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INTRODUCTION AND FOUNDATION

In preparation for the journey to remediate /r/, speech pathologists must have an understanding
of the musculature, mechanics, and correct placement of the sound itself. For some of you this
will be an overview, but for others it will be enlightening. Either way, we hope it is entertaining

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and truly informative.

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IN THIS CHAPTER

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• What Have You Shared? PR
• Can You Hear It?
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• Why Tongue Training? Truth, Trials, and Tribulations

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• What Does /r/ Look Like Anyway?

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• What Is Really Important?

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What Have You Shared?

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In dreaming of how to start this book, several different approaches came to mind. For example,
we could have restated all the book knowledge on how to produce the /r/ and provided detailed
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pictures, or we could have labeled every structure and delved into technical lingo. Although that
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knowledge is crucial to the profession and we do cover it in this book, we decided to start out
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with what you know on how to correct the dreaded frio

At many state conventions and at local and regional events, we distributed questionnaires,
soliciting information from fellow therapists about how to correct frio Here are some responses
from those surveys, listed in five distinct categories. Several of the responses amazed, over,
whelmed, and truly surprised us. Others served as a refresher or review for daily therapy practices
that may work with some students. Remember, these responses are quoted directly from therapists
in the field.

Category I-Sounds Like. . .

1. Growl like a dinosaur and have a growling conversation.
2. Imitate the rooster sound.
4f» The Wizard of Rs

3. Use the monkey hold-The tongue is a monkey, the teeth are branches, and the sides of the
tongue are the monkey's hands. The monkey's hands hold the branches and then you say "er."

4. Roar like a lion and growl like a bear.

S. Make the sound of a siren.
6. Growl like a dog.

Category 2-Positioning (You Put It Where?)

1. Move the tongue back from /1/ while voicing.

2. Have the student smile.

3. Make the /k/ sound, freeze your tongue, and then say jeri.

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4. Teach the pucker sound and the smiley sound so the student can hear the difference when say­

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ing /w/.

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5. Place the tongue in the /1/ position and slide back the tongue while voicing.

6. Raise the tongue and draw back the tongue as you say
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/i/.
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7. Place the tongue on the roof of the mouth and smile when you say /r/.
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8. Use your hand as a demonstration of the tongue beside the mouth.

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9. Put the sides of the tongue against the upper teeth.

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Category 3-Where Did This Come From?

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1. Have the student move the tongue until the best spot is found.
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2. Bite sticks with home practice.

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3. Lay down on the floor.

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4. Go from tongue down to tongue up.

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5. Smile.

6. Push up.

7. Make contact of tongue sides to molars.

8. Use square lips and oral stimulation.

9. Stabilize the jaw and wiggle the tongue.

10. Play pirates.

11. Be a "star-gazer," looking up at the ceiling.

12. Use the straw trick.

 Introduction and Foundation

Category 4-Edibles and Manipulatives

1. Apply marshmallow cream and pull back the tongue.

2. Use dental floss-pull back on the tongue with it.

3. Use small candy-have the student flip it back and forth for tongue mobility.
4. Place a tongue depressor laterally for retraction.

S. Put honey on the roof of the mouth and pretend it is a runway for the tongue.
6. Place a pencil between the teeth.

7. Use the magic mint-put mouthwash on a swab and stroke the areas for the tongue to
touch.
8. Place a straw across the jaw.

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9. Use a straw or depressor between the teeth.

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Category 5-Imagine This!

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1. Paint the roof of the mouth with the tongue and say "ler."
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2. Produce the "r" as a happy face sound when you smile with the tongue curled up at the end.
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3. Pretend a string is attached to the end of your tongue and a hole is on top of your head. Pull
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the string through the hole as you produce Ir/.

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4. Get mad at the Ir/.

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S. Tongue push#ups. It encourages retraction of the tongue.

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We do not necessarily endorse all of these responses. As you can see, they are varying and
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many need further explanation.

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Can You Hear It?

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The relationship between speech perception and speech production has been discussed and
debated for many years and will probably be debated for many more. The relationship as it affects
the correct production of Irl is what we are concerned about in this manuaL Studies since 1988
have given some assistance and contrasting views on perception and production of this difficult
phoneme.
To start, we need working definitions of speech perception and production. In speech percep#
cion, sound waves, produced by the articulatory mechanisms and transmitted through the air, are
processed by the auditory system, then decoded as linguistic messages in the final level of the
speech chain. Speech production involves three physiological processes: respiration, phonation,
and articulation. In short, production involves transferring the flow of air from the lungs, adding
voice along the way if needed, and shaping it into a sound that is recognizable as human speech.
 The Wizard of Rs

Two authors have addressed the relationship between perception and production. In 1988
Wood wrote "A Clinical Technique Helpful in the Elicitation of /?fI" Wood wrote that a clini­
cal requirement is that the child identify /~/ when it is produced by others. If the student knows
that you are actually trying to get him or her to produce /~/, then the student will revert to the
original error phoneme. In other words, Wood described a hear-it-in-others-but-not-in-yourself
approach.
In an article produced 10 years later, aptly named "The Perception of Correctly and Incor­
rectly Produced /r/," Shuster (1998) provided evidence for the relationship between perception
and production in students who are unable to produce /r/ correctly. She also concluded that chil­
dren who are unable to produce /r/ have difficulty in judging the correctness of their own /r/.
If you have any doubts about the correlation between perception and production, just
consider how the following learn to speak: newborns, individuals who are deaf, and parrots.
Repetition, feedback (auditorily or visually), and self-monitoring are paramount for these
learners, so why not in the correction of /r/ as well? We feel that a speaker needs to know if

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what he or she is producing is in error, and during therapy needs to be able to distinguish

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between total omissions and mild distortions in the progression to correct productions. Please

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keep in mind that there is no perfect /r/. Each person's IrIs vary from one another every time

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the sound is spoken. If you don't believe us, just look at a spectrograph of two of your IrIs.

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They will not be the same. PR
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Why Tongue Training? Truth, Trials, and Tribulations

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Why is tongue training important? The tongue is a series of muscles, and oral-motor exercises
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make the tongue stronger and more flexible. If you work out in a gym, your personal trainer will
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tell you which exercises to use to build up certain muscles or to make other muscles flexible.
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Surely the trainer would not prescribe neck exercises to build up your biceps. Likewise, in your
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role as "tongue trainer," you will give your trainee exercises addressing musculature needed in cor­
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rect production of /r/.

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Tongue Muscles
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In this section we briefly review the muscles of the tongue, along with their function, and address
those necessary for /r/ production. The muscles are divided into two categories, intrinsic and
extrinsic. Intrinsic means within the tongue, and extrinsic means originating outside of the
tongue.

Intrinsic Musculature
The intrinsic muscles of the tongue are the superior longitudinal, inferior longitudinal, transverse,
and vertical (see Figure 1.1). The superior 10ngitudiL 1 runs along the top of the tongue, and its
function is to shorten and elevate the tip of the tongue (Figure 1.IA). The inferior longitudinal
 Introduction and Foundation

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Superior Transverse
longitudinal
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(Anterior-Posterior
view)
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.,• . Vertical
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Figure 1.1 Intrinsic muscles of the tongue involved in the production of Ir/.
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runs along the bottom of the tongue, and its function is to shorten the tongue and pull the tip
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downward. The transverse, which runs from side to side, pulls in the sides and lengthens the
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tongue (Figure LIB). The vertical, which runs from top to bottom, flattens the tongue (Figure
1.1A). Which of these are attached to /r/ production? During production of /r/, the tongue is nar#
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rowed at the tip (transverse superior longitudinal), widened at the sides (vertical), and pulled
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back and up (superior longitudinal). Therefore, the only intrinsic muscle not involved in /r/ pro#
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duction is the inferior longitudinaL

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Extrinsic Musculature
The extrinsic muscles of the tongue consist of the genioglossus, hyoglossus, palatoglossus, and
styloglossus (see Figure 1.2). The genioglossus is the meat of the tongue tissue, and contrac#
tion of the entire muscle pulls the tongue downward, causing a trough in the tongue. The
hyoglossus runs from the posterior half of the tongue to the hyoid bone, and its function is to
pull the tongue down and elevate the hyoid. The palatoglossus starts at the soft palate and
attaches to the sides of the tongue and it raises the tongue, creating a groove. The styloglos#
sus runs from the styloid process to the tip of the tongue, interweaving with intrinsic muscles
on the way, and its function is to pull the tongue up and back, creating a trough in the
tongue. The muscles that help with the production of /r/ are the genioglossus, styloglossus, and
palatoglossus.
 The Wizard of Rs

Palatoglossus

Styloglossus

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... d""'--­
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Genioglossus
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Figure 1.2 Extrinsic muscles of the tongue involved in the production of Ir/.
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Mandibular Depressor: The Forgoffen One

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There is also a mandibular depressor involved in Irl production. It is the posterior geniohyoid (see
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Figure 1.3). It aids in forward and backward movement of the tongue tip and blade.
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Tongue Training Considerations

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Trials and tribulations often occur in tongue trammg. Restrictive frenulum, dysarthria, and
apraxia, for example, may impact muscle tone, flexibility, strength, and endurance. Information
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on these disorders and remedial techniques are available in speech textbooks.

One additional issue to discuss regarding tongue training is muscle memory. Many experts
have debated whether muscles have memory. No muscle group could be more convincing of the
existence of muscle memory than those of the tongue. How many clients have you seen who pro­
duced a ItI for years and then lost ability to do it (without extenuating circumstances such as a
cerebrovascular accident)? It is likely that you have never encountered a situation like this. In
tongue training a student may briefly carry a feature of a sound to a related sound, but this is dis­
cernible and usually selrcorrected. For example, one may front a sound that should be produced
at the back (e.g., a Idl for Igl when you are practicing ItI for /k/). Once a sound has achieved car'
ryover status to sentence and conversational level, rarely or never do you have to draw a speaker's
attention to correct placement. The tongue becomes imprinted with memory for the movements
required for each phoneme.
 Introduction and Foundation

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Geniohyoid

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Figure 1.3 The posterior geniohyoid.

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What Does /r/ Look Like Anyway?

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Before discussing the approximate tongue placement for the correct /r/, we want to emphasize
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that no one oral cavity is the same as the next. For instance, some students have high arched
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narrow palates, which may make lateralization of the tongue easy but elevation of the tip dif­
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ficult, whereas others have flat wide palates, which make elevation of the tongue tip easy and
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lateralization difficult. These variations are discussed later in oral-motor exercises to aid in spe­
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cific differences. Now back to correct tongue placement.

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To produce /r/, in general, the tongue tip should approximate to the alveolar ridge without
touching it; the body of the tongue should be elevated and lateralized to touch the molars for
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sealing the airflow in the direct oral cavity, not the buccal cavity; the velum should be closed; the
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lips relaxed; and voice added. It is one of the most difficult phonemes to produce because so much
is going on, and there is a lot to teach.
Imagine what happens if only one feature is in error. If the tip touches the alveolar ridge, you
have /1/. If the tongue tip drops, you could have /II or /g/ depending on severity. If the lips round,
you could have /w/ approximate. If the jaw is too tight, mixed results can occur.

What Is Really Important?

You might be asking yourself, "Why is there a chapter covering anatomy and physiology when
I studied that in college?" To correct a problem with /r/, you need to have a "blueprint" and
a working knowledge of function of anatomical or physiological structures specific to /r/. At
 The Wizard of Rs

college, you were likely presented with everything in anatomy and physiology at one time,
and not on muscles directly related to specific sounds. Instruction definitely wasn't tied
directly to oral-motor exercises, therapy strategies, or tricks for Irl remediation. In later chap­
ters you will see the relevance of this instruction on muscles for oral-motor exercises designed
for remediation of the Irl difficulty. You will also find a wealth of tricks, tried and true, for
daily therapy practice.

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