Department of Speech Language Sciences

A Child Language Disorder is a condition that affects a child’s ability to use or understand language. It can involve problem with vocabulary, grammar, speech sounds or social communication. A child language disorder can have different causes, such as genetic factors, brain injury, hearing loss, or environmental factors. A child language disorder can affect a child’s academic, social, and emotional development.

Developmental Delay is a term that refers to a child who has not gained the developmental skills expected of him or her, compared to others of the same age. Developmental delay can affect different areas of development, such as motor, speech, language, cognitive, social, and emotional skills. Developmental delay can have various causes, such as genetic conditions, prenatal exposures, prematurity, infections, or environmental factors. Developmental delay can be identified by screening tests, evaluations and observations.

Receptive language disorder: It is a condition that affects a person’s ability to understand spoken or written language. People with receptive language disorder may have trouble following directions, answering questions, interpreting nonverbal cues, or comprehending jokes. Receptive language disorder can be caused by various factors, such as hearing loss, brain injury, development delay or genetic conditions. Receptive language disorder can interface with a person’s academic, social and emotional development. Receptive language disorder can be treated with speech language therapy, assistive technology or accommodations.

Expressive language disorder: This is when a child has difficulty using language to communicate with others. They may have trouble forming sentence, using words correctly, or expressing their thoughts and feelings. Expressive language disorder is communication disorder that affects a person’s ability to express thoughts, ideas, or information verbally or in writing. People with expressive language disorder may have trouble finding words, using correct grammar, forming complex sentence, or conveying their emotions. Expressive language disorder can be caused by various factors, such as brain injury, developmental delay, or hearing loss. Expressive language disorder can impact a person’s academic, social, and occupational functional functioning. Expressive language disorder can be treated with speech-language therapy, assistive technology, or accommodations.

Mixed receptive-expressive language disorder: This is when a child has both respective and expressive language problems. They may have difficulty with both understanding and producing language.

Phonological disorder: This is when a child has difficulty with the sounds of speech. They may have trouble pronouncing certain sounds, syllables, or words. They may also have trouble with rhyming, blending or segmenting sounds. Phonological disorder can be caused by various factors, such as hearing loss, genetic conditions or developmental delay. Phonological disorder can affect a person’s communication, literacy and social skills. Phonological disorder can be treated with speech-language therapy, which involves teaching the rules and pattern of sounds in a language.

Social communication disorder is a communication disorder that a person’s ability to use language for social purpose, such as having conversations, making friends, or telling stories. People with social communication disorder may have trouble with understanding and applying the different rules of social situations, communicating in different ways with different people, using nonverbal cues, such as eye contact or gestures, or interpreting the meaning and intention of others. Social communication disorder can be developmental, meaning it occurs from an early age, or acquired, meaning it results from brain damage. Social communication disorder can have various causes, such a genetic factors, developmental delay, or autism spectrum disorder.

Attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) is a condition that affects a person’s ability to focus, control impulses and regulate their activity level. People with ADHD may have trouble paying attention, staying organized, following instructions, or completing tasks. They may also act impulsively, fidget, talk excessively or interrupt others. ADHD can cause problems at school, work, or home. ADHD is not a sign of low intelligence or laziness. It is a brain-based disorder that can be treated with medication, therapy or other interventions.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) refers to a group of neurodevelopment disorder that affect how people communicate, learn, behave, and socially interact. People may have repetitive and characteristic patterns of behaviour or narrow interests. ASD is a spectrum meaning that symptoms can range from mild to serve and vary from person to person. ASD can affect people of any age, race, ethnicity or gender. The exact causes of ASD are not known but research suggest that both genes and environment play a role. There is no cure for ASD but early intervention and treatment can help improve the quality of life and outcomes for people with ASD and their families.

Speech sounds disorder: A child with a speech sound disorder is unable to say all of speech sounds in words. This can make the child’s speech hard to understand. People may not understand the child in everyday situations. For most children the cause of the speech sound disorder (misarticulation) is unknown. Other speech sound disorder can be linked to things such as a cleft palate, problems with the teeth, hearing loss or difficulty controlling the movements of the mouth.

Maxillofacial Anomalies: Cleft lip and palate are the most common facial deformity. It may involve lip only, lip and palate and palate only. The main reason of cleft in infants may be either environmental (such as smoking, alcohol, poor nutrition) or genetic factors (such as familial factors and chromosomes)

Voice Disorders: The voice is produced as air from the lungs move up through and vibrates the vocal folds. This is called phonation. With voice disorders, the voice may be harsh, hoarse, and raspy, cut in and out, or show sudden changes in pitch. Voice disorders can be due to vocal nodules, cysts, papillomas, paralysis, or weakness of the vocal folds.

Dysphagia: Dysphagia refers to difficult or painful swallowing due to an underlying medical condition. People with dysphagia have difficulty swallowing and may even experience pain while swallowing (odynophagia). Some people may be completely unable to swallow or may have trouble safely, swallowing liquids, foods, or saliva. When that eating becomes a challenge. Often, dysphagia makes it difficult to take in enough and fluids to nourish the body and can lead to additional serious medical problems.

Resonance Disorders: Reasons is the overall quality of the voice. A resonance disorder is when the quality of the voice changes as it travels through the different-shaped spaces of the throat, nose and mouth.

Resonance disorders include the following:

i. Hypo nasality (Denasality): this is when not enough sound comes through the nose, making the child sound ‘stopped up’. ‘This might be caused by a blocking in the nose or by allergies.
ii. Hyper nasality: This happens when the movable, soft part of the palate (the velum) does not completely close off the nose from the back of the throat during speech. Because of this, too much sound escapes through the nose. This can be due to a history of cleft palate, a submucous cleft, a short palate, a wide nasopharynx, the removal of too much issue during an adenoidectomy, or poor movement of the soft palate.
iii. Cul-de-Sac Resonance: This is when there is a blockage of sound in the nose, mouth, or throat. The voice sounds muffled or quite as a result.

Fluency Disorder (Stuttering): Stuttering is the most common type of fluency disorder. Stuttering happens when there are an abnormal number of repetitions, hesitations, prolongations or block in this rhythm or flow of speech. Tension may also be seen in the face, neck, shoulders or fists. There are many theories about why children stutter. At present, the cause is most likely linked to underlying neurological differences in speech and language processing. Internal reaction from the person talking, and external reaction from other listeners, may impact stuttering, but they do not cause stuttering.

Cerebral Palsy: Cerebral Palsy is considered a neurological disorder caused by a non-progressive brain injury or malformation that occurs while the child’s brain is under development. Cerebral palsy primarily affects body movement and muscle co-ordination.

Neurodegenerative conditions: Neurodegenerative disorders encompass a wide range of conditions that result from progressive damage to cells and nervous system connections that are essential for mobility, coordination, strength, sensation, speech, language and cognition. Neurodegenerative disorders include: Alzheimer’s and other memory disorders, Ataxia, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Motor neuron disease, atrophy, Progressive supranuclear palsy, Myasthenia Gravis, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Apraxia of Speech: Apraxia of speech is also known as acquired apraxia of speech, verbal apraxia or childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), when diagnosed in children it is known as a speech sound disorder. Someone with AOS has trouble saying what he or she wants to say correctly and consistently. AOS is a neurological disorder that affects the brain pathways involved in planning the sequence of movements involved in producing speech. The brain knows what it wants to say but cannot properly plan and sequence the required speech sound movements.

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC): Augmentative and alternative

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC): Communication is a range of strategies and tools to help people who struggle with speech. These may be simple latter or picture boards or sophisticated computer-based systems. AAC helps someone to communicate as effectively as possible, in as many situations as possible.