1. Understanding Students with Communication Disorders
Chapter 6

2. What is communication? Receiving information Understanding information
Expressing information
Expressing feelings
Expressing ideas

3. Speech Language Disorders
Speech disorder
Language disorder
Receptive language disorder
Expressive language disorder
Speech disorder: difficulty pronouncing sounds and voice quality (hoarse voice) or fluency problems such as stuttering, sometimes associated with cleft palate or lip where the person has a split in the upper part of the oral cavity or the upper lip
Language disorder: difficulty receiving, understanding, and formulating ideas and information
Receptive disorder: difficulty receiving or understanding information
Expressive: difficulty formulating ideas and information

4. Cultural Diversity in Communication
Cooperative group activities and role-playing
Highlight the value of cultural diversity: contributions of events, celebrations, and people
Guest speakers from differing cultures
Parental involvement

5. Incidence 18.8% ages 6-21 get speech/language service
55% children ages 3-5 served under IDEA for speech/language
Most children spend majority of their day in general education

6. Typical Speech Development
Person pushes air from lungs
Muscles in larynx move vocal folds producing sound
Larynx sits on top of the trachea and contains the vocal folds where voice is produced
Person forms sounds by varying the position of lips, tongue, and lower jaw

7. Language
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics

8. How it all fits

9. Phonology Use of sounds to make meaningful syllables and words
Encompasses the rules and sequencing of individual speech sounds (phonemes)
Study and use of individual sound units in a language and the rules by which they are combined and recombined to create larger language units.
Phonemes are the unit of sound such as /s/ or /b/ , they do not convey meaning.
Phonemes alter meaning of words when combined (e.g., sat to bat).

10. Phonological Deficits
Frequently appear as articulation disorders.
Child omits a consonant: “oo” for you
Child substitutes one consonant: “wabbit” for rabbit
Discrimination: child hears “go get the nail” instead of mail

11. What is a Phoneme? Different linguistic units: large to small
The smallest unit of sound in our language that makes a difference to its meaning.
Dog /d/ /o/ /g/
Sun /s/ /u/ /n/
Man /m/ /a/ /n/

12. What is Morphology? The system that governs the structure of words
The smallest meaningful unit of speech is called a morpheme
Adds plurals, inflection, affixes, and past tense markers to verbs
For example: changes “swim” to “swam”

13. Syntax
Study of the rules by which words are organized into phrases or sentences in a particular language.
Referred to as the grammar of the language and allows for more complex expression of thoughts and ideas by making references to past and future events.

14. Syntactic Deficits
Lack the length or syntactic complexity (e.g., “Where Daddy go?”).
Problems comprehending sentences that express relationship between direct or indirect objects.
Difficulty with wh questions.

15. Semantics The larger meaning component of language.
More than single words, includes complex use of vocabulary, including structures such as word categories, word relationships, synonyms, antonyms, figurative language, ambiguities, and absurdities.
Semantics: language meaning; the meaning of individual words as well as the meaning that is produced by a combination of words.
Categories include objects in general, actions in general, and relations between objects and relations between events
Students with semantic problems may use or understand a limited number of words. May be in specific areas, such as adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, or pronouns.
Dysnomia: difficulty in retrieving or recalling specific words
Lack of understanding of how context can change the meaning of words
Understanding of idioms
Linguistic concepts such as before/after, if/then, many, some, few
Misuse of transition words

16. Semantic Deficits
Limited vocabulary especially in adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, or pronouns.
Longer response time in selecting vocabulary words.
Fail to perceive subtle changes in word meaning: incomplete understanding and misinterpretations.
Figurative language problems.

17. Pragmatics
Knowledge and ability to use language functionally in social or interactive situations.
Integrates all the other language skills, but also requires knowledge and use of rule governing the use of language in social context.
Pragmatics: use of language in communication; may include verbal, vocal, or motoric expression.
Rules that govern the use of language in social contexts to convey a variety of intentions such as requesting, asserting, or questioning.
Sometimes referred to as communicative competence; may be least likely to be identified as an area of instruction or to be includes as part of the formal school curriculum.
Problems include inability to understand indirect requests (Isn’t it time to go to bed now?), determining when the listener doesn’t understand, entering conversations in a socially-unacceptable manner, monopolizing conversation, inappropriate facial expressions, difficulty staying on topic.
Figure 9.2: Pragmatic skills for communication

18. Pragmatic Deficits
Problems understanding indirect requests (e.g., may say yes when asked “Must you play the piano?”).
May enter conversations in a socially unacceptable fashion or fail to take turns talking.
Difficulty staying on topic.

19. Social Interaction Theories
Communication skills are learned through social interactions
Language development is the outcome of a child’s drive for attachment with his or her world
Vygotsky: children learn by doing with more experienced partners (guided learning)

20. Language Development Within first month - respond to human voices
3 months - turn, smile, and coo
12 months - make sounds when spoken to, vary pitch and intensity, and experiment with rhythm, may say first words
12-24 months - vocabularies increase to words

21. Language Development Cont.
3 year olds - understand simple questions and prepositions (in, on, under) and follow 2-step directions, have vocabulary of 900-1,000 words
Preschoolers - ask W (5) and H questions and have vocabularies of 1,500-1,600 words
Age 6 - use irregular verbs “be,” “go”, “run” and “swim” and have vocabularies of 2,600 words

22. Speech Disorders Articulation disorder Apraxia of speech Substitutions
Omissions
Additions
Distortions
Apraxia of speech
Articulation is a speaker’s production of individual or sequenced sounds
Substitutions: /d/ for /th/ - doze for those, /t/ for /k/ tat for cat or /w/ for /r/ wabbit for rabbit
Omissions: leaves a phoneme out of a word (boo for blue, cool for school)
Additions: place a vowel between 2 consonants (tree into tahree)
Distortions: sound of the phoneme is distorted - usually called lisps (/s/, /z/, /sh/, and /ch/ are mispronounced
Apraxia of speech - problems with the voluntary purposeful movements of speech often caused by stroke, head injury or tumor
(/b/ for /p/ or /g/ for /k/

23. Voice Disorders Pitch Duration Intensity Resonance Hyponasality
Hypernasality
Pitch: affected by the tension and size of the vocal folds -men have lower pitch
Duration: length of time any speech sound requires
Intensity: Loudness and softness
Resonance: quality of someone’s voice - the tone coming from vocal folds
Hyponasality sound as if they have a cold or holding their nose
Hypernasality: air is allowed to pass through the nasal cavity oon sounds other than /m/, /n/ and /ng/

24. Fluency Disorders Interruptions in the flow of speaking Hesitate
Repeat themselves
Use fillers such as “umm”
Stuttering

25. Organic Causes Nervous system Muscular system Chromosomes
Formation of speech mechanism
Hereditary malformation
Prenatal injuries
Toxic disturbances
Tumors
Traumas
Seizures, Infections diseases
Muscular diseases
Vascular impairments

26. Functional Disorders
Present when the cause of the impairment is unknown - no physical cause

27. Collaboration with Teachers
Supportive teaching
Complementary teaching
Consultation
Team teaching
Supportive: Teacher and speech language pathologist plan together a unit and how to support student, pathologist works individually with student to preteach words
Complementary: speech pathologist takes notes while teacher teaches
Consultation: speech pathologist works with teacher to adapt text

28. Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Integrated groups of components that supplement the communication abilities of individuals who cannot communicate effectively through gestures, speaking, and/or writing

29. AAC Devices A symbol set A means for selecting the symbols Gestures
Photographs
Manual sign sets/systems
Pictographs (symbols that look like what they represent)
Ideographs (more abstract symbols)
Printed words
Objects
Partial objects
Miniature objects
Spoken words
Braille
A means for selecting the symbols

30. Activity
Get into your group
Read over Box 6-3
Answer questions 1-4