
The most common patients have motor speech disorders, articulation problems or are non-verbal children. PROMPT therapy is appropriate for a wide range of patients with communication disorders. With the timing and movement of more than 100 muscles involved, you can see why the training is so intense. The therapist attempts to “teach” the patient’s muscles to produce a phoneme correctly by stimulating all of these through touch. All of these things have to happen with the proper timing and sequence to produce one phoneme correctly. Each phoneme requires different muscle contractions/retractions and placement/movement of the jaw, lips, tongue, neck and chest to produce. For example, the “d” sound in the word dog is one phoneme, the “o” is another and the “g” is yet another. A phoneme is the smallest increment of sound in speech. Therapists begin by helping patients produce certain phonemes. The technique develops motor control and the development of proper oral muscular movements, while eliminating unnecessary muscle movements, such as jaw sliding and inadequate lip rounding.

The technique is a tactile-kinesthetic approach that uses touch cues to a patient’s articulators (jaw, tongue, lips) to manually guide them through a targeted word, phrase or sentence.

PROMPT is an acronym for Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets.

Mainstreamed in kindergarten, she is thriving in a gifted and talented program. Following intensive work with teachers of the deaf and speech pathologists, a once anxious and quiet Chloe rapidly excelled.Ĭhloe speaks English and Russian at home and is studying Spanish at school. At 2 1/2 years old, after her hearing loss progressed even further, she received bilateral cochlear implants and enrolled in Clarke New York's Early Intervention Program. Her parents wanted her to listen and talk, so at age 6 weeks, she was fitted with hearing aids. Identified at birth, Chloe's hearing loss is genetic. Efforts are under way with adaptive sports companies to design a helmet that will accommodate Chloe's cochlear implants safely and make it less "uncomfy" for her. Her determination has won the hearts of many, including the HearStrong Foundation, who honored her as a Champion last June, and the Girls Riders Organization (the group she is training with). On her skateboard, Chloe is just one of the girls, practicing drop-ins and eager to learn new tricks. In the latest edition of Hearing Health Magazine published by Hearing Health Foundation, our former client Chloe is featured in the page 12 article "If You Embrace Your Hearing Loss, You Deal With It Better" by Melissa Griswold, M.E.D.
