Applied Linguistics: Language Delay

Language delay is a failure to develop language abilities on the usual developmental timetable. Language delay is distinct from speech delay, in which the speech mechanism itself is the focus of delay. Thus, language delay refers specifically to a delay in the development of the underlying knowledge of language, rather than its implementation.

The difference between language and speech can be understood by considering the relationship between a computer program and an output device like a printer. The software running on the computer (a word processing program, for example) is designed to allow a user to create content that is stored in the computer. In order to actually create a physical copy of the file, the computer requires another device: a printer. The printer takes the file and transforms it into a series of commands which control the movement of a print head, thereby making marks on paper.

This two-stage process is something like the distinction between language (computer program) and speech (printer). When we want to communicate something, the first stage is to encode the message into a set of words and sentence structures that convey our meaning. These processes are collectively what we refer to as language. In the second stage, language is translated into motor commands that control the articulators, thereby creating speech. Speech refers to the actual process of making sounds, using such organs and structures as the lungs, vocal cords, mouth, tongue, teeth, etc.

Because language and speech are two independent stages, they may be individually delayed. For example, a child may be delayed in speech (i.e., unable to produce intelligible speech sounds), but not delayed in language. In this case, the child would be attempting to produce an age-appropriate amount of language, but that language would be difficult or impossible to understand. Conversely, a child with a language delay typically has not yet had the opportunity to produce speech sounds; it is therefore likely to have a delay in speech as well.

Language delay is commonly divided into receptive and expressive categories. Receptive language refers to the process of understanding what is said to us. Expressive language refers to the use of words and sentences to communicate what we think, need, and want. Both categories are fundamental in order to be able to communicate with others as well as to understand when others communicate with us.

Language delay is a risk factor for other types of developmental delay, including social, emotional, and cognitive delay, though some children may grow out of these deficits, even excelling where they once lagged, while others may not. One particularly common result of language delay is delayed or inadequate acquisition of reading skills. Reading depends upon an ability to code and decode script (i.e., match speech sounds with symbols, and vice versa). If a child is still struggling to master language and speech, it is very difficult to then learn another level of complexity (writing). Thus, it is crucial that children have facility with language to be successful readers.

Applied Linguistics: Speech Disorder

Speech disorders or speech impediments are a type of communication disorders where 'normal' speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute.

Classification

Classifying speech into normal and disordered is more problematic than it first seems. By a strict classification[citation needed], only 5% to 10% of the population has a completely normal manner of speaking (with respect to all parameters) and healthy voice; all others suffer from one disorder or another.

Stuttering affects approximately 1% of the adult population.[citation needed]

Cluttering, a speech disorder that has similarities to stuttering.

Dysprosody is the rarest neurological speech disorder. It is characterized by alterations in intensity, in the timing of utterance segments, and in rhythm, cadence, and intonation of words. The changes to the duration, the fundamental frequency, and the intensity of tonic and atonic syllables of the sentences spoken, deprive an individual's particular speech of its characteristics. The cause of dysprosody is usually associated with neurological pathologies such as brain vascular accidents, cranioencephalic traumatisms, and brain tumors.

Muteness is complete inability to speak

Speech sound disorders involve difficulty in producing specific speech sounds (most often certain consonants, such as /s/ or /r/), and are subdivided into articulation disorders (also called phonetic disorders) and phonemic disorders. Articulation disorders are characterized by difficulty learning to physically produce sounds. Phonemic disorders are characterized by difficulty in learning the sound distinctions of a language, so that one sound may be used in place of many. However, it is not uncommon for a single person to have a mixed speech sound disorder with both phonemic and phonetic components.

Voice disorders are impairments, often physical, that involve the function of the larynx or vocal resonance.

Dysarthria is a weakness or paralysis of speech muscles caused by damage to the nerves and/or brain. Dysarthria is often caused by strokes, parkinsons disease, ALS, head or neck injuries, surgical accident, or cerebral palsy.

Apraxia of speech may result from stroke or be developmental, and involves inconsistent production of speech sounds and rearranging of sounds in a word ("potato" may become "topato" and next "totapo"). Production of words becomes more difficult with effort, but common phrases may sometimes be spoken spontaneously without effort. It is now considered unlikely that childhood apraxia of speech and acquired apraxia of speech are the same thing[citation needed], though they share many characteristics.

There are three different levels of classification when determining the magnitude and type of a speech disorder and the proper treatment or therapy:

1.       Sounds the patient can produce

Phonemic- can be produced easily; used meaningfully and contrastively

Phonetic- produced only upon request; not used consistently, meaningfully, or contrastively; not used in connected speech

2.       Stimulable sounds

Easily stimulable

Stimulable after demonstration and probing (i.e. with a tongue depressor)

3.       Cannot produce the sound

Cannot be produced voluntarily

No production ever observed

Causes

In many cases the cause is unknown. However, there are various known causes of speech impediments, such as "hearing loss, neurological disorders, brain injury, mental retardation, drug abuse, physical impairments such as Cleft lip and palate, and vocal abuse or misuse."[3] Child abuse may also be a cause in some cases.

Expressive language disorder

Expressive language disorder is a communication disorder in which there are difficulties with verbal and written expression.  It is a specific language impairment characterized by an ability to use expressive spoken language that is markedly below the appropriate level for the mental age, but with a language comprehension that is within normal limits. There can be problems with vocabulary, producing complex sentences, and remembering words, and there may or may not be abnormalities in articulation.

As well as present speech production, very often, someone will have difficulty remembering things. This memory problem is only disturbing for speech; non-verbal or non-linguistically based memory will be unimpaired.

Expressive language disorder affects work and schooling in many ways. It is usually treated by specific speech therapy, and usually cannot be expected to go away on its own.

Care must be taken to distinguish expressive language disorder from other communication disorders, sensory-motor disturbances, intellectual disability and/or environmental. These factors affect a person's speech and writing to certain predictable extents, and with certain differences.

Applied Linguistics: Dyscalculia

Dyscalculia or math disability is a specific learning disability or difficulty involving innate difficulty in learning or comprehending mathematics.

It is akin to dyslexia and can include confusion about math symbols. Dyscalculia can also occur as the result of some types of brain injury.

Dyscalculia occurs in people across the whole IQ range.

Symptoms

Frequent difficulties with arithmetic, confusing the signs: +, −, ÷ and ×.

Difficulty with everyday tasks like checking change and reading analog clocks.

Inability to comprehend financial planning or budgeting, sometimes even at a basic level; for example, estimating the cost of the items in a shopping basket or balancing a checkbook.

Difficulty with multiplication-tables, and subtraction-tables, addition tables, division tables, mental arithmetic, etc.

May do fairly well in subjects such as science and geometry, which require logic rather than formulae, until a higher level requiring calculations is obtained.

Many of those who suffer from dyscalculia may have parents who perform well to excellent in Mathematics-related fields (such as architects, engineers, or math teachers), though this connection has yet to be genetically linked.

Difficulty with conceptualizing time and judging the passing of time. May be chronically late or early.

Particularly problems with differentiating between left and right.

Might do exceptionally well in a writing related field- many authors and journalists have this disorder

Difficulty navigating or mentally "turning" the map to face the current direction rather than the common North=Top usage.

Having particular difficulty mentally estimating the measurement of an object or distance (e.g., whether something is 10 or 20 feet (3 or 6 metres) away).

Often unable to grasp and remember mathematical concepts, rules, formulae, and sequences.

An inability to read a sequence of numbers, or transposing them when repeated, such as turning 56 into 65.

Difficulty keeping score during games.

Difficulty with games such as poker with more flexible rules for scoring.

Difficulty in activities requiring sequential processing, from the physical (such as dance steps or sports) to the abstract (signaling things in the right order). May have trouble even with a calculator due to difficulties in the process of feeding in variables.

The condition may lead in extreme cases to a phobia or durable anxiety of mathematics and mathematic-numeric devices/coherences.

Inability to concentrate on mentally intensive tasks.

Low latent inhibition, i.e., over-sensitivity to noise, smell, light and the inability to tune out, filtering unwanted information or impressions. Might have a well-developed sense of imagination due to this (possibly as cognitive compensation to mathematical-numeric deficits).

Mistaken recollection of names. Poor name/face retrieval. May substitute names beginning with same letter.

Dysnomia

Dysnomia is a difficulty or inability to retrieve the correct word from memory when it is needed. Dysnomia can affect speech skills, writing abilities, or both.

Normal individuals will occasionally suffer problems recalling words. This only becomes a medical condition when the recall problems interfere with daily life. Doctors use neuropsychological tests to diagnose the condition.

Dysnomia can develop because of brain trauma or can be a learning disability. Dysnomia from strokes or head injuries will frequently reduce or disappear with time.

The learning disability, however, cannot be cured. Patients can improve their life skills by using coping strategies.

The difference between dysnomia and anomia is the level of function. This is indicated by the nature of the names, dys-nomia vs. a-nomia. Anomia, "renders a person completely unable to name familiar objects, almost as if he or she were suddenly required to converse in a foreign language". Dysnomia, on the other hand, is a lesser level of dysfunction, a severe form of the "tip-of-the-tongue" feeling where the brain cannot recall the desired word or name.

Despite the difference, some sources interchange the terms. A review of available literature shows:

The two diagnoses have similar, but separate references in diagnostic codes

Anomia is cited more frequently/studied more frequently, possibly because anomic patients are more likely to be hospitalized or institutionalized

Dysnomia appears more common in reference to a learning disability

In cases where the two terms are used in the same materials, dysnomia is sometimes mentioned as the primary , other references place anomia first, and other references list both and treat them as synonyms .

Despite the separate diagnostic codes, a search of online materials failed to reveal clear clinical criteria for when dysnomia shifts to anomia.

Applied Linguistics: Echolalia

Echolalia

Echolalia is the automatic repetition of vocalizations made by another person. It is closely related to echopraxia, the automatic repetition of movements made by another person.

The word "echolalia" is derived from the Greek ἠχώ meaning "echo" or "to repeat", and λαλιά (laliá) meaning "babbling, meaningless talk" (of onomatopoeic origin from the verb λαλέω (laléo) meaning "to talk").

Immediate echolalia causes the immediate repetition of a word or phrase. Some autistic people and people with Asperger syndrome may use repetition as a method of allowing themselves more time to process language.

A typical pediatric presentation of echolalia might be: a child is asked, "Do you want dinner?" the child echoes back "Do you want dinner?" followed by a pause and then a response, "Yes. What's for dinner?"

In delayed echolalia, a phrase is repeated after a delay, such as a person with autism who repeats TV commercials, favorite movie scripts, or parental reprimands.

Applied Linguistics: Dyslexia

Dyslexia

Dyslexia is a broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or accuracy in being able to read, speak, and spell and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, and/or rapid naming. Dyslexia is separate and distinct from reading difficulties resulting from other causes, such as a non-neurological deficiency with vision or hearing, or from poor or inadequate reading instruction.[4][5] It is believed that dyslexia can affect between 5 to 10 percent of a given population although there have been no studies to indicate an accurate percentage.

There are three proposed cognitive subtypes of dyslexia: auditory, visual and attentional. Although dyslexia is not an intellectual disability, it is considered both a learning disability and a reading disability. Dyslexia and IQ are not interrelated, since reading and cognition develop independently in individuals who have dyslexia.

Accomplished adult dyslexics may be able to read with good comprehension, but they tend to read more slowly than non-dyslexics, and may perform more poorly at nonsense word reading (a measure of phonological awareness), and spelling.

Preschool-aged children

It is difficult to obtain a certain diagnosis of dyslexia before a child begins school, but many dyslexic individuals have a history of difficulties that began well before kindergarten. Children who exhibit these symptoms early in life have a higher likelihood of being diagnosed as dyslexic than other children. These symptoms include:

delays in speech

slow learning of new words

not crawling

difficulty in rhyming words, as in nursery rhymes

low letter knowledge

letter reversal or mirror writing (for example, "Я" instead of "R")

Early primary school children

Difficulty learning the alphabet or letters order

Difficulty with associating sounds with the letters that represent them (sound-symbol correspondence)

Difficulty identifying or generating rhyming words, or counting syllables in words (phonological awareness)

Difficulty segmenting words into individual sounds, or blending sounds to make words (phonemic awareness)

Difficulty with word retrieval or naming problems

Difficulty learning to decode written words

Difficulty distinguishing between similar sounds in words; mixing up sounds in polysyllabic words (auditory discrimination) (for example, "aminal" for animal, "bisghetti" for spaghetti)

Older primary school children

Slow or inaccurate reading (although these individuals can read to an extent).

Very poor spelling[39] which has been called dysorthographia (orthographic coding)

Difficulty reading out loud, reading words in the wrong order, skipping words and sometimes saying a word similar to another word (auditory processing disorder)

Difficulty associating individual words with their correct meanings

Difficulty with time keeping and concept of time when doing a certain task

Difficulty with organization skills (working memory)

Children with dyslexia may fail to see (and occasionally to hear) similarities and differences in letters and words, may not recognize the spacing that organizes letters into separate words, and may be unable to sound out the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word (auditory processing disorder).

Secondary school children and adults

Some people with dyslexia are able to disguise their weaknesses (even from themselves) and often do acceptably well — or better — at GCSE level (U.K. - at 16 years old). Many students reach higher education before they encounter the threshold at which they are no longer able to compensate for their learning weaknesses.

One common misconception about dyslexia is that dyslexic readers write words backwards or move letters around when reading. In fact, this only occurs in a very small population of dyslexic readers. Dyslexic people are better identified by writing that does not seem to match their level of intelligence from prior observations. Additionally, dyslexic people often substitute similar-looking, but unrelated, words in place of the ones intended (what/want, say/saw, help/held, run/fun, fell/fall, to/too, etc.)

Applied Linguistics: Aphasia

Aphasia (pronounced /əˈfeɪʒə/ or pronounced /əˈfeɪziə/), from the Greek root word "aphatos", meaning speechless, is an acquired language disorder in which there is an impairment of any language modality. This may include difficulty in producing or comprehending spoken or written language.

Traditionally, aphasia suggests the total impairment of language ability, and dysphasia a degree of impairment less than total. However, the term dysphasia is commonly confused with dysphagia, a swallowing disorder, and thus aphasia has come to mean both partial and total language impairment in common use.

Depending on the area and extent of brain damage, someone suffering from aphasia may be able to speak but not write, or vice versa, or display any of a wide variety of other deficiencies in language comprehension and production, such as being able to sing but not speak.Aphasia can be assessed in a variety of ways, from quick clinical screening at the bedside to several-hour-long batteries of tasks that examine the key components of language and communication. The prognosis of those with aphasia varies widely, and is dependent upon age of the patient, site and size of lesion, and type of aphasia.

Fluent, non-fluent and "pure" aphasias

The different types of aphasia can be divided into three categories: fluent, non-fluent and "pure" aphasias.

Fluent aphasias, also called receptive aphasias, are impairments related mostly to the input or reception of language, with difficulties either in auditory verbal comprehension or in the repetition of words, phrases, or sentences spoken by others. Speech is easy and fluent, but there are difficulties related to the output of language as well, such as paraphasia. Examples of fluent aphasias are: Wernicke's aphasia, Transcortical sensory aphasia, Conduction aphasia, Anomic aphasia

Non fluent aphasias, also called expressive aphasias are difficulties in articulating, but in most cases there is relatively good auditory verbal comprehension. Examples of nonfluent aphasias are: Broca's aphasia, Transcortical motor aphasia, Global aphasia

"Pure" aphasias are selective impairments in reading, writing, or the recognition of words. These disorders may be quite selective. For example, a person is able to read but not write, or is able to write but not read. Examples of pure aphasias are: Pure alexia, Agraphia, Pure word deafness

Primary and secondary aphasia

Aphasia can be divided into primary and secondary aphasia.

Primary aphasia is due to problems with language-processing mechanisms.

Secondary aphasia is the result of other problems, like memory impairments, attention disorders, or perceptual problems.

Acquired childhood aphasia

Acquired childhood aphasia (ACA) is a language impairment resulting from some kind of brain damage. This brain damage can have different causes, such as head trauma, tumors, cerebrovascular accidents, or seizure disorders. Most, but not all authors state that ACA is preceded by a period of normal language development.  Age of onset is usually defined as from infancy until but not including adolescence.

ACA should be distinguished from developmental aphasia or developmental dysphasia, which is a primary delay or failure in language acquisition.[4] An important difference between ACA and developmental childhood aphasia is that in the latter there is no apparent neurological basis for the language deficit.

ACA is one of the more rare language problems in children and is notable because of its contribution to theories on language and the brain.[4] Because there are so few children with ACA, not much is known about what types of linguistic problems these children have. However, many authors report a marked decrease in the use of all expressive language. Children can just stop talking for a period of weeks or even years, and when they start to talk again, they need a lot of encouragement. Problems with language comprehension are less common in ACA, and don't last as long.