Video yourself communicating

Raising awareness of communication difficulties for clients with cognitive deficits in order to facilitate goal-setting

Activity
Discussion
Target
  • Language
  • Social communication
  • Client group → Adults
  • Speech → Dysarthria
  • Cognitive communication
  • Voice
Abstract
Clients with cognitive difficulties often require support to raise their awareness of the impact of their communication style and agree goals. I have found the simple idea below helpful in my work with young adults with Traumatic Brain Injury who have dysarthria. It can be adapted to focus on any area of communication difficulty.
portrait Contributor Clare Chilvers

method

Directions

Explain to the client that you would like to record them talking about a topic of their choice for a minute or so, so that, together, you can think about how easy it is for other people to understand what they say.

Ask the client for their consent to be videoed. Give them time to generate a topic. Record them speaking on their topic of choice.

Next session, review the recording with the client. Ask them to repeat, or ideally write down, what they said.

Discuss what they noticed about their speech and encourage them to write down the strengths and areas of difficulty. (Obviously this could be a very difficult experience for the client and the need for a sensitive and encouraging approach is paramount.)

Over following sessions, introduce and practise strategies to improve their speech intelligibility.

Repeat the recording, encouraging the client to use their strategies to improve their speech clarity. Review the second recording and compare to the first.

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