Speech Therapy
A speech language pathologist is a health professional trained to evaluate and treat people who have voice, speech, language or swallowing disorders, including hearing impairments that affect their ability to communicate from infancy through geriatrics.
Pathologists serve individuals, families and groups from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
The pathologist addresses communication and swallowing difficulties in the following areas:
- Speech production – Articulation, apraxia, dysarthria, ataxia
- Resonance – Hypernasality, hyponasality, cul-de-sac, mixed resonance
- Voice – Phonation quality, pitch, loudness, respiration
- Fluency – Stuttering, cluttering
- Language – Phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, literacy, prelinguistic communication, paralinguistic communication
- Cognition – Attention, memory, sequencing, problem solving, executive functioning
- Feeding and swallowing – oral, pharyngeal, laryngeal, esophageal, orofacial mycology (including tongue thrust), oral-motor functions
- Potential etiologies of communication and swallowing disorders to include – neonatal problems (i.e. premature, low birth weight, substance exposure), developmental disabilities, auditory problems, oral anomalies, respiratory compromise, pharyngeal anomalies, laryngeal anomalies, neurological disease/dysfunction (TBI, CP, CVA, dementia, Parkinson’s, ALS), psychiatric disorder, genetic disorder