Dyslalia is a violation of the correct reproduction of certain sounds, provided that the patient retains normal hearing function and the supply of nerves to the speech apparatus. It is often diagnosed in children aged 3-5 years, less often in patients of the younger school age group.
Content of the article:
Speech dyslalia: classification of the violation
Causes of dyslalia
Symptoms of impaired sound perception
Diagnosis of dyslalia
Ways to correct dyslalia
Prognosis for recovery and preventive measures
Dyslalia
The peculiarity of the violation of pronunciation of sounds is that dyslalia has no connection with injuries of the hearing aid or disorders of the child’s central nervous system, that is, the patient is physically healthy, but when communicating, he swaps letters or pronounces them “swallowing”. However, if the child is asked to write a word with which there are difficulties, the correct letters will be indicated.
Speech dyslalia in younger children is the most diagnosed defect. If we consider statistics, then in medical practice such a violation is found in 1 out of 3 children aged 3-5 years, after reaching 6-8 years, speech is corrected, and the symptoms of the violation will be noticed in 1 out of 5 children. In the future, only 1% of patients are diagnosed.
Dyslalia is selective, that is, the child perfectly pronounces 90% of words, letters and sounds. If the correction is implemented in a timely manner, the patient completely gets rid of the violation of sound reproduction.
Speech dyslalia: classification of the disorder
In the process of studying the deviation, specialists came to the need to classify the pathology, which in the future allowed them to choose the optimal method of speech correction.
There are three forms of dyslalia:
physiological — age-related speech defect of the child;
mechanical — due to the incorrect structure of the speech apparatus (there is a possibility of hereditary transmission);
functional — speech disorders are not caused by pathologies of the organs that are responsible for the function of speech.
With the first two forms, everything is clear. But what to do when functional dyslalia is diagnosed? Speech therapy in this case offers powerful correction methods that can help the patient. However, it is of paramount importance to understand what it is caused by and how it manifests itself.
The occurrence of functional dyslalia is associated with stable individual characteristics of the nervous system. The violation of this type is reversible, unlike mechanical dyslalia, which is caused by an incorrect structure of the speech apparatus, when correction is possible exclusively surgically.
In turn, experts distinguish two types of functional dyslalia:
sensory appearance — occurs against the background of neurodynamic disorders of the central part of the speech and hearing apparatus;
motor variant — occurs against the background of neurodynamic disorders of the central part of the speech and motor apparatus.
Sensory dyslalia is characterized by a violation of the difference between similar sounds. The child, when pronouncing, confuses hissing or whistling sounds, deaf or sonorous, hard or soft. Therefore, when he is asked to say, for example, “word”, he can pronounce “slovo”, that is, there is an interchange of sounds. In addition to oral speech, if the patient writes under dictation, he may make a similar mistake on the letter.
Motor dyslalia is characterized by a discrepancy between the movements of the lips and the tongue when pronouncing sounds. Articulation becomes blurred, and in this connection a phonetic defect appears.
In severe cases, it is possible to diagnose the totality of sound reproduction, then the doctor diagnoses sensorimotor dyslalia. The degree of difficulty of pronunciation and differentiation of sounds by the patient may be different.
By the nature of the violation of dyslalia , there are:
articulation;
acoustic;
articulatory-phonetic — occurs as a result of not fully formed phonetic hearing, when pronouncing a word, the patient incorrectly defines difficult sounds (“crust” — “slide”, “bones” — “gostochki”);
articulatory-phonemic — characterized by the replacement of the heard sound with a similar one, provided that the articulatory positions are located incorrectly (“gone” — “sat down”);
acoustic-phonemic — incorrect articulatory arrangement during pronunciation, in connection with this distortion of the pronounced sounds occurs (the letter “p” pronounces by grasping).
Depending on how many sounds the patient does not pronounce, the form of the violation is determined.
There are two forms of dyslalia:
complex — the perception and reproduction of more than four sounds is disturbed;
simple — characterized by the same type of violation: monomorphic (only vowels or consonants) and polymorphic (vowels and consonants).
In speech therapy, there is a special table of violations for classifying dyslalia by sounds. The Greek alphabet was taken as a basis:
yotacism — incorrect pronunciation of words where there is a sound “Y”;
rotacism — incorrect pronunciation or substitution of the “P” sound;
hitism — problems with recognizing and pronouncing the sounds “X” and “K”;
kappacism — difficulty pronouncing words where there is a “K”;
gammacism — incorrect differentiation of the sound “G”;
sigmatism — violation of pronunciation or substitution of hissing and whistling;
The danger of dyslalia lies in the fact that complex cumulative defects in pronunciation and recognition of sounds can occur against its background. In the case when a patient is diagnosed with a combined dyslalia with a phonemic deviation, a “pair” will be present in the diagnosis, for example, paraiotacism.
Causes of dyslalia
If we consider mechanical dyslalia, experts note the main reason for its appearance — a defect in physical development, which does not allow the patient to correctly reproduce the sound heard. It appears mainly in the presence of dental defects (such as abnormal bite, incisors that have not cut or incorrectly formed, underdevelopment of the lower jaw, cleft palate, etc.).
Functional dyslalia develops against the background of an unstable mental or physical condition of the child. This may be due to the injuries received.
Very often dyslalia is diagnosed in children with mental development problems. Another factor that provokes dyslalia are diseases of high severity suffered at the time of the formation of speech function. Often the reason for the development of dyslalia is the parents themselves, namely the lack of communication and attention paid to a preschool child who is in the active stage of speech formation.
Rarely, but there are cases of combined dyslalia.
Doctors identify a number of main causes of the development of mechanical dyslalia. These include:
underdevelopment of the tongue frenulum (short);
incorrect maxillofacial bone structure;
defects of the palate;
underdevelopment of the upper lip frenulum;
violation of the integrity of the upper hard palate and lip.
Given the above reasons, a speech therapist can diagnose a speech disorder, but the treatment process is transferred to the hands of dentists and orthodontists, after which the child is recommended to undergo a speech correction course. The best results of treatment are achieved at the age of 5-6 years.
The causes of functional dyslalia are as follows:
insufficient attention of parents to the development of the child’s speech;
the presence of an object for copying incorrect speech by a child;
lack of parenting by parents;
phonemic hearing problems;
hearing impairment.
Symptoms of impaired sound perception
Attentive parents will not be difficult to notice a violation of the perception or reproduction of sounds in a child. This manifests itself in the distortion, replacement or omission of letters or sounds.
When a child’s dyslalia is characterized by the omission of certain letters, the main symptom is their absence in any part of the word.
If sound substitution occurs, then the symptom is a change in the audible sound to the reproducible one. Such a violation occurs due to the fact that the child does not differentiate phonemes by articulatory and acoustic aspects. With such a deviation, the patient replaces sounds in any order, regardless of how they were formed in the original word, without classifying them into hard, soft, sonorous and sibilant.
When mixing sounds, the child from time to time pronounces the sound correctly or incorrectly, which indicates the incompleteness of the process of assimilation of phonemes.
If a child suffers from dyslalia, characterized by distortion of sounds, then you can notice this when communicating with him. Such patients use sounds or letters in their speech that are not present in the original word initially. Most often, such a defect occurs in patients with mechanical dyslalia.
If a child has functional dyslalia, then in his oral speech you can notice a violation of the reproduction of one, maximum a couple of sounds. With a mechanical disorder, the patient finds it difficult to determine a group of similar sounds. In case of underdevelopment of the lower jaw, the patient will pronounce sounds by anterolingual articulation, which is due to the lack of the ability to hold the tongue in the area of the frontal teeth.
Dyslalia refers to speech disorders that are prone to recovery. This is due to the growing up of the child. If during this period parents pay attention to the fact that their child is suffering from a violation and seek qualified help, then the chances of recovery are high. However, even those children who have not undergone speech correction, with dyslalia, have a rich vocabulary, depending on the form of the violation, they can correctly write words and incline them, break them into syllables and develop correct coherent speech.
Speech therapists also distinguish physiological dyslalia, which was described earlier. Such a violation independently passes in children by the age of five and is due to the formation of the most important functions of the body: hearing and speech.
Diagnosis of dyslalia
Diagnosis of dyslalia consists in a thorough collection of anamnesis. Not only the child should be interviewed, but also the mother. The doctor needs to establish how the period of intrauterine development took place, what kind of labor (natural or artificial) was, whether there were any complications during labor.
At the next stage, the specialist carefully examines the child’s medical record and talks with the parents. All this will help to thoroughly study the patient’s transferred diseases.
This is followed by a series of tests, after which the doctor will be able to determine how well the child’s psychomotor skills, speech, vision and hearing, and motor system are developed. And only after that, the leading specialist determines the level of development of the articulation apparatus. This is done visually: the doctor pronounces the words and asks the child to repeat after him. Depending on the correctness of the reproduction of these words, a development assessment will be made.
The main task of a speech therapist is to determine the level of development of a child’s oral speech. To do this, the specialist deliberately uses imitation words that are difficult to pronounce with dyslalia. Additionally, didactic material is used — pictures, toys, objects. After a full check, the doctor can accurately diagnose, indicate the degree and nature of the speech disorder. In addition, the speech therapist conducts phonemic tests to determine hearing.
If the patient has a mechanical violation of sound reproduction, then the diagnosis and subsequent treatment should be carried out by a team of specialists, where in addition to a speech therapist there is an orthodontist and a dentist, and a surgeon, possibly a neurologist, will also need to examine the child. In the presence of such a disease as hearing loss, an ENT examination is necessary.
Ways to correct dyslalia
The duration of treatment depends on the cause of dyslalia. If there is a mechanical one, then dental correction of defects is initially performed. It is best to perform these procedures at the age of seven.
Functional dyslalia is corrected by the efforts of a highly specialized speech therapist. Treatment is carried out in several stages. Initially, it is important to prepare the child for the treatment process, to tell why this is being done, what will happen if the problem is not eliminated. Speech therapists in the course of correction practice techniques for the development of not only speech, but also the memory of the child. Special attention is paid to the differentiation of phonemes by the patient. Regular speech motor skills and articulation exercises, massage are performed.
The next stage of correction consists in memorizing the child and setting the correct pronunciation of sounds. This is achieved by the method of imitation. The last stage is the development of the child’s communicative abilities.
It is important to be systematic in the process of correcting the child’s speech. If the dyslalia is of a simple form, then it will take a maximum of 3 months to correct. In difficult cases — about 6.
Prognosis for recovery and preventive measures
More than 95% of children fully recover their speech function. Depending on the degree of difficulty of dyslalia and the regularity of remedial classes, the recovery period ranges from 3 to 6 months.
If we talk about preventive measures, then parents need to monitor the health and development of the child. If any abnormalities in the anatomical structure are found, it is recommended to consult a specialist.
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