Use of gestures and sign-clues on language therapy of a patient with cerebral paralysis

Abstract

This paper refers to a therapeutic procedure with a spatic cerebral palsy patient. He was a male child aged 10 years with alterations in phonetic-phonological and syntactic systems, thus presenting unintelligible speech. An intervention therapeutic program, based on the same training the hearing-impaired children have,was planned, for as much as the patient had difficulty in evocating, maintaining and doing articulating patterns of determined phonemes. Therefore, the development of communication stimulated through both oral and sign language was considered. The method came from the studies about Total Communication. The analysis of results showed that the use of signals and gestures in oral communicaqtion was really effective in helping, basically, the evocation of missed elements making more intelligible the patient’s oral communication. These data were confirmed by two reevaluations done after six months and one year and a half after the work was completed.