about the speechologist
vivian “v” tisi, m.a., ccc-slp (龔玉蓮, they/she) is an autistic /adhd-er, taiwanese-venezuelan speech-language pathologist and clinician-educator activist in the san francisco bay area. v started the speechologist in 2015 to provide in-home and in-community services to chinese-language speaking young children (0-5) and autistic people of all ages (0-adult). v specializes in working with speech sound production (e.g. speech sound development, phonological development, motor speech) and with language and social-emotional development specific to experiences with autism and attention deficit disability that honors neurodiverse communication styles.
as an actually autistic individual with both lived experience as well as clinical expertise over a decade with diverse neurodivergent clientele, v helps to support neurodivergent people through social-emotional development when living and experiencing neurotypical demands. this includes an appropriate assessment to identify alexithymic needs and how they play a foundational role in social-emotional identification, comprehension, identification, and self-advocacy within socializing.
historically, the behavioral sciences believed that autistic individuals lacked theory of mind, which has been disproved not only within autistic communities but in literature such as the ‘double empathy problem’ (milton, 2012). this means that assessment and documentation should be filed appropriately for the social environment to meet the autistic child (or adult) where they are and not only demand discriminatory assimilation to the neuronormative. masking, the behavior in which the neurodivergent child is forced to change, has significant mental health detriments including anxiety, depression, meltdowns, self-injury, burnout, and suicidality (bradley et al., 2021; cassidy et al., 2018; pearson & rose, 2021; raymaker et al., 2020). v works both directly with clients as well as provides consultations with families and providers globally to support neurodivergent wellness and gentle, loving, and neurodiversity affirmation and acceptance.
as one of the 2.5% asian SLPs and 0.01% mandarin-chinese speaking SLPs within the speech-language sciences (asha, 2020), v is also dedicated to heritage language maintenance for all children and has published on the dire needs for the field to support pacific islander and asian languages (tisi & chiou, 2021). the literature demonstrates that there is a 3-generation language loss pattern, whereby the second generation has attrition and the third generation is completely lost (fisher, homberger, & putz, 2006). for children to maintain their sense of cultural identity as well as bridge connection to their family members cross-generation, it is critical to support their heritage ties to their languages.
when speech-language delay or disability is also present, services provided in english-only frequently exacerbate this phenomenon, leaving mandarin-chinese speaking children disenfranchised from their heritage language and from the richness of communication with their elders and community members. v’s mandarin is taiwanese-dialect influenced (accented) but works with families of all chinese languages for early age children (0-5) to develop polyglots and multilingual irrespective of ability and/or disability. they also consult with families for raising multilingual children. v does not read or write in chinese orthography and only works with children up to age 5 due to their own language fluency.
due to the complex nature of bilingual and multilingual development and the lack of service providers in many non-english languages as well as the racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse populations in the san francisco bay area, v has also assessed children in hindi, malayalam, urdu, korean, spanish, cantonese, japanese, russian, and hebrew languages by training interpreters. v is also available for consultation or for evaluation referencing the sciences of bilingualism development for both families directly or for schools. interpreters must be trained and provided for quality services.
v also is a professional development provider and a part-time professor to first-year master’s students at san francisco state university. their experiences in pedagogy, brain science, and trauma-informed practices, inform them to be an exceptional and individualizing educator for professional learners and parent learners alike. they are available for hire to provide professional development courses, lead learning workshops for clinics to review and reform their practices, and for parent/group courses and workshops.
