How can Speech Therapy Help Adults With Cognitive-Communication Disorders
Speech therapy for adults with cognitive-communication disorders includes addressing difficulty with the attention, memory, organization, and problem-solving skills that make communication work. These difficulties can occur following stroke, brain injury, concussion, or in progressive conditions like dementia. Virtual support available across Ontario.
What Is a Cognitive-Communication Disorder?
If you're considering speech therapy for a cognitive-communication disorder, you might be surprised by what that actually covers. At its core, cognitive communication is the successful co-application of cognitive skills and language skills. Cognitive skills can also be called thinking skills. These are your attention, memory, and organization skills. When these are disrupted, communication can break down. You may lose track of schedules, experience disorganized ideas or speech, or feel like your processing is slowed. All this can happen even when your speech itself sounds completely normal.
These skills do not exist in isolation. They interact with each other, with some executive functioning skills providing the foundation upon which more complex skills are built. This means that difficulties in one area can have a domino effect and can lead to difficulties in other areas as well.
Importantly, cognitive communication disorders differ from aphasia. Aphasia is a language-specific impairment affecting the brain’s centres for speaking, understanding, reading, or writing. Cognitive-communication disorders are broader, involving attention, memory, and organization as they affect communication. The two can occur separately or together, depending on the cause.
What Causes Cognitive-Communication Disorders?
These changes can follow a stroke, traumatic brain injury, concussion, or be present in a progressive condition like dementia. They can also show up more subtly, developing gradually rather than appearing all at once. Cognitive communication deficits or differences can also be present in chronic illnesses that lead to brain fog or mental fatigue.
Regardless of the cause, the day-to-day impact tends to look similar: conversations that are harder to follow, thoughts that are harder to organize, and tasks that used to feel automatic now take real effort.
What Do Cognitive-Communication Symptoms Look Like?
Every person's experience is different, but commonly targeted areas include:
Attention: This can include the ability to maintain focus throughout a conversation, in a meeting, or maintain focus on a task or switch between tasks without confusion or delay
Memory: This can include holding onto new information or recalling something from earlier in a conversation. It can also include prospective memory, such as remembering future appointments or tasks.
Organization: This can include organizing your thoughts and responses, following someone’s train of thought, as well as organizing presented information and variables
Problem-Solving & Planning: This can include spontaneous problem-solving, integrating several variables, and thinking ahead in an abstract manner
Word-Finding: This can include specific word finding difficulties mid-sentence, variable abilities dependent on fatigue, or generating novel responses on the spot
How Is a Cognitive-Communication Disorder Treated?
Treatment starts with understanding the specific challenges you face and how these changes are actually affecting your life. Perhaps you function well at work, but low cognitive reserves lead to you feeling drained once at home. Perhaps tasks such as managing your schedule, speaking with loved ones, or transitioning back to work feel difficult. Once we understand your challenges, goals, and strengths, we build strategies tailored to you. Some will be aimed at strengthening a skill directly, others focused on practical tools and routines that make daily communication easier while you continue to make progress. This mix allows for ongoing neural improvement as well as daily functioning.
Where possible, we may collaborate with your physician, neurologist, or other members of your care team, as recovery is holistic.
Do You Need a Diagnosis to Be Seen?
Cognitive communication disorders are often identified by speech language pathologists. An overarching diagnosis from a physician for the potential cause is not required for us to get started, and you don't need to feel like things have gotten "bad enough" before reaching out.
If communication or daily thinking tasks feel harder than they used to, even in small ways, that's reason enough to be evaluated. Whether the change happened recently or has been building for a while, it's not too late to ask for support.
You Don't Have to Navigate This Alone
Curious whether speech therapy could help you or someone you love? Reach out to our team, we’re happy to talk it through.
Virtual speech-language therapy for cognitive-communication disorders available in Toronto. Adult Speech Therapy Toronto