I think I missed how speech came into the picture, but I'm just piping in to agree with Patricia that yes, there absolutely is such a thing as motor planning problems with speech (usually referred to as "oral motor" problems). Any speech therapist should know about that.
Two of my kids had this problem (and they also had/have SPD). With the more severe one, who is still in speech therapy at 6 y.o. (due to articulation issues), for a long time, and even now sometimes, it takes a certain amount of time for him to "spit it out" so to speak, time for the signal to be sent from the brain to the mouth to form the sounds/words. It was quite the issue a couple years ago when he was even more shy/introverted than he is now - the speech majorly compounded the problem (he's still very introverted, but he's getting slightly better about talking when it's necessary - and slightly faster at getting the words out in spite of his artic issues). What really amazed me was when he first started talking - so much had been up there in that head that hadn't been coming out. I think that it was so much effort to talk that often he'd just say nothing if he could get away with it.
It can also be said that oral motor problems, like other types of motor problems, are a subset of SPD. Sort of downstream. Somewhere I have a nice triangle diagram from the Star Center (where my kids did their OT), showing where various problems fit, with the most basic being central nervous system at the base of the triangle, academic affects at the very top, and various motor issues, among other things, in between. Our OTs said it can be most effective to treat the problem on the most basic level (central nervous system) before working on the other issues that are downstream. We found that to be 110% true when it came to ocular motor issues (vision therapy) (long story). As for the oral motor, we know that ds6's speech improved quite a bit over that time (it was a short, intensive program of OT that he did about a year and a half ago), according to his speech therapist and his teacher. But he still has a ways to go. Anyway, that's my two cents on oral motor.
On the OP issue of SPD and the WISC, when my dd8 did the WISC IV a couple years ago (she was 6 then), the testers pointed us in the direction of getting treatment for her vision issue and for SPD. So, we are hoping they made a difference. The vision is probably more likely to have a direct affect on her WISC score, particularly in the area of block design, for example. As for the SPD, we know it affected her vision which in turn affected her WISC score, but beyond that I'm not really sure. I'm dying to re-test but I don't have much of an excuse to spend the $ at the moment. (Her reading also improved dramatically so I'm hoping that, sort of overall, might affect the VCI portion but I really have no idea if it could.) As for WM and PS, I have absolutely no idea whether the SPD could affect that.
Last edited by snowgirl; 05/05/09 09:09 AM.
