Alalia is a complete lack of speech or its underdevelopment in children with normal intelligence and hearing. This violation is the result of damage to the speech areas of the brain during birth. It can also appear due to a disease of the nervous system or severe trauma to the skull suffered by the child in the pre-speech period of life. Initially, Alalia was called hearing-mute and was not treated at all.
Alalia is of varying degrees - from the most severe, when the child does not speak until 12 years old, to mild, more reminiscent of the general underdevelopment of speech.
Alalia is a disorder associated with brain damage that is manifested in a child by a lack of ability to talk. It is important to distinguish such patients from those whose hearing and intelligence are impaired - with mental retardation. Children with alalia are able to respond to sounds and perceive information. Mental development can be impaired in a child only because of alienation, pedagogical neglect, impossibility of mastering the curriculum and poor memory.
Classification
There are two main types of alalia - sensory and motor. Both violations can be corrected with an integrated approach. In most cases, with timely diagnosis and compliance with all recommendations, children are able to enroll in a comprehensive school.
Sensory alalia
This problem is characterized by an initial violation of speech perception with normal hearing. Sensory alalia appears due to damage to the temporal regions of the brain located in the left hemisphere, which are called the center of Wernicke.
Children with sensory alalia do not understand speech at all or understand it in a limited way. They are able to adequately respond to
sound signals, distinguish between different noises in character (rustling, knocking, creaking, etc.). In the speech of babies with sensory alalia, echolalia is present - this is an automatic meaningless repetition of other people's words. Therefore, instead of answering the question, such a child can repeat the question itself.
Leading in sensory alalia is considered a violation of phonemic hearing, which manifests itself to varying degrees. That is, it can be absolute non-discrimination of speech sounds or their difficult perception, manifested in the difficulties of distinguishing similar in sound but different in spelling words (daughter - barrel, cancer - varnish).
It is important to send a child with sensory alalia in a timely manner for consultation with specialists: an otolaryngologist for hearing research, a neuropsychiatrist and speech therapist.
In practice, cases of sensory alalia are a rather rare occurrence; a more simple form of the disease is more common - motor.
Second type
Motor alalia is a complex of symptoms, both speech and non-speech, where mastering the language is leading. Motor alalia in children occurs several times more often than sensory. How serious is this problem?
Alalia. Diagnosis and speech symptoms
Speech disturbance in motor alalia captures all its components: the lexical-grammatical and phonetic-phonemic sides. It is assumed that the first problem is caused by damage to the anterior parts of the motor region in the cerebral cortex, and the second is due to a malfunction of the lower parts of the central motor region in the cortex of the dominant hemisphere, where all the irritations from muscles and ligaments that appear when performing articulation movements are concentrated.
In a child with alalia, the formation of subtle motor coordination of the speech apparatus is difficult . These disorders are of a different nature, ranging from oral apraxia (paralysis) to a violation of sequence or switchability. Inability to perform certain articulation movements is also observed.
Often, children with motor alalia, due to insufficient sound perception, capture only certain elements of the phrase and are unable to connect them into a common semantic structure. This limited understanding serves as a secondary manifestation of the underdevelopment of one’s own speech. Children with motor alalia usually have a limited vocabulary, but the passive vocabulary is very voluminous.
With motor alalia, the following aspects of speech can be disturbed:
- phonemic realization of statements;
- language speech;
- the rhythmic organization of a word is chanted speech.
Now consider what symptoms of motor alalia have. Vocabulary in children with such a violation is very slowly developing and is used incorrectly in speech. As a result of the poverty of the stock of lexical and semantic means, replacements appear in similarity or contrast, for example, erasing - washing, a cup - a glass, an ax - a hammer. The set of adjectives and adverbs is small.
At the initial stages of speech development, such a child has no need for communication using coherent speech, which is due to the underdevelopment of both general and speech activity. Therefore, the baby often uses facial expressions, gestures and monosyllabic words when communicating with an adult.
Non-verbal symptoms of the disease
In children with motor alalia, there is an underdevelopment of not only speech, but also some mental and motor functions. Usually, neurological symptoms are observed, varying in severity: from minimal manifestations of cerebral dysfunction to severe disorders. Often also noted physical failure and general somatic weakness of the body.
Children with motor alalia are usually clumsy, have discoordination of their movements, their movements are slow or inhibited. Motor activity is reduced, rhythm is insufficient, dynamic and static balance is disturbed. Violations of fine motor skills are especially evident.
In children with motor alalia, higher mental functions (memory, attention, thinking, etc.) are usually underdeveloped at the level of voluntary and conscious perception.
In a number of cases, pathological personality traits and character formation according to the neurotic type may develop. In children with motor alalia, isolation, self-doubt, irritability, touchiness and a tendency to tears are noted.
There is another kind of ailment - total, or mixed sensory-motor alalia. With this option, both the sensory and motor sides of speech are disturbed. If the child has sensory-motor alalia, he cannot speak. In addition, the patient does not understand the speech addressed to him.
What are the mixed alalia symptoms? This disease is difficult to diagnose. He is often confused with problems such as autism, hearing impairment, intelligence, etc.
Working with children with total alalia often includes, in addition to classes with a psychologist and speech therapist, drug treatment aimed at activating speech cents in the cerebral cortex.
How does the disease appear?
The main cause of alalia is brain damage during fetal development or in the first year of a child's life.
- In the prenatal period, the development of the brain can be affected by infections, hypoxia, placental insufficiency, bad habits of the mother. Damage to the baby’s brain can occur during childbirth. This may include hypoxia, birth injury, hypothermia.
- In the first year of a baby’s life, brain damage is possible due to viral infections or traumatic brain injuries.
Symptoms
Alalia, the diagnosis of which is a complex process, is sometimes practically indistinguishable from some other diseases. It is important to rule out deafness or mental retardation. With alalia, the child disrupts the activity of certain parts of the brain. A huge role is played by the defeat of two brain structures: Brock's speech centers and Wernicke, which are responsible for the formation of one's own speech and its understanding.
Signs of motor alalia
Among the symptoms of the disease can be identified:
- lack of self-care skills;
- movement disorder: children do not jump on one leg, cannot walk on the board, often stumble, and are unable to dance rhythmically to music;
- there are several standard levels of speech development for a given violation: from its complete absence to the ability to speak in expanded phrases;
- the child most often cannot express his feelings and ask for something;
- there is an awareness of speech addressed to the patient;
- the kid understands the lexical meaning of the word, but not the ending, prefixes, prepositions.
Signs of sensory alalia
Symptoms of this type of disease can be considered the following phenomena:
- the child does not understand the meaning of the word he has heard;
- there is no connection between a specific subject and sound design;
- the presence of echolalia (automatic repetition of words).
Fix the problem
Consider how the alalia is corrected. Since it is a medical-psychological-pedagogical problem, an integrated approach to the formation of the formation of speech and the development of the personality as a whole is necessary. Speech therapy work should be carried out against the background of medical and psychotherapeutic treatment. Alalia is a complex disorder that is not easy to diagnose.
The main features of correctional work
- The process is primarily aimed at the formation of motive, communicative intention, internal program of expression.
- Attention is paid to fine motor skills: children learn to paint, stroke, play with mosaics, tie knots, etc.
- Effective for the development of speech in children with alalia is the use of rhythm and logo rhythm. In these classes, music, speech and movement are combined in various exercises and form speech motor activity. Also there is a development of memory and personal development of children.
- To intensify speech, the practice of communication at the level accessible to the child is important: operations with words (repeat, show, name), phrases and phrasal material.
- Important is the development of analyzers - visual, auditory and tactile.
- It is only necessary to apply the game form of work.
- Mandatory use of visual material: various symbols, environmental materials, pictures, accompanying actions with speech, etc.
- The impact should be directed to the general speech system, vocabulary refinement, the development of phrasal and coherent speech, the production of sounds.
Main stages
- At the first stage of the work, the upbringing of speech activity and the filling of a passive dictionary, accessible for understanding, take place.
- Next, phrasal speech and dialogue are formed.
- At the third stage, special attention is paid to such aspects as coherent speech, communicative skills, in addition, grammar structures are automated.
In the process of eliminating the problem, various methods of conducting vocabulary work are actively used. The first option is natural: a demonstration of objects, pictures, actions, situations. The second is verbal: correlation of new words with those already known by similarity and opposite.
They use different types of work on the dictionary, which includes the selection of objects for action, for example, to show or say who flies, runs, crawls. Such methods are no less effective: naming the individual parts of the whole, for example, a wheel, headlight, steering wheel; selection of root words, synonyms, antonyms; guessing objects according to the description; transformation of diminutive words, etc. Also, in parallel with the replenishment of the dictionary on common topics (animals, plants, toys, vegetables, fruits, family, etc.), the skill of using a certain grammatical form of words (cases, singular and plural) develops and etc.).
If the child has alalia, how should corrective work be done? Performing actions with objects, children should try to voice them with a speech, that is, accompany each action with words: pour water, pour water, pour water into a bottle, blow water, etc. Patients at this stage develop the skill to answer questions and try ask them, come up with sentences first with one word, and then with reference words, with the help of a series of pictures, guess and compose riddles according to descriptions, compare the characteristics of several objects, etc. At that time, diverse and detailed answers are encouraged , which, in turn, contributes to the active search and selection of the appropriate grammatical form of the desired word, fosters interest in speech as a means of communication.
Naturally, no rules are explained to the child; grammar information is not communicated. The therapy process provides only a game form and practical familiarization with more frequency models in inflection and word formation, construction of sentences.
The whole procedure for working on grammatical categories is based on the following: first, the child must observe how the speech therapist constructs a certain model, and then he is included in the process of imitative speech activity.
If a child has motor alalia, how are classes conducted? The process of practical use of grammatical structures by children with alalia has some features, since the formation of all concepts is carried out only on the basis of special forms of analysis and synthesis, which as a result lead to abstraction and unnecessary generalizations.
The main task of the work, which includes the formation of the communication process and the active replenishment of the means of communication with the child, should be constantly visible. The next step can be considered a gradual transition from dialogue in interpersonal communication to monologic speech with the development of an incentive to tell. For this, usually the child talks about what he saw or passes on some information.
A letter helps to master the structure of words and phrases, and through reading and writing a child with alalia controls and corrects his speech. The education of such children is much longer, and it requires the use of special techniques and techniques. Often in children with the disease in question, in the process of mastering the written speech, secondary dyslexia and dysgraphia appear.
Does baby have alalia? What treatment and correction have features? One of the most commonly used ways to get rid of the problem in question is to stimulate certain skin areas using low-frequency current pulses. Such areas are projections of the speech zones of the brain. As a result of their stimulation, nerve endings are activated. This method of treatment does not have a scientifically sound basis, therefore, when correcting an ailment only with its help, the absence of a therapeutic effect is possible, therefore, the use of neurostimulation methods of speech zones can not always be justified.
Additional methods
If the patient has alalia, practicing with a speech therapist is very important. They should be carried out regularly. Speech therapy massage is actively used for such speech impairment as alalia. The treatment is aimed at stimulating the muscles that are involved in the formation of sounds. To do this, massage with fingers or special speech therapy probes.
Physiotherapeutic treatment is also used in children with alalia. Among the main methods are laser, water, magnet, and acupuncture.
Conclusion
Speech alalia requires a very long treatment and an integrated approach. Most often, therapy takes place in specialized kindergartens and schools, where children with speech impairments study. If treatment results are available, there is the possibility of children moving to a comprehensive school.
In some cases, the elimination and correction of alalia in a child takes several years, and then constant training with a speech therapist is required to maintain the result. Even after successful therapeutic work, most children require regular classes to eliminate dysgraphia and dyslexia. A child with alalia needs psychological help and support. It is difficult for him to make new acquaintances and feel good in the team. Some children experience constant stress when communicating with peers, which can lead to aggression, nervous breakdowns. Therefore, a child with alalia needs help in overcoming the fear of communication, isolation.