Stay informed as a
speech–language
pathologist

Ableism is the belief or assumption disabled people are inferior to able-bodied people. While there has been much discussion about fighting ableism within autistic and Deaf communities, SLPs have a responsibility to consider how ableism impacts all clients, including those who stutter. (Side note: stuttering, like autism, is a form of neurodiversity.) In this tutorial, Gerlach-Houck & Constantino challenge the one-sided narrative that stuttering is solely a negative experience…

You’re seeing a patient with Parkinson’s disease (PD) for dysphagia therapy. Based on her VFSS results and the fact that these patients often have reduced tongue strength, you’re considering lingual strength training as part of her therapy program. But is it as effective for people with PD as it is in other populations? How much of a difference does it make to use a biofeedback device like the IOPI rather than just doing tongue presses against the hard palate? And how many reps and sets should you be recommending, anyway?

Gestalt language processing (GLP): it is *everywhere* right now, and everyone is talking about it.  Why’s it so hot? We’ll get to that. What even is this? We’ll get to that too, no worries. But the big question that’s been blowing up our email, DMs, and search engine— Is there research behind GLP? Is it EBP?  Quick answer—yes, partly…it’s complicated! So while we wish we could pull this off in a quick soundbite, you’re going to need to grab a chair or an earbud and settle in for the ride. Let’s go!

The CDC rolled out revamped milestone checklists this month, and they’ve caused a lot of stir in the early intervention world. The goal of their project was to reduce the “wait and see” method of surveillance that rules the day in pediatricians’ offices by providing clearer guidance for when further screening and evaluation should be conducted. We can get behind the goals of the project and like many of the changes; however, some of the updated language milestones don’t align with current evidence—in a way that could undermine those goals.

Kang et al. found that people with Parkinson’s disease and self-reported cognitive decline could still be active participants in setting goals. This article focused on occupational therapy goal setting, but we can use this approach when creating cognitive-communication goals too. Here’s the technique (and we made you a printable form to use with clients, too!): 1. Discuss the overall purpose of therapy and give the client an idea of what to expect."I'm here to help you with your everyday communication and cognition—things like talking to your grandkids, remembering to take your meds on time, setting up a schedule for feeding the cat..."

Hey, remember that time a study that aggregated speech norms broke the internet? Haha, wow, that was fun, and also traumatic. I’m glad there aren’t too many papers that challenge long-standing ‘norms’ and fundamentally shift the information speech pathologists are communicating to parents. *Record scratch* OK, so if you’re in pediatrics (and you’re reading this, so you probably are) you might, at some point, have used some sort of speech intelligibility patter with parents and teachers like: ‘Kids should be 50% intelligible to strangers at two years, 75% at three years, and 100% intelligible (albeit not error-free) by four years.’ I know I have…