People who suffer from dysphasia usually have difficulties understanding and expressing language. Furthermore, not only do they acquire the language late but they do so incorrectly in terms of phonetics, structure or content. Do you want to know more about dysphasia? Then do not hesitate to continue reading this Psychology-Online article: What is dysphasia: definition, types, causes and treatment.
Definition of dysphasia
Dysphasia or also called specific language disorder is defined as a alteration in language development that occurs without affecting other evolutionary factors. It is an alteration in the language that manifests itself from the beginning of linguistic development, which appears with a delay and affects the person in a lasting way, whether with lesser or greater severity. Thus, it is considered a innate difficulty of the person. Furthermore, dysphasia is considered a specific language impairment since it is not justified by any sensory, motor, intellectual or socio-emotional deficit, but is a unique and exclusive language processing disorder. It is necessary to differentiate it from and from dysatria.
Although dysphasia is a specific language impairment, it can also coexist with other disorders, such as intellectual disability, among others. Therefore, it is important to differentiate the origin of the variables that affect the person, that is, to differentiate the strictly linguistic aspects and difficulties from the other variables that are due to another disorder other than dysphasia.
People who suffer from dysphasia, as a consequence of the disorder’s effects, not only present language difficulties, but also show affected their abilities to relate, pay attention and behave. Thus, people with dysphasia will present characteristics such as the following:
- Difficulty relating to peers.
- Isolation. The same person decides to isolate himself or his colleagues isolate him.
- Decreased attention to work.
- Another characteristic of people with dysphasia is that they tend to be repetitive in their habits.
- Difficulty acquiring knowledge.
- Difficulties in understanding space and time.
- Another characteristic of people who suffer from dysphasia is that they have greater cognitive complications compared to people who do not suffer from dysphasia.
Types of dysphasia
Three types of dysphasia can be differentiated:
- Motor or expressive dysphasia: People who suffer from this type of dysphasia show a good level of understanding but, at the same time, they have significant difficulty in being able to imitate the sounds of phonemes and words, and they have poor and limited spontaneous language.
- Sensory or receptive dysphasia: This type of dysphasia is characterized by the presence of difficulties in verbal associations, in the interpretation of environmental language (for example, difficulty in interpreting the sensations that light colors in a room give us) and in the verbal evocation of objects ( difficulty remembering the name of objects, for example, when we say “I had it on the tip of my tongue” we mean that it has been difficult for us to remember the name of a certain object).
- Mixed dysphasia: This dysphasia refers to the set of motor and sensory symptoms that are affected, that is, it includes the difficulties of the two previous types of dysphasia.
Causes of dysphasia
Dysphasia has different origins. The causes of dysphasia that we can find are:
- Trauma or blows to certain areas of the brain.
- Brain tumor.
- Causes of dysphasia originating at the time of childbirth (for example, lack of oxygen at birth, brain trauma during childbirth, among others).
- Infectious diseases that affect the brain.
- Genetic and hereditary factors.
- Another cause of dysphasia is alterations in the organs that intervene in the production of language.
- Environmental causes: refer to the negative influence on emotional and affective development by the person’s family, social, cultural and natural environment.
Dysphasia treatment
There is no single treatment model for dysphasia since each person is different and, therefore, has different difficulties and needs. For this reason, it is advisable to adapt the treatment to the patient’s age and individual characteristics. But there is a usual model consisting of three levels, which must be adapted to the person and, therefore, no two will be alike. The three levels of dysphasia treatment are described below:
- The first level is called “reinforced stimulation.”, which consists of presenting the patient with natural communicative and verbal stimuli in real and facilitating contexts, in which the patient can put into practice the strategies involved in the use of language. In this way, the aim is to increase the stability of the stimuli and strategies and also to increase the intensity of the interactions that the patient establishes with other people.
- The second level refers to the so-called “language restructuring”, where the aim is to modify all aspects of communication and language in order to facilitate their development. At this level, it is proposed to introduce methods that can increase the ease of communication, such as adding visual, tactile or motor information, in addition to the acoustic component of speech.
- Finally, the third level of dysphasia treatment is characterized by introduction of an alternative communication system, in cases where verbal communication is not possible or is very limited. In some cases, this would be the definitive solution, although in most cases this alternative system ends up becoming a system that increases the development of communicative capacity.
It should be noted that these three levels are complementary and flexible. It is simply a small practical guide that some professionals recommend to treat dysphasia.
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This article is merely informative, at Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
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Bibliography
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