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Becoming a Speech and Language Therapist

How Psychology and SLT are Linked

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One of the biggest surprises for me when I was looking into studying SLT, and also when I arrived at City, is how many different aspects of the course there are, how many different types of subjects are included and how many different skill sets are required for the course.

One of the subjects that spans over two years (as a pure subject) and over the whole course and definitely into working life as an SLT (in lots of different ways) is psychology.

In the first year, it’s developmental psychology, learning about how children typically develop. Even though we usually see children who are NOT typically developing in clinic, it’s really important we can see the signs that might indicate difficulties with language later on.  When kids point at stuff? That’s the start of intentional communication. When kids start to lie? Sign of being able to ‘mind-read’, or see something from someone else’s point of view, and so actually something else that we are keen to see as SLTs. Negotiation, friendship, playing….all of these things are what we learn to look out for in clinic during these first months of learning.

In the second year, we move into looking at a variety of psychological studies, to teach us to critically appraise literature, and basically see whether it’s good enough evidence for us to apply in clinical settings. We learn to ask questions about how many participants were involved, how the data was gathered, and whether the clinical population showed any real and lasting signs of improvement after a particular therapy intervention. This is all very useful for the final year, when we’re expected to include solid evidence into a literature review paper, and ignore the stuff that is less important for our particular question.

Woven into all of this lovely learning is neuroanatomy, a block of lectures on diagnosis and the SLT role in the management of mental health conditions and learning about brain injury and language processing in adults. So really, you get a bit of everything.

I have to admit, the psychology modules have proved to be some of the most challenging for me in this course. I came from no such background, so if you’re thinking about SLT and you’re already taking psychology, you’re already at a huge advantage. And if you’re into thinking about the brain and all the amazing things it can do (plus all the things that can go wrong), then perhaps studying SLT is for you….

About acnm941

Speech and Language Therapy student who writes about the ups and downs, ins and outs of studying and juggling real life (and who also includes silly photos sometimes). View all posts by acnm941 →

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City, University of London is an independent member institution of the University of London. Established by Royal Charter in 1836, the University of London consists of 18 independent member institutions with outstanding global reputations and several prestigious central academic bodies and activities.

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