QM News 74 (pdf 1.58 MB) - Queen Margaret University

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HEALTH AND REHABILITATION
New speech & hearing research
centre gets people talking
In May, QMU launched its new Clinical
Audiology, Speech and Language
Research Centre (CASL). The aim of
the Centre is to apply cutting edge
techniques which will assist in the
diagnosis and treatment of a wide variety
of communication disorders.
In the UK alone, 2.5 million people have
a communication disorder. In childhood,
speech sound disorders (SSD) are
the most common communication
impairment, affecting 6.5% of all UK
children - that’s around two children in
every classroom. SSD makes it difficult
for people to communicate and integrate
into society. This can restrict educational
attainment, as well as having a negative
impact on social and professional
relations in future life.
QMU has an international reputation for
its outstanding research in the area of
speech sciences, and over the last few
years, the specialist area of audiology
has been added to the portfolio. The
new Centre will draw together the
research and clinical practice expertise of
both audiology and speech & language
therapy.
Professor Jim Scobbie, Director of the
new Centre, said: “Speech, hearing
and language are intimately linked. It
is difficult for people who have speech
difficulties to improve their pronunciation
if they also have impaired hearing. For
example, a child with profound hearing
loss faces particular challenges in
learning to speak clearly. If you can’t hear
the sounds that you are supposed to
be making, then how can you achieve
them? It is therefore hugely beneficial to
have experts from both specialist areas
working in synergy.”
The new Centre builds on years of
pioneering work achieved in the area of
speech sciences. Much of the work has
focused on developing technologies,
in collaboration with engineers and
computer scientists, which provide visual
images of the tongue and its movement
inside the mouth during speech.
Professor Scobbie explained: “Finding
out exactly what the tongue is doing
inside the mouth during speech is
extremely difficult. But without this
information it can be impossible for
people to correct their speech. QMU has
developed different technologies to view
and record tongue movements. These
images provide a new type of feedback
which the speech therapy client can use
to help them learn new patterns. This
can help children and adults to master
hard sounds such as ‘R’ and ‘L’, and
to distinguish sounds made in different
locations in the mouth, such as ‘T’ and
‘K’, for example.”
Electropalatography, or EPG, is a
technique which is not yet routinely
available in NHS clinics. It records
where and when the tongue makes
contact with the roof of the mouth
during speech. It can be a particularly
useful means of helping some children
with speech difficulties to improve
their speech because it provides visual
feedback to the child, which is not
ordinarily available, and does not rely
purely on what the child hears.
One such child who had outstanding
success with EPG was Lily Davidson.
Lily became deaf shortly after birth and
had a cochlear implant when she was
nearly three years old. This device was
implanted into the cochlea in the inner
ear. A processor worn externally then
translates speech and environmental
sounds into electrical impulses that
stimulate the auditory nerve and allow
Lily to hear all of the sounds crucial for
speech. Like all young cochlear implant
users, Lily received intensive speech and
language therapy from a young age.
Dr Sara Wood, a Speech and Language
Therapist at QMU, began working with
Lily when she was 10 years old – shortly
after she received a second cochlear
implant. As a bright child, Lily had made
remarkable progress in learning language
and her speech was considered to be
quite good. However, she still struggled
to produce clear speech.
Dr Wood explained: “We began using
EPG therapy to help Lily improve her
speech intelligibility. She had difficulty
with specific speech sounds including
the sound of the letter ‘L’.
Lily explained: “Because I couldn’t hear
anything at all, I didn’t learn to speak
normally like a baby does, just lying
gurgling in my cot, testing out how to
make sounds. I had silence for three
years. Then, when I was three and got
my implant, I had to guess how to move
the inside of my mouth to make words.
So I had some odd ways of saying words
- like ‘orange’ – I would say ‘oh-in-j’. As
I got older and spoke more quickly, the
words didn’t run together properly. The
EPG helped me relearn how to speak.”
With EPG therapy, Lily’s speech quickly
improved.
She said: “I didn’t realise what I was
doing wrong before but seeing the
shapes my tongue made on a computer
screen made it easy for me to learn how
to change my words.”
Lily confirmed: “People understand me
so much better now and I don’t have to
repeat what I say nearly so much.”
More recently, Professor Jim Scobbie
has been pioneering the use of
ultrasound technology as another
method of viewing the movement of the
tongue inside the mouth during real time
speech. Lily was the first person with a
cochlear implant to receive EPG therapy
at QMU. It significantly helped her