Services
Ronni's numerous years of experience and education allow her to offer a wide variety of services within the field of Speech and Language Pathology.
Articulation and phonological disorders
An articulation disorder refers to problems in making specific speech sounds. For example, substituting the /r/ sound with a /w/ (e.g saying “wabbit” for “rabbit“). Speech sounds can be substituted, changed, added, or deleted.
A phonological disorder involves patterns of sound errors. For example, a sound produced in the front of the mouth like /t/ and /d/ is substituted for a sound produced in the back of the mouth like /k/ and /g/ (e.g. saying “tat” for “cat” or “dap” for “gap”). Many phonological process errors are common and appropriate but at a certain age are no longer expected.
Expressive and receptive language therapy
Children with expressive language delays may have a limited expressive vocabulary, poor grammar skills, and difficulty describing words, and producing complete sentences.
Receptive language is the ability to understand both nonverbal (e.g. gestures) and verbal language. This includes the ability to understand the meaning of words, concepts (e.g. up/down, big/little, hot/cold, etc.), and understand questions.
Children with receptive language delays or disorders may have difficulty with reading comprehension, sequencing events, understanding spoken or written language, and following directions.
Cognitive-communication disorders
Clients with cognitive-communication disorders may have difficulty with communication skills that involve memory, attention, perception, organization, regulation, orientation, language processing speed, problem-solving, reasoning, and executive functioning.
Autism spectrum disorders
Individuals with social/pragmatic language delays frequently display difficulties with the use of nonliteral language (e.g.idioms such as ”You’re on the right track” may not be referring to a train, depending on the situation). Additionally, social language deficits may be present in situations that require changing language according to the needs of a listener. For example, using different language with a baby than an adult, giving background information to an unfamiliar listener, and speaking differently in different environments. Pragmatic deficits are also evidenced in following rules for conversations and storytelling, taking turns in conversation, maintaining a topic, rephrasing when misunderstood, using verbal and nonverbal signals, as well as how close to stand to someone when speaking, and how to use facial expressions and eye contact.
Auditory processing disorders
Auditory processing disorder is a neurological defect that affects how the brain processes spoken language. This makes it difficult for an individual to process verbal instructions or to filter out background noise.
Children with an auditory processing disorder may exhibit a variety of listening and related complaints. Sometimes they may behave as if a hearing loss is present, often asking for repetition or clarification. In school, children with an Auditory Processing Disorder may have difficulty with spelling, reading, and understanding information presented verbally in the classroom.
A child with an auditory processing disorder can often have the same types of behavioral problems as a child with ADHD. It's easy to see, however, that using the techniques appropriate for an ADHD child will not be very effective with a child experiencing auditory processing issues.
Fluency disorders
Clients with fluency disorders may have issues such as stuttering in which the flow of speech is interrupted by abnormal stoppages, partial word repetitions (“b-b-boy), or prolonging sounds and syllables (sssssnake).
Oromyfunctional therapy / tongue thrust
Tongue thrust is the process of thrusting the tongue forward and/or sideways against the teeth or in between the teeth while speaking or swallowing.
The constant pressure of the tongue at rest against or between the teeth, along with the hammering of the tongue during swallowing, can force the teeth out of alignment potentially creating a malocclusion (bad bite). A speech and language pathologist typically works in conjunction with a dentist or orthodontist to achieve optimal results.
