When many people think of SLPs, they think of a person who helps young children produce speech sounds correctly. But they can do much more than that! Speech-language pathologists are trained to treat people of all ages, from babies to the elderly. Here are the areas SLPs are trained to identify and treat:
- Speech Production:
- This includes working with articulation, phonological, and motor planning disorders.
- Language:
- This includes both expressive language (talking and writing) and receptive language (listening and reading). Many people don’t know that SLP’s also work with clients on social use of language.
- Cognition:
- This includes areas such as memory, problem-solving, attention, and executive function.
- Voice and Resonance:
- This includes helping people to modulate the pitch, volume, and nasality of their voice.
- Feeding and Swallowing:
- This includes helping people to swallow safely and help remediate atypical eating patterns, such as refusing to eat or being extremely selective about foods.
- Fluency:
- This includes teaching people who stutter strategies to make communication easier. This also includes cluttering, a disorder characterized by rapid and irregular speech.
- Auditory Habilitation or Rehabilitation:
- This includes working to improve auditory processing skills or helping to improve communication for people who have experienced hearing loss.
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