Logopedii Silesiany, (paste the English text) Olga Przybyla

The contribution deals with the possibilities of oromotor praxis diagnosis and intervention in individuals suffering from autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Under the Czech and foreign conditions, this domain is rather neglected. The focal analysis is the analysis of an ASD child’s oromotor ability through the application of a partial task activity from the software programme FONO 2, Section ‘Warm-up’. The results of the longitudinal observation are detected by means of the developed evaluation scale and are recorded in the form of tables and graphs, which are analysed subsequently. According to the analysis of oromotor abilities, it is possible to achieve positive results through systematic speech and language therapy intervention focused on the development of mobility in the orofacial sphere. We are of the opinion that the ability to imitate oromotor skills could interfere with the ability to understand and acquire non-verbal communication elements and, subsequently, influence the correlations with possible pragmatic communication abilities in ASD children, similar to the discovery of mutual correlation among oral praxis, oral gnosis, motor praxis and visual perception (with special emphasis placed on eye movements) in children suffering from hearing disorders. The results of the study constitute partial outputs of a specific research within the IGA (IGA 2014/2015 PDF 2014_016) project and, in part, also the GAČR project implemented by the Institute of Special Education Studies of the Pedagogical Faculty of Palacký University in Olomouc.

The author in his paper attempts at answering a question concerning the relationship between dysfluent realisation of speech units (sound, open and closed syllable, word, phrase and sentence) and disordered symptoms occuring beyond the language (e.g. the speed of speech, symptoms of logophobia/anxiety, muscle comovements) and the age of the stutterers. The significant quantative and qualitative differences, being prototypes for the age groups are also discussed. It will be in three age groups (A: 7-11 yrs.; B: 12-16; C: 17 yrs. and more) at the number of 250 stutterers discussed. The findings of the study suggest the assumption that frequency of occurrence of dysfluent realisation of speech units among stutterers in three groups is very similar. The units that are most commonly blocked occur in initial sound, alike in all groups and stop-explosive consonants and vowels belong to the most fre¬quen¬tly blocked ones. The highest ratio of frequency in stuttering in percentage is slight level of stuttering for all groups. Significant differences between groups in case of logophobia/anxiety level have been observed, but this is not discussed in this paper.

The objective is the analysis of examinations (evaluated by means of subjective and objective criteria) focused on identifying voice and speech problems experienced by interpreting students as a specific group of vocal professionals in relation to the prevention of voice disorders and voice hygiene. Methodology: Students who are studying interpreting and whose vocal and overall communication expression has been analysed through direct observation and through the analysis of video records have been evaluated by means of a questionnaire focused on identifying voice and speech problems and by means of subjective evaluation of the possible impact of these problems on their profession. The resultant analysis shows, among other things, that vocal professionals experience objective problems in the use of their voices, which are chronic in some cases. Most students have subjectively evaluated their vocal expression as average and as significantly influenced by the psychosomatic factors disrupting their performance in the sphere of executive and cognitive functions and by the dialect. Some of the subjective feelings are strongly related to the possible exhibitions of vocal disorders. In many cases, the analysis of video records has proven non-compliance of the subjective evaluation of the students’ exhibitions with the objective experience and the idea of voice and speech professionalism. The results have served, among other things, for setting other education and enlightenment objectives in the sphere of vocal and speech prevention and for capturing possible deviations, even based on the comparison of this preliminary data with the results of similarly focused examinations implemented by the speech and language therapy department.

The aim of this paper is to present multidimensional problems of inclusive education of impaired hearing. Selected components of inclusive education that are of particular interest in this paper are as follows: legislative regulations, inclusive education principles and their application for a speech therapist, organising the education of deaf and hard of hearing students, and prospects of the development of surdologopaedics in view of the challenges of inclusive pedagogy.

The article discusses theories about the origin and formative mechanism of stuttering with regard to verifiable methods based on neuroimaging, as well as neurophysiology and audiology. The theories presented are interpreted with regard to the model of formation of fluent speech grounded upon the knowledge from the fields of neuropsychology and audiophonology. Conclusions drawn from the discussed theories are posed in reference to speech therapy practice.

Psychoorganic syndrome is a condition in which, due to the organic damage to brain structures, disorders of the patient’s behaviour occur, manifesting themselves in the socio-emotional, cognitive, and linguistic spheres. The symptoms of psychoorganic syndrome have different types of neuropathogenesis: they may be caused by toxic, infectious, vascular and traumatic factors. The existing descriptions of speech disorders concentrate upon the damage to different brain areas, usually focusing first of all on dysfunctions of the communication process, i.e. the programming of verbal utterances. In the case of psychoorganic syndrome, interaction disorders do not arise from strictly linguistic difficulties, but are caused by disorders of the controlling function of the word. Psychoorganic syndrome is usually diagnosed in adults, while brain injuries in the developmental age usually lead to mental development disorders. Psychiatric literature therefore makes a distinction into three forms of psychoorganic syndrome: in adults 1) characteropathy and 2) dementia, and in children 3) oligophrenia. In speech therapy there are developed standards of diagnostic and therapeutic management in the case of oligophrenia and some forms of dementia, but there are still no procedures for diagnosis and therapy of interactions in other forms of dementia and characteropathic disorders.

The article presents a review of objective methods of hearing diagnostics. Methods of hearing loss and partial deafness treatment (PDT) by means of hearing implants are also discussed in the study. Due to the surgical treatment, the results of hearing preservation in patients undergoing partial deafness treatment (PDT) enable the efficient use of acoustic components. The results of speech comprehension achieve 100% in silence and about 68% in noise at a level of 65 dB SPL. The paper outlines the post-operative care and rehabilitation of patients with a cochlear implant (the care of multiple specialists, auditory-verbal therapy, telerehabilitation). National teleaudiology network connecting numerous centres is one of the elements improving the effectiveness of the therapy. It allows patients to get necessary care close to their homes and – what is more important – to be less tired (which is especially important in the case of children) during the rehabilitation. The article also underlines the influence of technological progress, which with proper surgical technique allows patients that were treated early enough (prelingual deafness) to attend general, not special, schools. One of the important results of the therapy with cochlear implants is that many users of cochlear implants graduate from universities

Central nervous system (CNS) seems to be the most sophisticated system of the human body. Its proper functioning requires enough blood supply. The development of CNS starts very early in the foetal life. The neural tube and the neural crest are formed from ectoderm in the third week of the foetal life. The brain, the spinal cord and the peripheral nerves develop from these structures. Physiologists describe three functional brain levels, that is – spinal, lower and higher cerebral. The spinal cord is considered to be the first and the oldest phylogenetic functional part of CNS. Its work is reflexive and automatic, thus enabling a quick reaction to a stimulus. The lower brain level consists mainly of subcortical centres – the hypothalamus and the thalamus. Both of them are responsible for homeostasis. The cerebral cortex is the highest brain level. It integrates all kinds of stimuli, movement planning and the development of learning. The cerebrum provides the proper motor coordination and the sense of balance. Vasomotor, respiratory centres and the nucleus of cerebral nerves are located in the brain stem. It also contains reticular formation, which modulates pain sensation and is responsible for the maintenance of the proper level of consciousness.

In their article on the motivation for stuttering therapy in secondary school students, the authors present the results of their survey-based research conducted in 2014 among 40 stuttering males (M) and 12 stuttering females (F) in three age groups: a) 15-17 years old, b) 18-19 years old, c) 20 years old and over. The 52 stutterers were asked 12 questions assessing, among others, their levels of motivation for starting their speech therapies: before starting secondary school, during secondary school, and towards the end of their time in secondary school. The scale of motivation levels was set as: very high, high, medium, low, and none. In one of the questions, the stutterers were asked to name their reasons for deciding on starting a speech therapy in the aforementioned periods, and among those reasons suggestions from their mother, father, grandparents, teachers, the influence of the Internet, or the lack of them, could be found, to name a few. The surveyed group was also asked to rate those reasons from the most important (1) to the least important (6, 7, 8, 0). The stutterers also provided their own/personal reasons for starting a stuttering therapy in the aforementioned period of time and scale, and those pertained to lack of progress in earlier attempts at therapy and very low self-esteem connected to communication difficulties. The survey also provided answers to questions about the factors that influenced their final decision to choose the right method of therapy. The graphs in the article and their analysis will allow the readers to familiarise themselves with the wide spectrum of motivation and its lack to start a therapy aimed at correcting speech communication disorders in the form of stuttering in secondary school students. Towards the end of the article some research conclusions are described, pointing to the fact that the main influence on deciding to start a speech therapy is the mother, and towards the end of school – the Internet, while the lack of decision is most often influenced by little interest in the problem on the family's part and failed past attempts at therapy.

For a long time linguists and speech therapists have drawn attention to the worrying phenomenon of the common use of the slightly softened articulation of rustling consonants series and the slightly hardened (semi soft) one of hushing consonants series. Its diagnostics – the speech description of (mostly) young people, the assessment of the scale of the phenomenon, the analysis of phonetic and situational conditions of such an articulation and the reflection on the causes of the spread of semi-soft articulation – is the main aim of this paper. Both extra- and intra-lingual causes have been analysed, whereas two other processes – prognostics and anagnostics – have only been indicated. An important question whether it is necessary to correct the semi-palatal articulation does not provide a definite answer, especially since such an articulation does not disturb the communication and is generally unnoticed by the speakers.

The article presents the linguistic analysis of samples of children’s speech with diagnosed childhood dysphasia, that is – the attempt at describing the process of separation and the description of typical phenomena in all subsystems of language. The base of my research model is Maria Zarębina’s linguistic description of adult aphasia. My research proves that each of the examined children manifested the dysfunctions typical of compound aphasia (according to Maria Zarębina’s naming).

A. Wątorek’s paper addresses methodological issues revolving around the studies on linguistic competence of children with a diagnosed mental disability. The author presents a range of specific solutions that are worth familiarising with, since she has proved their usefulness in the research work during several years of her original studies with 8- and 10-year-old students afflicted with mild intellectual disability attending special and integration schools. A. Wątorek recreates a possible course of the research process, as seen from the perspective of an empirical researcher who is fully aware of the difficulties that pile up in front of him or her, associated with selecting the subjects for the experimental group, choosing control groups, selecting research tools and methods, planning diagnostic sessions, and analysing the obtained empirical data. The author underlines the fact that the current knowledge on the speech acquisition of children with intellectual disabilities is insufficient, and the reason for that lies in the lack of verified methodological models. She provides the example of her own original research concerning passive and active vocabulary of children coming from different socio-familial backgrounds, simultaneously proving that constant underestimation of the environmental factor in comparative studies on linguistic competence of children with mild intellectual disability leads to the exaggeration of differences between subjects with diagnosed mental disability and subjects that are within the clinical norm, whereas in certain circumstances the diagnostic criterion gives way to various environmental criteria. As the author emphasises, despite the difficulties that are connected with studies on the speech of children with intellectual disabilities, the research should be planned and executed with the proper care for methodological transparency, as the essence of scientific activity is to ascertain the truth – no matter how hard it may be – with the use of increasingly improving methods, tools, techniques and procedures of research conduct.

The child born with cleft lip and palate requires multidisciplinary care since the very first hours of its life. These actions should also include speech therapy stimulation. Initially, the work of a speech therapist over dealing with this birth defect differs from the standard therapeutic procedures as a speech therapist comes into contact with a very young patient who has difficulties with food intake and often suffers from swallowing and breathing disorders. This study contains a proposal for speech therapy care over a child with cleft lip and palate. The method is used in the clinics of the Mother and Child Institute in Warsaw.

The aim of this article is to present the problems of diagnosis, and the possibilities of language programming of a child with profound hearing loss using the auditory-verbal method. Therapeutic procedure refers to the proper development of the child’s speech.

The aim of this article is to describe the dynamics of recovery from aphasia of a patient after a neurosurgery. The surgery involved a removal of a haematoma, which was a result of cranio-cerebral injury on the left fronto-temporo-parietal region of the brain. The patient was diagnosed with global aphasia in the first stage of recovery, after the clinical stage had been stabilised. During the rehabilitation period of two years, certain stages of the aphasic disorders occurred. Symptoms of deep receptive and expressive aphasia, with considerable difficulties in understanding and creating verbal expressions, evolved into acoustic-gnostic aphasia with difficulties in identifying the audio form of expression. Phonemic awareness disorders passed soon and acoustic-mnestic aphasia with deficits in auditory-verbal memory followed. Eventually, linguistic disorders transformed into semantic aphasia, including disorders of simultaneous synthesis which caused difficulties in understanding logically and grammatically complex forms of expression, reading and writing. Along with overcoming the aphasic difficulties and the evolution of the linguistic disorders mechanisms, the patient’s level of functioning in social and cognitive sphere was changing. During the process of therapy, which was activating and stimulating the mechanisms of neuroplasticity and neural compensation, the patient additionally acquired a particular aesthetic sensitivity, which resulted in artistic talent and rich artistic output. The speech therapy also inspired the patient to try literary forms of expression. The woman overcame her limitations in reading and writing in order to write her own book. At present, the patient lives a successful life, being involved in its various aspects, such as familial, social and professional ones.

This carefully prepared report presents briefly the problem of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and the role of a speech-language pathologist in multi-specialist rehabilitation of ALS patients. ALS, as a degenerative disease, poses a difficult task for speech-language pathologists. Their main aim is to maintain the current functional communication for as long as possible. The article contains the suggestions for speech-language therapies for people who suffer from ALS.

PIssues related to the comprehension of the text have been undertaken by philosophy, psychology and linguistics. Each of these disciplines has its own set of conceptual instruments, methods of text analysis and proposals for the evaluation of their understanding. So far in logopaedics more issues connected to text comprehension have not been addressed, and thus its method of testing has not been developed. The article contains the description of the first logopaedic proposal of evaluation of text comprehension, and practical benefits of its use for examining people with speech disorders.

Reading and writing skills are necessary for the proper functioning of human society, there are one of the forms of linguistic communication. Underlying the difficulty in mastering these skills may lie among others speech disorders, including neurological substrate. In the case of people with alalia, developmental disorders of speech significantly affect the mastery of reading and writing. There are language operations in which the symptoms of disorder may persist for a long time. The article discusses the relation of speech disorders of neurological substrate with difficulties in reading and writing. The introduction presents the concept and the reasons for difficulties in reading and writing, which are related with speech disorders. I separate described difficulties from the concept of dyslexia. Based on the analysis of case 16-year-old girl with alalia I show that the difficulties in learning reading and writing skills are the result of disturbances in speech development. The case study indicates that symptoms of alalia can persist to the age of teenage and determine the life of an adult.

This article is a continuation of theoretical reflections on discourse disorders in persons with schizophrenia. The theoretical part was presented in Logopedia Silesiana 2. Working with a person suffering from schizophrenia relies on frequent relapses, medical prognosis, no schematic disorders, making it difficult to capture the moment of stabilization, when it can start or continue speech therapy. In the article are general guidelines that may affect the positive effects of therapy, such as giving everyday schematic rules, the gradual introduction of changes , reducing incentives. The research process involves five men staying at the Hospital for Mental Diseases in Rybnik, which combines diagnosis of schizophrenia. The study was based on Krótka Skala Oceny Schizofazji T. Woźniak and A. Czernikiewicz. Also used The scale for the assessment of thinking , language and verbal communication. In the final statement shows the most common disorder of text that should be included diagnostic and therapeutic process in neurologopedic therapy.

The article presents the specificity of the work of a speech therapist and a physiotherapist with a neurological patient. The authors discuss the diagnosis, the speech therapy and the effects of physiotherapy of a patient with a history of subarachnoid haemorrhage; the method of PNF was used in this case. In this article the most important questions and effects of the therapy are described. In addition, the text contains a list of classes used in the treatment of both the vital functions and the lower and upper limb. They are characteristic of the chosen method of therapy.

There are still many controversies concerning the location of cortical functional areas involved in speech processes. It has been proved that brain plasticity mechanisms enable the transfer of functions between areas located in the same hemisphere as well as through the commissural fibres system to the opposite hemisphere. The originally distributed location of functional areas may also exist simultaneously in both hemispheres. The aim of this study was twofold: to analyse speech problems occurring in patients treated for primary tumours of the CNS and to attempt to correlate symptoms with the location of damage. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), The Right Hemisphere Language Battery – Polish version (RHLB-PL) and the neurologopaedic diagnosis were used for evaluation. The authors present the preliminary results of a group of twenty patients with primary brain tumours.

The article presents the image of people with a speech impediment in the perception of the society. Numerous observations and studies indicate that the perception of children suffering from speech difficulties correlates with their low self-esteem. The consequences of it are numerous difficulties, connected to school on the one hand, and to the establishment of relationships, emotional ties and social skills on the other. Speech development influences the development of thinking, and thus it is related to the advancement with respect to school and professional careers. Communication difficulties often close the door to a “better world” for children – and later adults. Therefore, the research conducted has been designed to examine how speech therapists’ patients are seen by others. Looking into this problem from this perspective enables one to individualise a therapy in such a way that the young patients are entering the stage of schooling with increased self-confidence.

The overall aim of the research is the description of the aphasiac speech disorders in correlation with the clinical picture of the patient after a stroke, recognizing the research problem in terms of pragmatic, aimed at creating a patient-oriented diagnosis and effective rehabilitation. Cerebral stroke is one of the most common causes of focal brain damages and the cause of more than half of all cases of aphasia. The types of post-stroke disorders are closely related to the location of damage. Any change in the area of the brain affects directly or indirectly the ability and quality of speech, which is coupled to the overall memory functions, motor and intellectual functions. Aphasia comes from the Greek aphasia and means dumbness. The precise explanation of the term, however, causes many difficulties. A multitude of definitions suggests the high complexity of the problem and carries a multiplicity of diagnostic approaches and methodology. In order to make a diagnosis of studied patients she was subjected to a series of trials and exercises, which were the basis of methods based on selected items of psychological and neuropsychological diagnostics. The patient was also subjected to a detailed interview. An evaluation of cranial nerve function and language functions was also made. Due to the age of the patient the degree of cognitive activity was also examined. The research and observations made it possible to diagnose a post-stroke language disorders with the characteristics of motor aphasia and the elements of sensory aphasia. The therapy was aimed mainly at improving the disturbed functions of naming and spontaneous speech. For this purpose a diverse set of exercises were worked out. The right mix of methods used for working with patients allow getting the proper diagnosis and plannig the right treatment that streamlined lost functions, restore the patient to the independent and proper functioning. ...

The purpose of the study is to present certain play which can be successfully applied to the speech therapy of children with the abnormal execution [š, ž, č, ǯ, r]. The speech therapy is conducted through fun. The form undertaken is to encourage children to do the exercises of speech therapy more frequently.

The NetQues Project Report Speech and Language Therapy Education in Europe is to present Benchmarks and Key Subject specific and generic Competencies which form common Standards for European SLT initial education for Speech and Language Therapy Education in Europe