Language Disorders - Paper Example

A language disorder can be defined as an impairment that makes it difficult for an individual to find the right words and to construct clear sentences when speaking (Rovai, Baker, & Ponton, 2013). It can also be defined as impaired knowledge and use of written, spoken, and symbols. This disorder can also make a person have a difficulty in understanding what another is saying. A child with this disorder struggles to put thoughts into words. Others have described it a significant delay in using and comprehending spoken language, written language, or both. This disorder may involve the meaning of language (semantics), its form (phonology, syntax, and morphology), or the use of language (pragmatics). Language disorders are due to genetic influences, environmental factors, laterality of language function, and brain asymmetry. Examples of these disorders include delayed language, articulation disorders, stuttering, voice disorders and aphasia. The treatment methods include early intervention approaches such as family-centered approaches including expansion and recasts, parallel talk, maternal responsiveness, promotion of enabling environment, encouraging a childs involvement in social routines, and script-based interventions.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Etiology

Genetic influences

Many family studies have found out that genetics contribute to language disorders. For instance, a study conducted by Tallal and others (2001) revealed that specific language impairment occurred in 13% of the participants when none of the parents had the disorder. When one of the parents was affected by the disorder, the prevalence rates rose 40%. In a family with both parents having language disorders, 71.4% of the children manifested the disorder. Genetic components of language disorders have not been well established, but research has shown that genetic contributions to language difficulty may be similar to genetic causes related to language problems found in individuals with autism. These disorders have also been traced to deletion of 16q and 19q chromosomes, which have been found to have a detrimental effect on phonological short-term memory and tense (Riccio, Sullivan, & Cohen, 2010).

Environmental influences

There are many prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal factors associated with delayed or disrupted language development. Some of the antenatal and perinatal factors that may affect the childs normal language development include anoxia, infections such as rubella and herpes, low birth weight, and maternal intake of drugs, alcohol, and smoking (Riccio, Sullivan, & Cohen, 2010).

Laterality of Language Function

In most people, language dominance is linked to the left hemisphere (Knecht et al., 2000). Language lateralization process in starts at early developmental stages and increases with age. When dichotic listening tasks are used to assess lateralization of language and the integrity of the temporal lobe, children with language disorders have been reported to demonstrate left ear advantage rather than right. This is known as left ear dominance and is associated with two problems (Riccio, Sullivan, & Cohen, 2010).

First, if the left ear is dominant, auditory stimuli from the left ear is transmitted first to the right hemisphere of the brain, and then crosses the corpus callosum which connects the left and right brain hemispheres to get to the language center located in the left hemisphere. This causes a delay in auditory stimuli reaching the language center, causing sound confusion and dyslexia. The deficiency of right ear performance leads to a delay in processing of auditory information leading to dyslexia or stuttering. Secondly, a person who has left ear dominance relates to sound primarily through low frequencies, which makes them feel like they are far from the source of the sound. Because of this, an individual feels isolated from people he is trying to communicate with. High frequencies define consonants, and thus such people fail to hear certain consonant sounds (Riccio, Sullivan, & Cohen, 2010).

Brain Asymmetry

Brain studies have shown right-asymmetrical cortex in people with language disorders and autism (Herbert et al., 2005. The differences in asymmetry have been found to be more profound in higher order association areas. Rightward hemispheric asymmetries of the Borcas area and posterior superior temporal cortex have also been found in individuals with language disorders and those with autism. The absence of asymmetry in the left and right planum temporale is also linked with language difficulty. For instance, in individuals with dyslexia, platinum temporal is symmetrical. The symmetrical nature of planum temporale inhibits speech comprehension and phonological processing leading to language deficits (Riccio, Sullivan, & Cohen, 2010).

Types of Language Disorders

Delayed language

Children with this disorder often learn words and grammar slower as compared to normal kids. Loss of hearing is the primary cause of this. Children who a deaf or partially deaf face many challenges copying, learning, and understanding language. They experience oral motor problems in sound articulation using the lips, tongue, and jaw. Sometimes, the brain is a source of these problems as it is responsible for the development of language and speech.

Development of children varies as others develop fast, while others are slower than others. It may be difficult to tell the existence of language delay in children because, despite the delay, they may develop normally. Developmental milestones help in telling if a child has delayed speech and language skills. Hence it is necessary for a parent to check these milestones to ascertain the development of a child.

Articulation disorders

Articulation refers to the making of clear and distinct sounds in a speech which requires the movement of lips, tongue, teeth and the palate to make sounds. The movement of these parts is responsible for the manipulation of air from the vocal cords to make sounds, words, and syllables. A parent should know that when a child articulates incorrect sounds, syllables, and words, there is a possible presence of an articulation disorder because listeners may not understand what the child is saying.

There are following articulation errors occur in children: substitutions, omission, and distortions. An omission is where a child has a tendency of leaving out a sound in a word. For instance, a child can say p ay for play, oo for shoe and g een s ake for the green snake. This error makes the speech difficult to understand because it affects the childs intelligibility. Substitution is where a child replaces a sound with another. For example, wabbit for rabbit, thoap for soap and wed for red. Distortion is where a sound is produced in an unfamiliar way. The child articulates a word that sounds as it should be but is wrong. A good example is, shlip for the ship, or the nasalization of pencil to make it sound like mencil.

There is a big difference between baby talk and articulation disorders. Baby talk is not a disorder because it is normal for a young child to mispronounce words. Articulation disorders impede good communication, but people should not confuse a different accent with articulation problems. Despite this, an accent becomes a challenge for a child if it hampers his or her communication because a child should articulate almost all sounds by eight years. There are different conditions which bring about articulation problems. These include physical challenges such as cleft palate, dental problems, cerebral palsy, hearing loss and exposure to incorrect speech and language models to a child.

Stuttering

Stuttering is the interruption of verbal expression fluency by uncontrolled, audible or silent, repeated or prolonged sound syllables. They are not controlled and may be accompanied by movements such as blinking of the eyes and shaking of lips and emotions such as fear, irritation or embarrassment. Stuttering and stammering are often used interchangeably and is common in children between the ages of 2 and 6 because this is the time when children are learning language and speech. Stuttering is common when a child is learning the language, but boys are more likely to stutter than girls, yet most children outgrow it. A child may experience stuttering when speaking on the telephone, in the presence of many people, or when singing.

There are are a combination of factors that are known to trigger stuttering. These include developmentally related causes, neurogenic, psychogenic and hereditary factors. Developmental stuttering occurs when a child is learning how to talk and fails to find the words that he or she wants to say. This is normal, and children outgrow this. Neurogenic causes such as problems in the nerves, muscles and the brain also trigger stuttering. Damage by stroke or head injury affects the part of the brain and the muscles responsible for speech and language development. Psychogenic related cases also cause stuttering. This stuttering is seen in children with mental ill health and affects the feeling or a childs thinking which inflict stress or damage to the mind. Hereditary causes which run in a childs family are passed from parent to child, though some experts dispute this, trigger stuttering.

Voice disorders

A voice may be disordered when vocal chords responsible for sound production are damaged. A child can damage the vocal chords by using a pitch that is too high or excessive by screaming, often called voice misuse. Other causes of voice disorders are upper respiratory infections, throat cancer, muscle tension and acid influx. Despite voice disorders being uncommon in children, they are corrected through speech therapy where children are taught how to speak softly. While screaming and shouting are discouraged by the therapist, adults should not indulge in such acts because children copy what adults do.

Aphasia

Aphasia is another language disorder which occurs when the parts of the brain in charge of language are damaged. Aphasia may be an immediate cause such as stroke, head injury or slow development created by a brain tumor. Though this condition is rare in children, it affects the childs speech, hampers understanding of what others say, and the ability to read and write deteriorates (Akbari, 2014).

Treatment of Language Disorders

Early Intervention Approaches

If the child has comorbid disabilities that are associated with speech and language development e.g. autism spectrum disorder and down syndrome, there is a need for language intervention at an early stage of infants life. Early intervention strategies are also applicable for children who fail to achieve early language or speech milestones. When children are at their tender age, language intervention is implemented by parents or caregivers under the guidance and support of speech clinician. The guidance provided by the clinician helps the parents and caregivers acquire knowledge and skills required to support childs language and speech development in daily routines and interactions. This type of intervention is known as a family-centered approach (National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, 2016).

This method entails the provision of emotional support for family members, who may be undergoing adjustment to their childs developmental difficulties and the resulting effect on family life. Additionally, family-centered approaches recognize the important role of the family context in a child's development. The major focus of these approaches is to help the caregivers to get acquainted with the best methods of promoting childrens communication development throughout everyday routines.

Some of the family-centred approaches are expansion and recast. A parent or a caregiver often rephrase things their children say. For inst...