B13-Human Communication Flashcards
Aphasia
Difficulty in producing or comprehending speech not produced by deafness or a simple motor deficit; caused by brain damage.
Broca’s aphasia
A form of aphasia characterized by agrammatism, anomia, and extreme difficulty in speech articulation.
Function word
A preposition, article, or other word that conveys little of the meaning of a sentence but its important in specifying its grammatical structure.
Content word
A noun, verb, adjective, or adverb that conveys meaning.
Broca’s area
A region of frontal cortex, located just rostral to the base of the left primary motor cortex, that is necessary for normal speech production.
Agrammatism
One of the usual symptons of Broca’s aphasia; a difficulty in comprehending or properly employinng grammatical devices, such as verb endings and word order.
Anomia
Difficulty in finding (remembering) the appropriate word to describe an object, action, or attribute; one of the symptoms of aphasia.
Wernicke’s area
A region of the auditory association cortex on the left temporal lobe of humans, which is important in the comprehension of words and the production of meaningful speech.
Wernicke’s aphasia
A form of aphasia characterized by poor speech comprehension and fluent but meaningless speech.
Pure word deafness
The ability to hear, to speak, and (usually) to read and write without being able to comprehend the meaning of speech; caused by damage to Wernicke’s area or disruption of auditory input to this region.
Transcortical sensory aphasia
A speech disorder in which a person has difficulty comprehending speech and producing meaningful spontaneous speech but can repeat speech; caused by damage to the region of the brain posterior to Wernicke’s area.
Arcuate Fasciculus
A bundle of axons that connects Wernicke’s area with Broca’s area; damage causes conduction aphasia.
Conduction aphasia
An aphasia characterized by an inability to repeat words that are heard but the ability to speak normally and comprehend the speech of others.
Circumlocution
A strategy by which people with anomia find alternative ways to say something when they are unable to think of the most appropriate word.
Prosody
The use of changes in intonation and emphasis to convey meaning in speech besides that specified by the particular words; an important means of communication of emotion.
