I just read a great article about word finding difficulties, Word-Finding Intervention for Children With Specific Language Impairment: A Multiple Single-Case Study by Anne Bragard, Marie-Anne Schelstraete, Perrine Snyers, and Deborah G. H. James
Wording finding difficulties can truly impair a person's ability to communicate. It affects how a person learns new vocabulary, is able to express ideas in writing and speaking, affects confidence, and can hamper participation in the classroom.
When I started working with adult patients who suffered a stroke or brain injury, the implications were quite obvious. My therapy focused on helping my patients access previously learned vocabulary and express ideas. This was rehabilitation.
Now, as I work with children, I help students learn vocabulary correctly the first time as well as access the vocabulary they have already learned. Most of my therapy (and what I talk about on this website) focuses on semantic intervention. This means, I teach students all the parts of a definition and how to relate words together. The idea behind it is that the stronger the semantic relationship, the easier it is for a child to recall a word (the article reviews this as well). Students then can start to automatically self-cue by describing a word to help access their memory. As a bonus and a hope....students will start to learn new vocabulary with their learned components of a definition and reduce word finding difficulties in the future.
However, is therapy evidence based? Is there carryover or generalization of progress? This article shed some light on this as well as got me thinking about other aspects of therapy.
In this article, I didn't learn anything groundbreaking but it was a good review of word finding difficulties and really got me thinking about intervention ideas.
All this information got me thinking....
Bridget is an ASHA certified, practicing speech-language pathologist. She is passionate about providing parents with information on child speech and language development as well as provide functional, easy activities to do at home! Parents have the power to make a real difference. Follow Bridget at Facebook and Pinterest for more fun!