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Treatment of Young Children With CAS

Presented by Marnie Millington

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Once the SLP has identified that CAS is a major contributor in a child’s communication disorder, the next step is designing and implementing effective treatment. The goal of therapy with this population is to reduce the child’s speech-motor planning and, programming impairment and in doing so, increase their speech intelligibility. In this course, we will discuss how to remediate CAS in young children. Evidence-based practice will be shared to explain how to choose the treatment team, schedule therapy, write therapy objectives, demonstrate treatment techniques as well as cues to elicit accurate responses, measure progress, and help the child move from good practice in the therapy room to successful learning in day-to-day life.

Meet your instructor

Marnie Millington

Marnie Millington co-owns a pediatric speech-language clinic in MetroWest Boston. Marnie’s weekly caseload focuses on motor-speech disorders. She has taught on the subject of pediatric and lifespan motor-speech disorders at Northeastern University and Emerson College. She has presented nationally on the assessment and…

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Chapters & learning objectives

Designing Successful Therapy

1. Designing Successful Therapy

In this chapter we'll discuss how to set the stage for successful therapy. We'll learn about who should play a role in intervention, how often therapy should occur, and how to choose what should be worked on. We'll discuss how to write precise and complete therapy objectives so that these can be measured. We'll talk about how to collect data and calculate when a target has been sufficiently practiced to increase the likelihood that learning will occur. Next, we'll explore a treatment hierarchy aimed at moving the child from practice to generalization. We'll end this chapter discussing how to determine the movement sequences we will teach.

Eliciting Accurate Responses and Promoting Successful Practice

2. Eliciting Accurate Responses and Promoting Successful Practice

Now that we know what we will teach, when we hold sessions, and who will help the child practice the movement sequences, or words and phrases, let's talk more precisely about how we will help the child learn the material. We'll discuss techniques that should be used and how to move him or her from inaccurate to accurate responses. In this chapter we'll "hone-in" on what to do when a direct model is not enough to elicit an accurate response.

Using the Principles of Motor Learning to Inform Therapy

3. Using the Principles of Motor Learning to Inform Therapy

Because CAS is a motor or movement-based speech disorder, therapy must be designed and implemented based on what is known about motor learning. We do not learn rules in the same way we learn movement patterns. As children with this disorder struggle to communicate clearly because they are unable to bank and retrieve speech movement sequences, we will work towards reducing their impairment by teaching successful movement patterns. Remember that when I say speech movement patterns I am talking about syllables, words, phrases, and sentences. I am thinking primarily about speech as movement rather than the traditional approach where we think about speech as a cognitive-linguistic product. Let's discuss the Principles of motor learning and how we can use these to inform early and late stages of treatment.

Clinical Discussion with Dr. Edythe Strand

4. Clinical Discussion with Dr. Edythe Strand

In this chapter Dr. Edythe Strand joins for a discussion on treatment options for kids with motor or movement-based speech disorder.