STYLE Media and Design

Dr. Ann Pendley shows a patient how the brain processes information.

The Center helps patients who may have difficulty with articulation, voice-vocal fold problems (literacy), pediatric feeding and swallowing, cleft palate, cognitive-language difficulties, brain injury, autism, stuttering, and more. In July 2009, they will begin seeing stroke patients and accepting Medicare.

“It’s pretty eclectic. There are four therapists and we each bring our own brand of training and, by cross training, we’ve created a system that comes together.”

One common influence is the Lindamood approach. “Most of us came from her perspective in literacy and we base our process on that.” She refers to the Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing (LiPS®) Program, which stimulates phonemic awareness: making individuals aware of mouth actions that produce speech sounds. The awareness becomes the means for verifying sounds within words, enabling individuals to become self-correcting in reading, spelling, and speech. The technique is catered to the client’s needs with Pendley’s unique approaches incorporated.

“We determine the learning style of our client and then incorporate the parts of their brain that they may not have used before. For example, when you first look at the print on a piece of paper, the information goes to the occipital lobe (back of the brain), where you see the letters. Then it goes to the temporal lobe, where you interpret language. Then, if you read out loud, you bring it up front to the parietal lobe. The frontal lobe helps you monitor yourself, make corrections, and get the bigger picture. That is also part of the right hemisphere of the brain. So while most functions may happen on the left side of the brain, you also need the right side to grasp the bigger picture of what’s occurring.”

There are many methods of incorporating other areas of the brain. “The motor component is not typically used in reading. But, by crossing your legs at the ankle or sitting on an exercise ball, or even walking when you read, you might stimulate something that will help with learning. When we work with sensory-based colleagues, occupational therapists for example, they might suggest using exercise before a particular client sits down to read or write or concentrate on something. We take those suggestions and we integrate them into what we need to do and that’s the nice tie in between the disciplines.”

It is within this area that brain integration might be useful, says Pendley. “If I’m working with a client and something just isn’t clicking – maybe they’re very distracted or frustrated or there’s a whole history we don’t know about – we may not be able to get through to the patient. That’s where I see something like Dr. Charles Krebs’ idea of opening pathways might work. It might be appropriate for some people to take a break from what we do, work with someone who does brain integration, and then come back. They may then be in a better place to add on this next layer.”

Pendley says there is, of course, a full spectrum of approaches in the speech and language field as in any health-related area. “When you go to one end of the spectrum, it’s all evidence-based, and then at the other end of the spectrum are those non-scientifically demonstrated techniques. I put us in the middle. We like to base our work on what has been shown to be good and then we integrate some things that are a little less traditional. We need to be flexible and let it depend on the needs of the individual clients. If they need more evidence-based therapies, we can do that. If they come from a more non-traditional, holistic approach, we also try to incorporate that as much as we can.”

It’s all about outcome, she says. “The point is to get them to learn to their full potential and it may take several different styles to do that.”

For additional information on the Speech and Language Stimulation Center, check their Website at www.speech-language-voice.com.