Intervention Planning for Adults with Communication Problems: A Guide for Clinical Practicum and Professional Practice

This adult-centered book meets the demand for the problem-solving and decision-making process involved with clinical intervention planning for adult communication problems. Readers are introduced to theories of learning rehabilitation that apply specifically to treatment of adult communication problems. With its clinical and practical orientation, this book applies an intervention planning model to specific language disorder types and levels of severity. The authors suggest that current thinking regarding speech and language disorders in children also hold true for adults. Interactions among semantic, syntactic, phonologic, and pragmatic components are thus a key topic of this book. The authors also explain how impaired speech and language performance may rest on the relationship between linguistic and nonlinguistic behavioral systems such as the cognitive, sensorimotor, and psychosocial. This book also offers suggestions on how to make management decisions at three major points in the intervention process, regardless of speech/language disorder type and severity. Selected areas of adult intervention include: aphasia and related disorders, motor speech disorders, language learning disabilities, fluency disorders, voice disorders, and bidialectal/bicultural phonological differences. In addition, this book guides the reader in the derivation of intervention goals and procedures, moving from the development of long-term goals and procedural approaches to specific session goals and procedures. Anyone who practices or is interested in speech-language pathology.