FACILITATION OF DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF-MONITORING SKILLS, AS THEY RELATE TO FLUENCY
Rationale: They client must be able to effectively identify, through
adequate self-monitoring skills and self-awareness, those elements
which are interfering with his/her fluency. Development of these skills
is crucial to the attainment and maintenance of fluency
Activities/Techniques:
- Tape record - Use of audiotaped speech samples is helpful in
initial identification of primary or audible secondary behavior(s)
as well as continued identification of inappropriate rate and
audible tension. Audiotaping is also helpful during the later
stages of therapy to improve self-monitoring skills. The client
may be asked to assess a sample of his/her speech for
effectiveness of technique use.
- On-line identification - The clinician first identifies primary
and secondary behaviors or easy and hard speech for the child.
Then the child gradually begins the identification of these
behaviors himself/herself. It is helpful to contrast the
identified behaviors with easier forms of saying the word or
describing what made the word hard.
- Identifying behaviors in the clinician's speech is a helpful way
to initially increase the child's awareness.
- Contrast drills - Using word lists, the client is instructed to
produce each word - first hard, then easy. The clinician aids the
client in identifying what made each word hard or easy.
- For the latter stages of therapy, the clinician must cue the
client to monitor those aspects of his/her speech which may be
interfering with fluency. Gestural cues may be adequate; however,
verbal cueing such as "Did that feel hard?", "Is your mouth open
enough?", and "Did you feel that you had no air for speech?" may
be more helpful.
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