PROMPT Therapy with our Brisbane Speech Pathologists

PROMPT Therapy for Speech Sound Disorders

In our Brisbane Speech Pathology clinic, we are occasionally asked whether we provide PROMPT therapy.

The short answer – is YES!  For anyone unfamiliar, PROMPT is a type of speech pathology intervention that can be used to help children pronounce their speech sounds.  Particularly if the child has difficulties that stem from a motor basis.

What is PROMPT?

PROMPT is an acronym that stands for

Prompts for

Restructuring

Oral

Muscular

Phonetic

Targets.  

PROMPT therapy integrates the physical-sensory aspects of motor movement and planning, as well as the cognitive-linguistic and social emotional domains.

PROMPT involves physically manipulating and ‘prompting’ the oral musculature (jaw, tongue, lips) and guiding them through a targeted sound, word, phrase or sentence.  Through this, the motor plan for the sound is mapped into the patient’s motor plan repertoire.

PROMPT develops motor control and movement whilst eliminating unnecessary or incorrect muscle movements.

Who is PROMPT for?

PROMPT is used to help patients with a variety of communication disorders.  Most commonly, PROMPT is used for patients who have motor speech disorders, articulation disorders or who are non-verbal. PROMPT can help for diagnoses such as:

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)

Dysarthria

Cerebral Palsy

Acquired Brain Injuries

Autism Spectrum Disorders

& Other Pervasive Developmental Disorders

What do PROMPT trained therapists do?

Firstly, your PROMPT trained therapist will begin by prompting the patient to produce target phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in speech; for example /d/, /m/, /p/, /e/, /i/, /oo/.

Different phonemes require different muscle contractions/retractions and placement/movement of the oral musculature (jaw, lips, tongue, etc) to produce. These movements need to happen in the correct timing and sequence to produce the sound/phoneme correctly. Therapists ‘prompt’/teach the patient’s muscles to produce the phoneme by tactilely stimulating – ‘prompting’ – this through touch.

Speech requires the timing and movement of more than 100 muscles; with this in mind, it is easy to understand why correct timing and sequencing is so important!

What do I do if I think my child needs PROMPT?

Here at Cooee Speech Pathology, we are lucky to have one of our Speech Therapists, Emma, trained in the PROMPT technique.

If your child has one of the above diagnoses, or has been resistant to traditional articulation therapy in the past, they may benefit from the use of PROMPT.  

Contact us on 3265 4495 today, and chat with one of our friendly Client Care team today to make an appointment!

You can also find more at the PROMPT website!