EWU faculty at the\u00a0University Speech and Hearing Clinic\u00a0in Spokane are using innovative ultrasound methods to address some of the most problematic obstacles for children with speech disorders \u2013 among them the pronunciation of \u201cR\u201d sounds.<\/p>\n
According to Hashemi Hosseinabad, PhD, an assistant professor in EWU\u2019s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, up to\u00a0two percent of people\u00a0who reach adulthood have speech disorders that affect their ability to pronounce certain sounds. One of the most common and hard-to-fix speech errors, she says, is that difficult \u201cR\u201d sound.<\/p>\n
Conventional speech therapy involves using a mirror to teach young patients the sounds produced by the lips like \u201cP\u201d and \u201cB.\u201d Because this method often fails to help with more tongue-twisty consonants, therapists such as Hosseinabad are increasingly turning to alternatives such as visual feedback therapy \u2013 a treatment technique involving ultrasound.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor more challenging sounds like \u2018R\u2019 or \u2018S\u2019 that children cannot see inside their mouth, we use real-time biofeedback that enables them to visualize inside their mouth,\u201d says Hosseinabad. \u201cUltrasound imaging for speech therapy offers real-time views of the tongue during speech that teaches children to produce correct tongue shapes for complex sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hosseinabad recently wrapped up a two week intensive speech therapy \u201cR-Camp\u201d utilizing the ultrasound technology at the clinic, which is run collaboratively by EWU and WSU in the Health Sciences Building on the Riverpoint Campus.<\/p>\n
It was open to children six and older who had not made any progress with traditional therapy, and Hosseinabad says early evaluations show participants demonstrated significant gains in producing the \u201cR\u201d sound.<\/p>\n
Read about the clinic\u2019s tremendous success in the July 7 edition of the\u00a0Spokesman-Review<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" EWU faculty at the\u00a0University Speech and Hearing Clinic\u00a0in Spokane are using innovative ultrasound methods to address some of the most problematic obstacles for children with speech disorders \u2013 among them the pronunciation of \u201cR\u201d sounds. According to Hashemi Hosseinabad, PhD, an assistant professor in EWU\u2019s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, up to\u00a0two percent of…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":462,"featured_media":86436,"menu_order":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-86434","stories","type-stories","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","stories_tags-cmsd"],"acf":{"display_byline":false,"subheading":"","featured_image_format":"cover","display_featured_image":true,"display_date_published":true,"featured_video":"","Links":false,"Resources":false,"page_override_title":"","page_hide_sidebar":false,"page_enable_page_nav":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/chsph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories\/86434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/chsph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/chsph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/stories"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/chsph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/462"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/chsph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories\/86434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86439,"href":"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/chsph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/stories\/86434\/revisions\/86439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/chsph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test-www.ewu.edu\/chsph\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}