Week 1 - Essentials of Communication and Its Disorders

• Communication

  any means by which individuals relate their wants, needs, thoughts, feelings, and knowledge to another person
• Communication Disorders

  an impairment in the ability to receive, comprehend, or send messages verbally, nonverbally, or graphically; any articulation, language, voice, resonance, cognitive, or hearing impairment that interferes with conveying or understanding a persons wants, needs, thoughts, feelings, and knowledge
• Modalities

  any sensory avenue through which information may be received (auditory, visual, tactile, taste, and olfactory)
• What are the three primary modes to receive communication?

  auditory, visual, and tactile
• What are the three primary modes to send communication?

  verbal, graphic, and gestural
• Language

  a socially shared code or conventional system for representing concepts through the use of arbitrary symbols (sounds and letters) and rule-governed combinations of those symbols (grammar)
• Approximately how many "living languages" are there?

  7,000
• What are the five domains of language?

  phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics
• Phonology

  the study of speech sounds and the rules for using them to make words in a language
• Morphology

  the study of the way words are formed out of basic units of language (morphemes)
• Syntax

  the rules for acceptable sequences and word combinations in sentences
• Semantics

  the study of meaning and language that convey by the words, phrases, and sentences communicated
• Pragmatics

  the rules governing the use of language in social situations
• Quality of life

  a global concept that involves a person's standard of living, personal freedom, and the opportunity to pursue happiness; a measure of a person's ability to cope successfully with the full range of challenges encountered in daily living; the characterization of health concerns or disease effects on a person's lifestyle and daily functioning
• Articulation

  articulation disorders, phonological disorders, and motor speech disorders
• Language

  receptive language disorders & expressive language disorders
• Fluency

  stuttering & cluttering
• Voice

  dysphonia & aphonia
• Resonance

  hypernasality & hyponasality
• Cognition

  developmental disorders & acquired disorders
• Literacy

  reading disorder & writing disorder
• Hearing

  conductive loss, sensorineural loss, and mixed loss
• Speech Disorders


  any deviation or abnormality of speech outside the range of acceptable variation in a given environment
• Language Disorders

  an impairment of receptive and/or expressive linguistic that affects comprehension and/or expression of wants, needs, thoughts, feelings, or knowledge through the verbal, written, or gestural modalities
• Functional disorder

  a problem or impairment with no known anatomical, physiological, or neurological basis that may have behavioral or emotional causes or components
• Organic disorder

  a problem or impairment with a known anatomical, physiological, or neurological basis
• Articulation disorder

  the incorrect production of speech sounds due to faulty placement, timing, direction, pressure, speed, or integration of the mandible, lips, tongue, or velum
• Phonological disorder

  errors of phonemes that form patterns in which a child simplifies individual sounds or sound combinations
• Motor speech disorder

  impaired speech intelligibility that is caused by a neurological impairment or difference that affects the motor planning or the strength of the articulators needed for rapid, complex movements in smooth, effortless, and intelligible speech
• Stuttering

  a disturbance in the normal flow and time patterning of speech characterized by one or more of the following: repetitions of sounds, syllables, or words; prolongation of sounds, abnormal stoppages or "silent blocks" within or between words interjections of unnecessary sounds or word; circumlocutions; or sounds and words produced with excessive tension
• Cluttering

  speech that is abnormally fast with omission of sounds & syllables of words, abnormal patterns of pausing and phrasing, and often spoken in bursts that may be unintelligible; frequently includes abnormalities in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
• Voice disorder (dysphonia)

  any deviation of loudness, pitch, or quality of voice that is outside the normal range of a person's age, gender, or geographic cultural background that interferes with communication, draws unfavorable attention to itself, or adversely affects the speaker or listener
• Dysphonia

  a general term that means a voice disorder, with the person's voice typically sounding rough, raspy, or hoarse
• Aphonia

  a complete loss of voice followed by whispering for oral communication that typically has psychological causes such as emotional stress
• Resonance disorder

  abnormal modification of the voice by passing through the nasal cavities during production of oral sounds (hypernasality) or not passing through the nasal cavities during production of nasal sounds (hyponasality)
• Hypernasality

  a resonance disorder that occurs when oral consonants and vowels enter the nasal cavity because of clefts of the hard and soft palate or weakness of the soft palate, causing a person to sound like they are talking through their nose
• Hyponasality (denasality)

  lack of normal resonance for the three English phonemes, /m/, /n/, and /ng/ caused by a partial or complete obstruction in the nasal tract
• Cognition

  the act or process of thinking or learning that involves perceiving stimuli, memory, abstraction, generalization, reasoning, judgment, and problem solving
• Hearing Impairment

  abnormal or reduced function in hearing resulting from an auditory disorder
• Conductive hearing loss


  a reduction in hearing sensitivity because of a disorder