educational info

Educational Information

ED321504 90
Children with Communication Disorders.

ERIC Digest #E470 (Revised #419).
Author:
Council for Exceptional Children, Reston, Va.; ERIC Clearinghouse on Handicapped
and Gifted Children, Reston, Va.

THIS DIGEST WAS CREATED BY ERIC, THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ERIC, CONTACT ACCESS ERIC 1-800-LET-ERIC

WHAT IS MEANT BY "COMMUNICATION DISORDERS"?

The term COMMUNICATION DISORDERS encompasses a wide variety of problems in language, speech, and hearing. Speech and language impairments include articulation problems, voice disorders, fluency problems (such as stuttering), aphasia (difficulty in using words, usually as a result of a brain injury), and delays in speech and/or language. Speech and language delays may be due to many factors, including environmental factors or hearing loss.

Hearing impairments include partial hearing and deafness. Deafness may be defined as a loss sufficient to make auditory communication difficult or impossible without amplification. There are four types of hearing loss. Conductive hearing losses are caused by diseases or obstructions in the outer or middle ear and can usually be helped with a hearing aid. Sensorineural losses result from damage to the sensory hair cells of the inner ear or the nerves that supply it and may not respond to the use of a hearing aid. Mixed hearing losses are those in which the problem occurs both in the outer or middle ear and in the inner ear. A central hearing loss results from damage to the nerves or brain.

Many communication disorders result from other conditions such as learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, or cleft lip or cleft palate.

HOW MANY CHILDREN HAVE COMMUNICATION DISORDERS?

The overall estimate for speech and language disorders is widely agreed to be 5% of school-aged children. This figure includes voice disorders (3%) and stuttering (1%). The incidence of elementary school children who exhibit delayed phonological (articulation) development is 2% to 3%, although the percentage decreases steadily with age.

Estimates of hearing impairments vary considerably, with one widely accepted figure of 5% representing the portion of school-aged children with hearing levels outside the normal range. Of this number, 10% to 20% require some type of special education. Approximately one-third of students who are deaf attend residential schools. Two-thirds attend day programs in schools for students who are deaf or day classes 
located in regular schools. The remainder are mainstreamed into regular school programs.

WHAT ARE SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILDREN WITH COMMUNICATION
DISORDERS?

A child with speech or language delays may present a variety of characteristics including the inability to follow directions, slow and incomprehensible speech, and pronounced difficulties in syntax and articulation. SYNTAX refers to the order of words in a sentence, and ARTICULATION refers to the manner in which sounds are formed. Articulation disorders are characterized by the substitution of one sound for another or the omission or distortion of certain sounds.

Stuttering or dysfluency is a disorder of speech flow that most often appears between the ages of 3 and 4 years and may progress from a sporadic to a chronic problem. Stuttering may spontaneously disappear by early adolescence, but speech and language therapy should be considered.

Typical voice disorders include hoarseness, breathiness, or sudden breaks in loudness or pitch. Voice disorders are frequently combined with other speech problems to form a complex communication disorder.

A child with a possible hearing problem may appear to strain to hear, ask to have questions repeated before giving the right answer, demonstrate speech inaccuracies (especially dropping the beginnings and endings of words), or exhibit confusion during discussion. Detection and diagnosis of hearing impairment have become very sophisticated. It is possible to detect the presence of hearing loss and evaluate its severity in a newborn child.

Students who speak dialects different from standard English may have communication problems that represent either language differences or, in more severe instances, language disorders.

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