When I began my undergraduate studies at the College of Staten Island, I was extremely undecided on the collegiate path I wanted to take. Upon registering for classes I decided to take a course in American Sign Language (ASL) as well as joining the ASL Club with hopes of becoming involved in the Deaf community both within and outside of my school.
This club introduced me to places that I didn’t even know existed, such as the Hands for Christ community church. Attending Sunday mass weekly gave me the opportunity to get acquainted with the Pastor as well as fellow members of the church. Being exposed to the Deaf community at the Hands for Christ community church sparked my interest in learning more about Deaf culture.
As I began researching, I came across an article that discussed use of sign language in children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech. While I was aware that American Sign Language is typically used by individuals who are Deaf or hard of hearing, I had never before considered that it might be used in other populations as well. A multi-sensory approach I learned can be extremely beneficial not only to children with Apraxia of Speech, but also children with speech and language delay. It fascinated me that utilizing visual and tactile cues in addition to verbal cues facilitates the child in creating an association between the verbal and non-verbal acts of communication, and that sign language alongside verbal communication can also be used to help control rate of speech.
My academic, volunteer, and clinical experiences over the past two years are what have inspired me to pursue my education in the field of Speech-Language Pathology. I have a strikingly extroverted personality and love to interact and communicate with people, especially children, on a daily basis. This was a motivating factor in deciding to conduct a longitudinal study of speech motor control development for my capstone project under the supervision of Professor Christina Hagedorn.
The participant in this case study was a 4-year-old female, who was recorded on four different occasions, in intervals of approximately 3 weeks. This was the first time I conducted a longitudinal study, and I anticipated everything to go smoothly. Little did I know there were going to be things that occurred during the recording that were unfortunately out of my control, such as the amount of energy my participant had. Most of the recordings took place once my participant got home from school and all she wanted to do was run around the house. I was not expecting this to occur but I had to do my best in order to get her to focus back in on the task and continue on with the recording. Another instance that occurred during the recording were appearances by my participant’s 7 year old brother, who thoroughly enjoyed interrupting us as well as making lots of noise while playing his video games.
My participant was from an Italian American family, many of whom spoke Italian in their household. As a result of this environment she had acquired an Italian-American dialect. When I began to analyze my data I knew that my participant’s dialect would have an effect on her speech, although I didn’t realize how much of an impact it would have.
At first I was frustrated that these certain instances such as lack of focus and noise, took place during the recording. But I came to realize that instances like this occur all the time, in everyday speech language therapy sessions, ones which I will have to encounter in my future career.
Conducting this longitudinal study taught me a remarkable amount of information about the hands-on work that we don’t get to experience in a class room setting. This capstone project granted me the opportunity to administer a hands-on research project that provided me an immense amount of knowledge that I will take with me on my future academic endeavors.
No comments:
Post a Comment