Speech therapy can be incredibly helpful for both children and adults. Here at The Brain Trainer, we offer a number of different services in order to help students learn and communicate better by improving their memory, processing speed, attention, logic and reasoning, language and speech, auditory and visual processing, and much more. Speech therapy can help patients that have communication challenges due to certain conditions as well.
For example, our speech therapists are trained to help both children and adults with autism. Our brain training exercises have resulted in students with autism improving their ability to communicate greatly.
What is Autism?
Autism is a developmental disability that impairs communication as well as social interaction and cognitive skills. Autism often causes those affected by it to have trouble interacting with their environment as well as with both speech and nonverbal communication.
How Autism Affects Communication
Autistic individuals may exhibit speech problems that include the refusal to speak at all, the use of harsh sounds (such as grunts, shrieks or cries), the use of word-like sounds without meaning, the repetition of things other people say or the use of proper phrases and sentences - but without expression. Because of this, speech therapy is an incredibly important way to help autistic individuals improve their ability to communicate.
In addition to having trouble with verbal communication, autistic individuals may have other challenges in regards to communication. For example, people with autism often have trouble with eye contact and hand gestures, understanding what the meaning of words are that are used outside the context from where they were learned, the inability to understand the meaning of words or symbols and a lack of creative language.
How Speech Therapy Benefits Autism
Individuals that are autistic can benefit greatly from speech therapy due to the fact that they have problems with verbal communication. In fact, speech therapy should be a key component of autism treatment. Our speech therapists will work closely with the family of the autistic individual as well as other professionals that are assisting with their treatment in order to improve their ability to communicate.
We use specific brain training techniques in order to help both adults and children with autism to improve their focus, processing speed, logic and reasoning - and last but not least, their ability to adapt and transition. This, in turn, helps autistic students to improve their awareness of their environment and their ability to interact with other people, while also helping reduce tantrums and improve academic performance. Some of the specific goals that one of our speech therapists can help students with autism accomplish include:
- The ability to articulate words better
- The ability to communicate and comprehend both verbal and non-verbal language
- The ability to initiate communication without the encouragement of others
- The ability to develop conversational skills
- The ability to self-regulate
- The ability to exchange ideas
- The ability to communicate as a means of developing relationships
If you have a family member that is suffering from autism or a related autism spectrum disorder, then speech therapy is an incredibly important part of their treatment. Be sure to contact us at The Brain Trainer today to speak with one of our professional speech therapists. We will perform an assessment to determine whether the individual with autism will benefit more from our brain training techniques, our speech language services or a combination of both.
