervention materials.

Vocabulary is of course one of the integral components of reading comprehension  along with phonological awareness, phonics, and reading fluency. Knowledge of vocabulary is especially important for navigation of informational texts.

Who can benefit from explicit vocabulary instruction?

The answer is simple: any child with decreased vocabulary skills!  This may include but not be limited to:

  • Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds
  • Children with Limited English Proficiency
  • Children  with language impairments and learning disabilities

How can we design effective vocabulary interventions?

According to Judy Montgomery “You can never select the wrong words to teach.” Beck et al (2002)  recommends teaching Tier II words, as they would make the most significant impact on a child’s spoken and written expressive capabilities, and are useful across a variety of settings.

 Tips on creating intervention materials:

  • Make vocabulary  words thematic and center them  around current events
  • Select a topic students are learning about in the classroom or center it around a seasonal event/holiday
  • Select no more than 10 words per packet and work on the packet for a period of several weeks to engage in a frequent mass practice
  • Attempt to select vocabulary words used across several domains, which are still applicable to the student’s academic experience

 Packet Layout : 

 1.  Embed the selected vocabulary words in a short thematic text

2.  Create a definitions page with usage tips to assist students with comprehension of vocabulary definitions

3. Have  the students practice  using these vocabulary words  in various activities  such as fill-in the blank, matching,  sentence creation, etc.

water_cycle_diagram

This thematic packet, which can be used all year round, was created to target listening and reading comprehension of older students diagnosed with language impairments and learning disabilities.

The packet contains the following items:

  1. 4 Paragraph Reading Comprehension Passage about the Hyrologic (Water) Cycle
  2. 7  Open ended comprehension questions
  3. 12 Response to Intervention (RTI) Tier 2 vocabulary words in story context
  4. 10 Synonyms and antonyms matching words
  5. 15 Fill-in the blank words to complete sentences
  6.  Open ended sentence formulation utilizing 10 story vocabulary words

You can grab it HERE in my online store. 

Helpful Smart Speech Resources:

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SLP Efficiency Bundles™ for Graduating Speech Language Pathologists

Graduation time is rapidly approaching and many graduate speech language pathology students are getting ready to begin their first days in the workforce. When it comes to juggling caseloads and managing schedules, time is money and efficiency is the key to success. Consequently,  a few years ago I created  SLP Efficiency Bundles™, which are materials highly useful for Graduate SLPs working with pediatric clients. These materials are organized by areas of focus for efficient and effective screening, assessment, and treatment of speech and language disorders.   Continue reading SLP Efficiency Bundles™ for Graduating Speech Language Pathologists