Speech and language disorders

There are several key terms that are crucial to the description of speech and language disorder:

• dysphasia / aphasia, which is a disorder in the use of symbols whether, spoken, heard, written or read. It may be:
  • expressive:
    • usually the result of a lesion in the front of the lower end of the motor cortex: Broca's area
    • nominal: cannot find correct word - paraphrasias
    • and / or unable to pronounce polysyllabic words correctly.
    • language may be telegraphic and non-fluent
    • distressing to patient who is aware of condition
  • receptive:
  • usually due to lesions of Wernicke's area in the posterior superior temporal lobe
    • at its mildest, the patient cannot comprehend abstract concepts
    • more severely, speech is muddled by uncorrected mistakes due to a deficit of language analysis
• dysarthria - a disorder of articulation
• dysphonia - a disorder of vocalisation
• dyslexia - this is the impairment of ability to comprehend written language