Speech And Learning Difficulties

To begin with, the primary cause of aphasia should be stabilized or treated. After doing so, that’s the only time that a therapist can work on the rehabilitation of the patient. To recover a person’s language function, he or she should begin undergoing therapy as soon as possible subsequent the injury.

Speech Therapy: As A Treatment For Aphasia

Since there are no surgical or medical procedures that are currently available to treat Aphasia, conditions that result from head injury or stroke can be improved through the treatment of speech therapy.

For majority of Aphasic patients though, the main emphasis is placed upon optimizing the use of the person’s retained language skills and being able to learn to use other ways of communication to be able to compensate for their permanently lost language abilities.

Therapy Activities

The formulation of what activities to use during a speech therapy session is critically done and would highly depend on the therapists’ assessment and diagnosis results on the individual. However, there are some general activities that are done to treat Aphasia.

Exercise

Since most types of Aphasia would include right-sided weakness of the body and sensory loss, it is important for the patient to be able to exercise their body. Regular exercise and practice is needed to strengthen the weak muscles and prevent it from further degeneration.

The exercise activities do not have to be exhilarating. For the purpose of speech function, the therapist can exercise the patient’s weakened muscles through repetitive speaking of certain words, and projecting facial expressions, like smiling and frowning.

The use of food too is helpful, since the patient is able to exercise articulators needed for speech production like the tongue and jaw, which may be weakened due to the condition.

Picture Cards

One of the tools used for therapy are picture cards. Pictures of daily living and everyday objects can be used to improve and develop word recall skills. Picture cards can act as a visual cue to increase the learning process of an Aphasic. These can also help increase the vocabulary of the patient.

By showing the picture cards and repetitively saying aloud the names of the objects in the picture, the patient will be able to exercise weak muscles and practice vocalization.

Picture Boards

Another tool for therapy are picture boards. Since aphasia can bring about difficulty in recalling names of activities, objects and people, use of material to help recall these names is very helpful. By making use of a board where the therapist places pictures of different everyday activities and objects, the patient can point to specific pictures to express ideas and communicate with other people.

Workbooks

The use of workbooks is also important in the treatment of Aphasia. Since reading and writing skills are affected, this is one way to exercise them. Workbook exercises can be used to sharpen an Aphasic’s word recalling skills and recover reading and writing abilities.

By reading aloud, hearing comprehension can also be exercised and redeveloped through workbook exercises.

Computers

With the development of technology, there are now computer programs that are used to treat Aphasia. Such computer programs can be used to improve an Aphasic’s reading, speech, recall, and hearing comprehension. In fact, the use of computers can bring about optimal results, since it can stimulate senses of vision, and hearing at the same time, helping speed up the learning process.

Aphasia can bring about a lot of speech and language problems that are to be treated for speech therapy. The kind of speech and language problems brought by Aphasia would highly depend on the kind of Aphasia that you may have.

Broca’s Aphasia

Broca’s Aphasia is also known as motor aphasia. You can obtain this, if you damage your brain’s frontal lobe, particularly at the frontal part of the lobe at your language-dominant side.

If Broca’s Aphasia is your case, then you may have complete mutism or inability to speak. In some cases you may be able to utter single-word statements or a full sentence, but constructing such would entail you great effort.

You may also omit small words, like conjunctions (but, and, or) and articles (a, an, the). Due to these omissions, you may produce a "telegraph" quality of speech. Usually, your hearing comprehension is not affected, so you are able to comprehend conversation, other’s speech and follow commands.

Difficulty in writing is also evident, since you may experience weakness on your body’s right side. You also get an impaired reading ability along with difficulty in finding the right words when speaking. People with this type of aphasia may be depressed and frustrated, because of their awareness of their difficulties.

Wernicke’s Aphasia

When your brain’s language-dominant area’s temporal lobe is damaged, you get Wernicke’s aphasia. If you have this kind of aphasia, you may speak in uninterrupted, long, sentences; the catch is, the words you use are usually unnecessary or at times made-up.

You can also have difficulty understanding other’s speech, to the extent of having the inability to comprehend spoken language in any way. You also have a diminished reading ability. Your writing ability may be retained, but what you write may seem to be abnormal.

In contrast with Broca’s Aphasia, Wernicke’s Aphasia doesn’t manifest physical symptoms like right-sided weakness. Also, with this kind of Aphasia, you are not aware of your language errors.

Global Aphasia

This kind of aphasia is obtained when you have widespread damage on language areas of your brain’s left hemisphere. Consequently, all your fundamental language functions are affected. However, some areas can be severely affected than other areas of your brain.

It may be the case that you have difficulty speaking but you are able to write well. You may also experience weakness and numbness on the right side of your body.

Conduction Aphasia

This kind is also known as Associative Aphasia. It is a somewhat uncommon kind, in which you have the inability to repeat sentences, phrases and words. Your speech fluency is reasonably unbroken. There are times that you may correct yourself and skip or repeat some words.

Even though you are capable of understanding spoken language, you can still have difficulty finding the right words to use to describe an object or a person. This condition’s effect on your reading and writing skills can also vary. Just like other types of aphasia, you can have sensory loss or right-sided weakness.

Nominal Or Anomic Aphasia

This kind of aphasia would primarily influence your ability to obtain the right name for an object or person. Consequently, rather than naming an object, you may resort to describing it. Your reading skills, writing ability, hearing comprehension, and repetition are not damaged, except by this inability to get the right name.

Your may have fluent speech, except for the moments that you pause to recall the correct name. Physical symptoms like sensory loss and one-sided body weakness, may or may not be present.

Transcortical Aphasia

This kind is caused by the damage of language areas on your left hemisphere just outside your primary language areas. There are three types of this aphasia: transcortical sensory, transcortical motor, and mixed transcortical. All of these types are differentiated from others by your ability to repeat phrases, words, or sentences.