Using Hand Gestures as Cues

Full transcript

Nicole here, coming in from the NYU Motor Speech Lab with your Monday tidbit. I've been talking over the past couple of weeks about feedback, the importance of feedback, and how our feedback facilitates our clients' learning, in all therapy, but especially in motor speech therapy.

One of my favorite techniques, and I actually got it from the amazing Dr. Julie Case by watching her treatment videos, is really simple. It's just the use of hand gestures.

I'll give you an example. I'll say, "Okay, here's your mouth, and we're going to say the word 'banana.' Watch me. Ba-na-na." And what you see is I'm just using my hand to show the jaw height for this word.

True story: I had a kid in treatment who didn't have multisyllabic words. When I started using the hand gesture for "banana," just like that (obviously I'm in the teaching stage, so I'm doing it slow), he actually started to imitate the hand gesture as well. And he was able to get this word relatively quickly with this type of support.

I use it for all my target words. Another way I use it is with lip retraction. Let's say the word is "bye." "Bye. Bye." And I'll always say, "Okay, meet me here with your lips." And remember, they're like this: "Bye."