What is cognition in speech therapy?

Cognitive-communication disorders are a problem in communication which underlying cause in a cognitive deficit rather than a primary language or speech deficit. The person with the cognitive disorder may have difficulty paying complete attention to a conversation, remembering the specific information, understand the talk or joke, respond accurately.

If you need more information or you have a question regarding Cognition in Speech Therapy, you can discuss it with our HearingSol healthcare professionals, just give us a call on +91-9327901950. We are always here to help you.

Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy (CRT) is an expansive term used to medications describe the treatment of cognition issues that can occur after cerebrum damage. Given the seriousness of cognitive issues in people with mental damage. CRT does not prefer a particular way to deal with treatment.

It covers the areas of attention, concentration, orientation, word retrieval, and executive functioning skills such as problem solving and reasoning. A speech therapist can provide differential diagnoses between a cognitive disorder and a language disorder.

Causes of Cognitive-communication disorders

Cognitive-communication disorders can result from a stroke or traumatic brain injury (TBI), a brain tumor, a brain infection, or a degenerative disease such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or another form of dementia.

Cognitive-communication disorders can occur with one symptom or in a group of combination with other conditions, such as dysarthria (slurred speech), apraxia inability to move the face and tongue muscles correctly to form words or aphasia impaired language.

Thirty-five to forty-four percent of people surviving from stroke find themselves with cognitive impairments about three months after their strokes. About a third of these people experience impairments for a longer period of time.

How to Identify Cognitive-communication disorders

People who have suffered from brain injury or a stroke should be screened for perceptual and cognitive disorders. Cognitive-communication disorders can be easily found by using the Cognitive-Communication Checklist for Acquired Brain Injury (CCCABI), a free online screening tool for testing. If cognitive-communication disorders are identified, a referral should be made to the speech-language pathologist for a full assessment of related issues.

A full assessment of issues is likely to include several tools (both formal and informal), These including:

• Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)
• Full Functional Assessment of Verbal Reasoning and Executive Strategies (FAVRES)
• Assessment of Language-Related Functional Activities (ALFA)
• The scales of Cognitive Ability for Traumatic Brain Injury (SCATBI)
• Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test (CLQT)

After assessing the client issues, the speech-language pathologist prepares a completely personalized treatment plan, targeting goals to meet the exact client’s functional needs.

Problems with Cognitive-communication disorders

If a person is unable to speak, it’s important to determine whether the problem is aphasia or a cognitive-communication deficit. Most standardized tests for cognitive functioning use language. People suffering from aphasia, however, have trouble generating and/or understanding speech. They should be assessed with nonverbal measures (both formal and informal), which may include the following:

• Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM)
• Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test (CLQT)
• Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI)
• Butt Nonverbal Reasoning Test (BNVR)

People suffering from aphasia are likely to have many difficulties with cognitive processes such as paying attention, short-term memory, working memory, declarative memory, and executive functioning.

People with cognitive-communication disorders often have difficulties participating in any conversations. They may have difficulty understanding what is said by other people or be unable to respond in a timely fashion as others can do. They may have trouble speaking clearly or conveying their thoughts or messages efficiently and effectively to others.

Someone with a cognitive-communication disorder may have trouble in decision making, planning, reasoning and making decisions while communicating. They may have trouble remembering information and their conversations, experiences.

The Institute of Medicine report gives the wide definition of:

Cognitive recovery to upgrade working and freedom in patients with psychological weaknesses because of mental harm. It clears up that CRT is not quite the same as behavioral treatment, a treatment approach for emotional and mental issues.

Institute of Medicine specify two wide ways to deal with CRT:

Restorative treatment, whose objective is to enhance the cognitive framework to work in a wide range of exercises;

Compensatory treatment, which is used for a particular issue, for example, using memory journals or learning self-signaling methodologies.

SLP Role in Cognitive Disorders

The speech therapy activity is to survey all parts of patient communication: language, speech, and cognition. A patient who have recently faced a stroke or mental damage. In addition, those with dynamic conditions as dementia may be suffering from a cognitive-communication issue.

If any chance that treatment is shown, the therapist and patient will set objectives to enhance communication function so the patient can better take part in their life. The treatment may either address the impairment directly or focus on methodologies.

If you need more information or you have a question regarding Cognition in Speech Therapy, you can discuss it with our HearingSol healthcare professionals, just give us a call on +91-9327901950. We are always here to help you.