Speech therapy instruments

For the first time, wire devices began to be used at the beginning of the 20th century by a German doctor and deaf-and-dumb teacher, director of the Berlin school of deaf-and-dumb A. Gutzmann, and entered the practice of speech therapy and deaf-and-dumb pedagogy as Gutzmann probes. To a certain extent, this can be partly explained by the then fashion on all sorts of technical devices and mechanotherapy / mechanopedia of Germany of the late XIX - early XX century. Later, several modified probes began to be used by a domestic speech therapist and deaf-and-dumb pedagogue, professor FA Rau. Actually in this modification, with some changes proposed by RE Levina , they have come down to our days. Several adaptations were suggested by the domestic speech therapist, Professor M.Ye. Hvattsev in his textbook of speech therapy (1941). The most famous is the gnatofixator ME Kvattseva [3]. Czech laryngologist M.Seeman (1962) proposed a tool that entered speech therapy as M. Zeeman's phonendoscope [1]. The most recent implementation of the tool in speech therapy in the late 60s. XX century was a set of articulators Piskunova. Due to the poor awareness of the speech therapy community and the actual individual production, speech therapy tools are almost not used in speech therapy practice. The only exceptions are speech therapy probes and a medical spatula. Most often speech therapists use auxiliary tools: cotton wool, paper strips, ice cream sticks, as well as visual aids: photos of articulation of lips and correctional and training exercises, images of articulation profiles drawn or made from wire, following the principle: .

• Piskunov articulators - a set of wire-metal or wire-plastic removable devices fixed on the client's teeth. Used as an auxiliary device in the formation of the required articulation mode.

• Gnatofiksator M. Khvattseva - ordinary rubber cork, with a wire handle-screwed into it. It is used in spastic forms of dysarthria for fixing the jaws in the open state.

• Speech therapy probes (French sonde probe) are instruments designed to mechanically influence the language in the formulation and correction of the pronunciation of certain speech sounds [2].

• M. Zeeman’s phonendoscope is a fairly easy-to-make tool for creating an ordinary medical phonendoscope with rubber tubes. Usually there are two sets of ear olives (large and small). A small segment of the tube, cut off from the stethoscope clip, is fixed at the second end and a spare ear olive is put on it. M. Zeeman proposed a variant of a single phonendoscope.

Since the modern medical phonendoscope has two tubes, it may be an option and a two-working phonendoscope. M. Zeeman's phonendoscope [1] is used to train oral speech breathing, used in articulation of most speech phonemes. With the wrong direction of the air stream (through the nose) air flow hits the eardrum, causing a little pain or discomfort.

• Medical spatula (German Spatel scapula) is a tool for abduction (pushing) of an organ or tissue during examination or surgery, which is a straight or curved oblong plate with rounded edges [4]. In general medical (therapeutic) practice, a spatula is used for external examination of the root of the tongue and the patient's pharynx.

1. Zeeman M. Speech disorders in childhood. - M., 1962.
2. Conceptual and terminological dictionary of a speech therapist / Edited by V. I. Seliverstova . - Moscow: Humanitarian Publishing Center VLADOS , 1997 . - p. 151. - 400 p. - 25 000 copies - ISBN 5-691-00044-6 .
3. Khvattsev, Mikhail Efimovich Speech Therapy. M., Uchpedgiz, 1959.
4. Encyclopedic dictionary of medical terms. In 3 volumes / Editor-in-chief B. V. Petrovsky . - Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia , 1984 . - T. 3. - p. 290. - 1424 p. - 100 000 copies