What forms are there?
Strictly speaking, speech and language disorders must be defined independently of each other. One speaks of a speech disorder when the ability to form speech on the neurological level is disturbed. This means that a person with a speech disorder is not mentally capable of speech formation.
Speech disorders can be differentiated into different manifestations. The development of speech may be delayed or not at all, and a person may also lose the ability to speak and understand speech. This phenomenon is called aphasia and occurs for example in Alzheimer’s dementia or after a stroke.
In addition to the inability to produce speech, it can also occur that only the understanding of speech is disturbed. The person can still hear, but does not understand what is being said. In contrast to speech disorders, speech disorders do not affect the neurological level of speech formation, but the motor level. The speech disorder thus leads to a normal understanding and development of speech, but articulation is disturbed. In the case of the speech disorder, a distinction can be made between disorders of speech flow, such as stuttering, and a disorder of speech motor skills, such as lisping.
What is an expressive speech disorder?
An expressive speech disorder is a language development disorder that affects the practice of language. This means that the person affected understands language, but is not able to express himself or herself adequately. Children are therefore not able to express themselves according to their intelligence quotients.
The range of expressive speech disorders is wide, there may be a lack of speech or even a complete lack of speech. Those affected try to compensate for the linguistic deficit by facial expressions and gestures. On the other hand, the understanding of speech is not affected by an expressive speech disorder. In contrast to expressive speech disorders, receptive speech disorders affect speech comprehension.
Subtypes of speech and language disorders
Stammer, Dyslalie, Dyslalia, engl. Stammer These are pronunciation errors and articulation disorders. Up to the age of 4 years phonation defects are considered normal.
The most common form of stammering is lisping, whereby the S-sounds are formed incorrectly. Battarism Battarism is a speech disorder in which people speak very quickly or the speed of speech fluctuates.In addition to this irregular speech tempo, parts of the sentence are sometimes omitted. This can manifest itself by merging words or omitting parts of the sentence.
A person with a rumbling speech disorder may be very difficult to understand. Sometimes what is said is completely incomprehensible. It is difficult for those affected to control their speech.
The fact that conversation partners often do not understand what is being said and do not have to ask questions may cause the affected person to speak in fear. A further characteristic of the rumbling speech disturbance is that the concerning have difficulties to bring a structure into the saying. A directly related problem is that it is very difficult for those affected to formulate a sentence differently if the interlocutor has not understood it and asks questions.
Affected people can learn to speak more slowly and emphatically through various techniques. By speaking slowly and deliberately, the language becomes more understandable and the speech disorder recedes into the background. Stuttering, Balbuties, English Stuttering is a disturbance of the flow of speech caused by a disturbance of the coordination of the speech muscles.
There are frequent interruptions and repetitions of sounds. There are two forms of stuttering, the clonic form, in which sounds are repeated at the beginning of a word, e.g. “B-B-B-uch”, and the tonic form, in which a sound is stretched within a word, e.g. “Ko-f-f-f-fer”.
Stuttering often occurs for no apparent reason, it is not proven that stuttering is caused by nervousness. However, stuttering increases nervousness and can cause anxiety. Stuttering can be treated by different techniques, so the symptoms can be alleviated and the stuttering is less pronounced. However, stuttering is not curable.
