Communication Disorders

Question 1

What is Aphasia?

Answer 1

An acquired neurological impairment of processing for receptive and/or expressive language

Question 2

What characteristics are often associated with a poorer prognosis?

Answer 2

• Preservation of Speech
• Severe Auditory Comprehension Impairments
• Unreliable yes/no Answers
• Use of Empty Speech without Recognition of Impairments

Question 3

What is Fluent Aphasia?

Answer 3

Frequently involves the temporal lobe:
- Wernicke’s Area or Regions of the Parietal Lobe

• Word output and speech production are function
• Prosody Acceptable, but empty speech/jargon
• Speech lacks any substance
• Unrecognizable Words (Neologism)

Question 4

What Non-Fluent Aphasia?

Answer 4

Frequently involves the frontal lobe (anterior speech center) of the dominant hemisphere

• Poor word output and dysprodic speech (impairments in the rhythm and inflection of speech)
• Poor articulation
• Content may be present but impaired syntactical words

Question 5

What is Wernicke’s Aphasia?

Answer 5

AKA: Receptive Aphasia

• Comprehension (reading/auditory) impaired
• Good Articulation
• Impaired Writing
• Poor Naming Ability

Question 6

What is Conduction Aphasia?

Answer 6

• Severe impairments with repetition
• Intact fluency, good comprehension
• Speech interrupted by word-finding difficulties
• Reading intact, writing impaired

Question 7

What is Broca’s Aphasia?

Answer 7

AKA: Expressive Aphasia (most common form)

• intact auditory and reading comprehension
• impaired repetition and naming skills
• Frustration with language skill errors
• Motor impairments are typical due to the proximity of Broca’s area to the motor cortex

Question 8

What is Global Aphasia?

Answer 8

Comprehension (reading/writing) Severely Impaired
- Impaired naming, writing, repetition skills
- May involuntarily verbalize
- may use non-verbal skills for communication

Question 9

What is Verbal Apraxia?

Answer 9

Verbal Expression is impaired secondary to deficits in motor planning.

• Patient is unable to initiate learned movement (articulation of speech) even though they understand the task

Question 10

What is Dysarthria?

Answer 10

Motor disorder of speech due to a UMN lesion affecting the muscles used to articulate words and sounds.

• “slurred” type speech
• Impaired movement of muscles responsible for speech production: lips, tongue, vocal cords, diapghagm.