Speech Therapists applaud the Kings Speech

Colin Firth’s performance as the dysfluent prince who ascended to England’s throne in 1936 has generated Academy Awards talk for “The King’s Speech.” The film which portrays King George VI’s relationship with his Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), has also generated unprecedented awareness of stammering/stuttering and the therapists who treat the problem. 

“This movie has done in one fell swoop what we’ve been working on for 64 years,” says Jane Fraser, president of The US Stuttering Foundation, founded by her father in 1947.

The movie depicts Prince Albert’s debilitating stammer and how he overcame it to address the British people on live radio during World War II.

Speech therapists are thrilled with the accuracy of Firth’s portrayal of the condition. He reportedly spent hours getting the dysfluency right as well as imagining the ‘inconsolable despair that those who stutter feel’.

Bertie, as Prince Albert was known before he became King George VI, had to face his fears about talking when his older brother abdicated the throne to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson. 

Early intervention is certainly the key so let’s hope that the film will help with awareness and referrals across the globe. 

ASD: siblings may have subtler problems

by JON HAMILTON

Children with autism tend to have brothers and sisters with language delays and other, less obvious characteristics of the disorder.

iStockphoto.com

Siblings of children diagnosed with autism may benefit for a checkup for related symptoms.

That's the conclusion of a study of more than 1,200 families in theInteractive Autism Network, a national online research registry.

The finding suggests that the genes behind autism in one child may contribute to less serious problems in that child's siblings, says Dr. John N. Constantino, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, lead author of the study, which appears in theAmerican Journal of Psychiatry.

The study found that in 11 percent of families with a child with autism, a second child had also been diagnosed with the disorder. That's similar to what other studies have found.

But the new study also found that 20 percent of siblings who did not have autism had been diagnosed with language delay or speech problems early in life. And about half of those sibling had speech qualities associated with the autism.

Those qualities may include a lack of intonation, a failure to emphasize important words, or a staccato delivery of sentences, says Rebecca Landa, director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore.

The new study is important because it shows how not only autism, but autistic traits can run in families, Landa says.

"If you have one child with autism, it's important to monitor any other children from infancy," Landa says. And if there appears to be a problem, the child should get a professional evaluation.

Related articles

• Siblings of Autistic Children May Also Have Subtle Traits (nlm.nih.gov)
• Autism in Boys and Girls (everydayhealth.com)
• Siblings of Autistic Children May Also Have Subtle Traits (hon.ch)

Scientific study shows the voice of mothers activate a baby's brain and learning

By Ruben Dagda as seen on examiner.com

Scientists from the University of Montreal and Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center in Canada attached electrodes to a group of 16 24 hour  old babies to monitor brain activity. After performing the study, the researchers found the following  remarkable result: the voice of  a mother but not of a nurse, doctor or a stranger robustly activate the language processing centers of the brain in the newborn.   In other words, this is the first study of its kind that shows that the voice of mothers is unique and babies inherently recognize their mother's voice possibly even inside the womb. More importantly, theelectroencephalography and MRI studies show high resolution scans that pinpoint the activation of the Wernicke's area of the left hemisphere of the brain, the brain area that is specialized in language development and recognition in human beings.

  The scientists used a couple of controls in their studies to help with the interpretation of their results.  The researchers also involved a nurse who is herself a mother in their studies and also ruled out the "novelty" aspect by having the mother talk to a nurse at regular intervals before birth. Amazingly, their results still held water and proved that a mother's voice is only recognized by babies as the brain scans only showed selective activations of the language areas of the brain.

 Bottomline- 

     It has been well documented that newborn babies do have some innate language capacities. Moreover, infants may not only learn to specifically recognize their mother's voice but also show adult-like responses in the brain to human voice at 7 but not 4 months of age. However,  scientists are only just beginning to understand what the cognitive capacities of newborn babies are and the mechanisms by which babies learn and vocalize language. Nevertheless, what these studies do not currently show is whether the mother's voice is also important for brain development and learning in the child.   Hence, future studies are imperative to determine whether there are any deficiencies seen in babies in which mothers spend less than the average or ideal time talking to their newborn babies.  Moreover, studies like this have never been performed in such young participants which stresses the fact that many exciting and useful scientific discoveries with regards to the developing infant brain can be discovered with such a low number of participants (16) and can help us understand the pathological basis for speech language deficiencies and autism. 

 Moreover, the implications of these clinical findings are broad and other leading hospitals in the nation that perform pediatric research should conduct future studies as to whether a speech-language deficiencies in the infant could partly be a result of low mother to infant contact and interaction, even at such an early age.

 At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children's Hospital, there are a variety of speech language pathology programs that  perform cutting edge research which also involve clinical trials. Right now, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh is conducting a long term child neurology research registry. This is a large scale research initiative to store and track medical records of infants of all ages for statistical purposes. Moreover, this local clinical research initiative will help to elucidate the  etiology and root causes of many neurological diseases including infant speech language deficiencies.

   

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Related articles

• Newborns need their mother's voice to really fire their brains up [Mad Science] (io9.com)
• His Mother's Voice (thepondonome.wordpress.com)
• Newborn brains sensitive to mom's voice: study (cbc.ca)
• Mum's the word: Montreal team finds newborns respond uniquely to mother's voice (canada.com)
• Mother's voice really is special to babies (news.bioscholar.com)
• Mom's voice plays special role in activating newborn's brain (sciencedaily.com)

Small Talk Speech & Language Therapy in 2010

We've had a great year this year and I can't believe it has gone by so fast. I thought I'd re-cap some of our achievements this year. We:

• launched the groups as a franchise opportunity
• recruited franchisees both nationally and internationally
• have written a comprehensive training course for franchisees to be delivered in person or long distance
• taken part in a buddying scheme with staff and parents from a nursery and neighbouring pre-school
• developed the signing in nurseries and pre-schools to two 6 weeks courses
• Introduced stories with Jack
• extended the groups to include school age children
• have done lots of training with teachers, TAs, parents and carers
• launched an independent ASD assessment service
• started a blog as part of a social media marketing campaign which has a good monthly readership
• set up a local group for independent SLTs for ASTLIP
• were nominated for several awards & short-listed for a couple plus the groups were nominated for the What's on 4 Little ones awards
• were extremely busy on the independent speech therapy side with consistent No 1 google rankings
• developed and pilotted Teeny Talkers Training package
• worked with lots of NHS therapists
• started to put together an international bulletin for SLT/SLPs to be launched in January
• appeared on the radio several times
• had good local and regional press coverage

There's more that I cant recall right now and still things we didn't do that we wanted to but I'm proud of our achievements and I'm looking forwards to developing and extending next year. So here's to a fabulous 2011 for us all!!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from Libby, Franky, Helen, Nicky, Sumathi, Dee, Amy, Vanessa, Jennie and of course, Jack!! xx

www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk   www.smarttalkers.org.uk

0844 704 5888

Language learning starts in the womb!

I found this on examiner.com  and I thought it was worth sharing: Find them on Facebook!

A new study published on the November 5th online edition ofCurrent Biology reveals that newborns' cries already carry the mark of their parents language. The study has found that babies start to develop language elements in the womb, long before they first start to coo and babble.

The findings not only disclose that newborn human babies can produce different sounding cry sounds. They also reveal that neonates prefer to make the sound patterns that were typical to them when in the womb during their third trimester of gestation, explained Kathleen Wermke of the University of Würzburg in Germany. Unlike previously believed, the data in this study supports how important a baby'a crying is for seeding the development of language, added Wermke.

In the last trimester of pregnancy human fetuses can memorize external sounds, particularlymelody contours in music and language. Newborns prefer their mother's voice above other voices and can perceive emotion through intonation contours in maternal speech, also known as 'motherese' or baby talk. Babies' ability to differentiate between languages and changes in pitch is based on melody patterns.

The study's research team, led by Wermke, recorded and analyzed 60 healthy three to five day old newborn's cries, half of which were born to French-speaking families and the other half to German-speaking families. Clear differences were noted in the tone of the babies' cries, based on their maternal tongue.

French newborns had a cry with a rising melody contour, while the German babies had a falling melody contour cry. These melody patterns are consistent with the two languages, stated Wermke.

The data from this study show a very early native language impact, said the researchers. Infants can't match vowel sounds made to them by adult speakers until 12 weeks after being born, that skill depends on vocal control. However, they can imitate the tone of their mother's spoken language.

The fact that they can imitate melody contour, is probably due to their motivation to mimic their mother's voice to establish a bond. Since melody contour is probably the only characteristic of their mother's speech they can imitate, it could explain why it is found so early in a newborn's life.

Related articles

• Newborns need their mother's voice to really fire their brains up [Mad Science] (io9.com)
• Infants give mother tongue new meaning (theglobeandmail.com)
• Mum's the word: Montreal team finds newborns respond uniquely to mother's voice (canada.com)

A limited offer for Facebook friends, Twitter followers or Blog Contacts

Do you have questions about communication?  Do you have a small group of people who might like the opportunity to ask questions about speech, language and learning?  Perhaps family members, colleagues or neighbours, individuals from a play-group, discussion or hobby group, sports team, parents or teachers from your school, or even co-workers? 

Small Talk Speech and Language Therapy are offering a limited number of one-hour long, no-obligation, FREE question and answer forums. We are happy to extend this offer to any of your Face Book contacts (please forward) and will travel within a 20 mile radius of Hednesford or we can welcome your group to come to our Head Office at Centrix House. 

To take advantage of this limited offer 

please ring 0844 704 5888 or e-mail info@smalltalk-ltd.co.uk
www.smarttalkers.org.uk
www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk

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Auditory Memory

There are several different types of memory including long term and short term. Children may have a good long term memory but have difficulties with their auditory memory.

Auditory memory is the ability to process information presented orally, analyse it mentally and store it to be recalled later.  

Auditory memory is one of the most important learning skills. Children with weak auditory skills often have difficulty understanding what words mean, and can show a delayed grasp of language. This is because children need to  remember word sounds and piece them together to form words. Furthermore, since many children learn to read by being read to, those with problems with auditory learning will likely take longer to learn to read, and these delays may be reflected later in life with poor reading and writing skills.

We work on strategies to help auditory memory skills in small Talkers and Teeny Talkers from Smart Talkers Pre-School Communication Groups

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