Understanding Students with
Communication Disorders
Chapter 6
What is communication?
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Receiving information
Understanding information
Expressing information
Expressing feelings
Expressing ideas
Speech Language
Disorders
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Speech disorder
Language disorder
Receptive language disorder
Expressive language disorder
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
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
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
Language
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Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
How it all fits
Functionalist Language Theory
Pragmatics
Syntax
Phonology
Morphology
Semantics
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).
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
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/
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”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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 200-300 words
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
Speech Disorders
• Articulation disorder
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Substitutions
Omissions
Additions
Distortions
• Apraxia of speech
Voice Disorders
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Pitch
Duration
Intensity
Resonance
– Hyponasality
– Hypernasality
Fluency Disorders
• Interruptions in the flow of speaking
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Hesitate
Repeat themselves
Use fillers such as “umm”
Stuttering
Organic Causes
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Nervous system
Muscular system
Chromosomes
Formation of speech mechanism
Hereditary malformation
Prenatal injuries
Toxic disturbances
Tumors
Traumas
Seizures, Infections diseases
Muscular diseases
Vascular impairments
Functional Disorders
• Present when the cause of the
impairment is unknown - no physical
cause
Collaboration with
Teachers
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Supportive teaching
Complementary teaching
Consultation
Team teaching
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
AAC Devices
• A symbol set
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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
Activity
• Get into your group
• Read over Box 6-3
• Answer questions 1-4