What Are NSOMEs?
- Sensory stimulations to or actions of lips, jaw, tongue, soft palate, larynx and respiratory muscles
- Stretching, active muscle exercise, sensory stimulation, or blowing
- No speech sound is produced during exercise
Evidence To Support Them?
- NONE!
- http://ncepmaps.org/_sr/_444/
- Systematic review or research indicated not enough evidence to support or refute
- ASHA tells us to only engage in practices that are research-based
Look At Them Theoretically:
- Strength: Does not take significant amounts of strength to speak and these exercises do not provide enough repetitions or resistance to help even if we did need more strength.
- Transfer: Non-speech movements have not been shown to transfer to speech sounds, like blowing horns to work on lip rounding. These are controlled by different parts of the brain.
- Warm-Up: Speech muscles do not need warming up and if they did, it would be better to warm up with speech sounds.
What To Do Instead?
- Use real speech sounds for practice! Click Here to Download the Speech Sound Warm Up
- If articulators are uncoordinated, practice going between two sounds like tuh, kuh, tuh, kuh.
- If you need a “get ready for speech” activity, do a stimulability warm up. Evidence supports speech outcomes for stimulability.
- If you are working on lip rounding, make sure they say a sound while you do it.