Following a stroke or a traumatic brain injury, an individual may not recognize emotions in others as easily. This is often referred to as impaired emotion recognition.
Emotions are communicated by facial expressions, vocal inflections and volume, body language, and contextual clues. All of these messages may be impacted following a major medical event.
I use a number of different tools to address these deficits. Recently I printed out a set of short sentences and challenged a patient to read the same sentence with a variety of different emotions– “We are moving” sounds very different in sad, excited, and confused voices. Another approach is saying a group of words in the form of a declarative statement vs. a question– “We are moving?” is very different than “We are moving!”
If you or a loved one is seeking speech or swallow therapy, reach out to Live Well Speech Therapy and let’s chat. We offer free consultations.
