Autumn leaves have given way to the peace and tranquility of winter. We wish you and yours every happiness at this beautiful time of year.

What’s New:

Continuing Education:

Fall was a busy time for conferences. I attended four sessions on acquired brain injury, including the ABI Network of SW Ontario’s session in London and the Inter-Urban conference in Toronto. London has been asked to host the third annual Inter-urban conference in 2001. As part of the local Head Injury Association’s Conference Committee, we will be helping to plan this exciting event.

Staff also attended an early assessment and intervention session on autism at CPRI. Terri Corriveau, Speech-Language Pathologist at the Centre, will complete Level One Certification in autism from the Geneva Centre this month.

Autism Funding:

Terri has served on the local pervasive developmental disorders task force, helping prepare a local early intervention program submission. The provincial government’s Office of Integrated Services for Children, will eventually provide 19 million in annualized dollars for nine early intervention sites across the province. A long time coming but very welcome news!

New Website:

Our website has now been launched! Check us out at www.londonspeech.com. If you would like to link to our site or have us link to yours, please give me a call.

Presentations:

I presented at the Regional Support Associates workshop in Tillsonburg recently on communication development in the developmentally delayed population.

The Centre continues to offer monthly communication workshops for parents and teachers at Chapters bookstores, The Athletic Club and other community locations. These sessions are free. Check the newspaper or call the office for more details.

"Talk It Up" Saturday Program:

Registrations are being accepted for eight week sessions starting January 8, 2000. Children aged 3-8 years of age with speaking, listening, reading, writing or social interaction difficulties qualify for this exciting, year-round program.

Provincial Initiatives:

I continue to serve as Government Affairs Councillor for the Ontario Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists (OSLA). We are busy preparing a submission for the 5 year review of the Regulated Health Professions Act.

We are also advocating for changes to auto legislation, including acknowledgment of speech-language pathologists as health care practitioners (an omission that makes no sense). This will allow us to prepare and sign our own treatment plans, helping reduce delays in getting therapy started after an accident.

I also helped prepare a presentation for insurance companies on the need to improve coverage for speech-language pathology services. OSLA’s private practice committee is now planning presentations across the province. A special thank you to Mary Gibbens, Financial Advisor with London Life, for all of her assistance and support.

Community Involvement:

I am also active on the Health Promotions subcommittee of the provincially funded Tyke TALK program, helping improve public education on preschool speech and language issues. As a member of the steering committee of the ABI network of SW Ontario, I collaborate on how to improve services and supports for individuals with acquired brain injuries.

Kid’s Corner: Speech & Language Skills

Reports of twins developing their own "private language" are heard from time to time; however, the phenomenon was poorly understood until recently. Researchers from Cambridge UK discovered a significant association between parental reports of twin language and language impairment. They studied 176 twin pairs aged 7-13 (half with normally developing language, and half with at least one twin pair with a speech and language impairment). Twin language reports were significantly higher for children in the speech and language impairment group. The researchers suggest that twin language is best understood as immature or deviant language used by two children at the same developmental level. These children should be referred to a speech-language pathologist for assessment.

Source: JSHR, Feb 1998

Ask the Expert: Answers to Your Questions

Question: What is the speech-language pathologist’s role in the assessment and treatment of cognitive-communication disorders following acquired brain injury?

Answer: Thinking and communication difficulties are very common and often subtle. The speech-language pathologist can assess all aspects of communication (listening, speaking, reading, writing, social interaction), and all aspects of cognition that impact on communication (e.g. attention, memory, organization, reasoning, judgement). S/he will comment on how cognitive-communication difficulties impact on return to work, school, family and/ or community and provide treatment recommendations. Therapy is often multi-faceted, e.g. can include an educational component, environmental modification, isolated skill development, and the training of compensatory strategies. Speech-language pathologists work closely with other professionals to facilitate recovery.

Lost for Words: Learning Disabilities

Learning to read is, without a doubt, one of a child’s greatest accomplishments. School success depends upon the timely mastery of this skill. Research has shown that the primary source of reading failure is linguistic in nature. Sound awareness, syntactic knowledge, and vocabulary size are predictive of reading development. We also know that language therapy is effective in improving both reading accuracy and reading comprehension in students with specific learning disabilities. Researchers at the University of Oklahoma wanted to determine if oral story telling abilities were also predictive of reading comprehension skills. They compared reading comprehension scores and story telling abilities in 37 children aged 5-10. Oral story telling was significantly related, and predictive of reading comprehension scores.

Source: JSLPA, Sept /99

The Tangled Tongue: Stuttering

New research compared the characteristics of children who do not spontaneously recover from stuttering and those who do. Persistent stutterers perform less well on phonological (i.e. sound) processing measures. Expressive language measures, on the other hand, were not predictive of recovery. In fact, there was some evidence to suggest that precocious language development may be a predisposing factor for stuttering.

Source: ASHA Leader, Oct/ 99

The Hidden Hurt: Traumatic Brain Injury

It has been said, that the ability to appreciate humour is one of the highest of human brain attributes. Stuss and Shawmi, psychologists from the University of Toronto, demonstrated the importance of the frontal lobes in understanding and responding to humour.

The psychologists studied the humour responses of 31 men and women, some with mild brain injury, and others without. Individuals that had damage to the right frontal lobe had difficulty understanding jokes that required verbal connections and did not smile or laugh even if they understood the jokes. They responded only to obvious slap-stick humour.

Their research was conducted to more fully understand the function of the frontal lobes-structures highly developed in only humans and the least understood areas of the brain. For decades the frontal lobes were considered the "silent region" of the brain.

Source: The London Free Press, April/99

Thought for the Day:

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act but a habit"

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