Answers & Advice Blog - Page 4 of 52 - Marshalla Speech & Language

Articulation Norms

By Pam Marshalla

Q: What articulation developmental norms do you use? I don’t use any specific developmental norms because of the following: Lieberman (1980) found that a rudimentary vowel quadrilateral is set in infant vocal productions by 5 months of age. According to a recent chapter by Vihman (2004), research demonstrates that average children acquire basically all the consonant phonemes by 3 years of age. All studies that have been done since Templin in 1957 have demonstrated that all the consonants reach adult…

Vivifying Tongue Movement – Getting the Tongue to Move

By Pam Marshalla

Q: I currently have a female client age 2;5 who cannot lateralize or elevate her tongue. Would you have any suggestions for me? When a client has the type of limited tongue movement you describe, I think we have to follow Charlie Van Riper’s most basic advice, which is to get the tongue to move in any and all new directions. He called it “vivifying” tongue movement. To vivify means to enlighten or animate. This means that at first we…

Stimulating 2-Word Combinations

By Pam Marshalla

Q: Do you have any advice for helping preschoolers begin to use two-word combinations? The best way I ever have found to stimulate two-word combinations is to model them melodically following the basic research done on Melodic Intonation Therapy (see resources below) — this research was done with adults, but people have applied it to kids ever since it first came out. I use a two-tone high-low melodic pattern. Model the first word on the high tone, and the second…

Overgeneralization When Learning Speech

By Pam Marshalla

Q: I have a 3-year-old male client with apraxia. We are working on initial F. After two unsuccessful sessions where he completely shut down and did not want to speak, I took the pressure off, bombarded him with the sound, and rewarded him for placement. He ended up with a few good productions of the sound by the end of the session. The problem is that he came back to therapy today overgeneralizing the F. I was wondering if this…

Identifying Jaw Clenching

By Pam Marshalla

Q: How do you tell if a client is clenching the jaw when producing a target phoneme? The best way to determine if a client is clenching is to palpate the masseters. Do this on yourself first to learn the feeling. Place your fingertips on your masseters and then clench. Do you feel the bulge? Now do this with your client. If the jaw is clenching you will feel the muscle belly bulge. If it isn’t, then you won’t.

Teaching Final K

By Pam Marshalla

Q: I am working with a child 4;0 with velar fronting. I have established a somewhat inconsistent K in initial and medial position. How can I get k in final position? If he has K anywhere, he is on his way. At his age I would predict that he will learn it on his own given more time. It is very unusual for a child to get K initial and medial but not final — final usually comes in first — but…

Reverse Swallow with Lateral Lisp?

By Pam Marshalla

Q: Our SLPAs see artic kids for 5-7 minute every day. Some of the kids with frontal lisps also have reverse swallow patterns (tongue thrust swallow, infantile suckle-swallow patterns). Should the SLPAs work on this too? Will these kids fix their lisps without it? Yours is the question I hope the 21st century will answer! I personally do not think that SLPs or SLPAs who are not trained in teaching the correct swallow have any business working on it with…

Substituting Fp for F in Initial Position

By Pam Marshalla

Q: My client substitutes fp/f in the initial position, so he says “fpour” for “four”. Why does he put that P in there and how can I get him to stop it? I have seen this error a thousand times as it is a very common one in young children. Here’s how I see it: The client can say F, but he cannot transition from the voiceless F to the voiced vowel without stopping his airflow. In other words, he…

Babbling and Toddler Jargon – Phonological Development

By Pam Marshalla

Q: My preschool client says words, but they only occur at the end of long jargoned gibberish. How do I get rid of that unintelligible part? I would not take the jargon away because jargon is a natural part of speech development. Van Riper called it pretend speech. I call the type you described Word Jargon. It is jargon embedded with real words. Kids without speech-language impairment do this all the time, as they are moving toward 2-3 word phrases….

Toddler with a Lateral Lisp

By Pam Marshalla

Q: I am an SLP with a two-year-old son who has developed a lateral lisp on Sh and Ch. I really don’t want these lateral sounds to get worse and I am tired of hearing that I am over-reacting. Help! Oh you poor thing! Being an SLP and having a child of your own with an artic problem is one of the worst situations to be in! You are NOT over-reacting because you know that some of these so-called minor…