Communication Disorders

Identification of Communication Disorders

The scores obtained from standardized individually administered measures of expressive language development are substantially below those obtained from standardized measures of both nonverbal intellectual capacity and receptive language development. Communication disorders may be manifest clinically by symptoms that include having a markedly limited vocabulary, making errors in tense, or having difficulty recalling words or producing sentences with developmentally appropriate length or complexity.

Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder

The scores obtained from a battery of standardized individually administered measures of both receptive and expressive language development are substantially below those obtained from standardized measures of nonverbal intellectual capacity. Symptoms include those for Expressive Language Disorder as well as difficulty understanding words, sentences, or specific types of words, such as spatial terms.

Phonological Disorder

Failure to use developmentally expected speech sounds that are appropriate for age and dialect (e.g. errors in sound production, use, representation, or organization such as, but not limited to, substitutions of one sound for another (use of /t/for target/k/sound) or omissions of sounds such as final consonants).

Stuttering

Disturbance in the normal fluency and time patterning of speech (inappropriate for the individual's age) characterized by frequent occurrences of one or more of the following:

• Sound and syllable repetitions
• Sound prolongations
• Interjections
• Broken words
• Audible or silent blocking
• Word substitutions to avoid problematic words
• Words produced with an excess of physical tension
• Monosyllabic whole-word repetitions (e.g., "I-I-I see him")