Speech Disorders and Language Disorders: Classification

Aphasia

Aphasia can be classified as follows:

Standard Syndromes

  • Amnestic aphasia – word-finding disorders, sentence breaks.
  • Broca’s aphasia – agrammatism, often speech apraxia.
  • Global aphasia – severe disorders in all modalities.
  • Wernicke’s aphasia – severe speech comprehension disorder.

Non-standard syndromes

  • Conductance aphasia – moderately impaired communication with impaired mimicry, paraphrasias, reduced verbal memory span.
  • Transcortical aphasia
    • Transcortical-sensory – inconspicuous fluency, comprehension impaired.
    • Transcortical-motor – fluency severely restricted, good comprehension.
    • Mixed-transcortical – fluency severely restricted, poor comprehension.

ICD-10 – Language development delays

The 10th edition of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10,) classifies circumscribed developmental disorders of speech and language (UESS; F80.-) as follows:

  • Articulation disorder (F80.0) – A circumscribed developmental disorder in which the child’s articulation is below the level appropriate for his or her age of intelligence, but his or her language skills are within the normal range.
  • Expressive language disorder (F80.1) – A circumscribed developmental disorder in which the child’s ability to use expressive spoken language is well below the level appropriate for his or her age of intelligence, but language comprehension is within the normal range. Disorders of articulation may occur.
  • Receptive language disorder (F80.2). – A circumscribed developmental disorder in which the child’s language comprehension is below the level appropriate for his or her intelligence age. In virtually all cases, expressive language is also markedly affected, and disorders in word-sound production are common; incl.
    • Congenital lack of acoustic perception
    • Developmental: dysphasia or aphasia, receptive type.
    • Developmental: Wernicke’s aphasia word deafness.
  • Other developmental disorders of speech or language (F80.8), incl.
    • Lisp
  • Developmental disorder of speech or language, unspecified (F80.9)