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Aphasia can bring about a lot of speech and language problems that are to be treated for speech therapy. The kind of speech and language problems brought by Aphasia would highly depend on the kind of Aphasia that you may have.

Broca’s Aphasia

Broca’s Aphasia is also known as motor aphasia. You can obtain this, if you damage your brain’s frontal lobe, particularly at the frontal part of the lobe at your language-dominant side.

If Broca’s Aphasia is your case, then you may have complete mutism or inability to speak. In some cases you may be able to utter single-word statements or a full sentence, but constructing such would entail you great effort.

You may also omit small words, like conjunctions (but, and, or) and articles (a, an, the). Due to these omissions, you may produce a “telegraph” quality of speech. Usually, your hearing comprehension is not affected, so you are able to comprehend conversation, other’s speech and follow commands.

Difficulty in writing is also evident, since you may experience weakness on your body’s right side. You also get an impaired reading ability along with difficulty in finding the right words when speaking. People with this type of aphasia may be depressed and frustrated, because of their awareness of their difficulties.

Wernicke’s Aphasia

When your brain’s language-dominant area’s temporal lobe is damaged, you get Wernicke’s aphasia. If you have this kind of aphasia, you may speak in uninterrupted, long, sentences; the catch is, the words you use are usually unnecessary or at times made-up.

You can also have difficulty understanding other’s speech, to the extent of having the inability to comprehend spoken language in any way. You also have a diminished reading ability. Your writing ability may be retained, but what you write may seem to be abnormal.

In contrast with Broca’s Aphasia, Wernicke’s Aphasia doesn’t manifest physical symptoms like right-sided weakness. Also, with this kind of Aphasia, you are not aware of your language errors.

Global Aphasia

This kind of aphasia is obtained when you have widespread damage on language areas of your brain’s left hemisphere. Consequently, all your fundamental language functions are affected. However, some areas can be severely affected than other areas of your brain.

It may be the case that you have difficulty speaking but you are able to write well. You may also experience weakness and numbness on the right side of your body.

Conduction Aphasia

This kind is also known as Associative Aphasia. It is a somewhat uncommon kind, in which you have the inability to repeat sentences, phrases and words. Your speech fluency is reasonably unbroken. There are times that you may correct yourself and skip or repeat some words.

Even though you are capable of understanding spoken language, you can still have difficulty finding the right words to use to describe an object or a person. This condition’s effect on your reading and writing skills can also vary. Just like other types of aphasia, you can have sensory loss or right-sided weakness.

Nominal Or Anomic Aphasia

This kind of aphasia would primarily influence your ability to obtain the right name for an object or person. Consequently, rather than naming an object, you may resort to describing it. Your reading skills, writing ability, hearing comprehension, and repetition are not damaged, except by this inability to get the right name.

Your may have fluent speech, except for the moments that you pause to recall the correct name. Physical symptoms like sensory loss and one-sided body weakness, may or may not be present.

Transcortical Aphasia

This kind is caused by the damage of language areas on your left hemisphere just outside your primary language areas. There are three types of this aphasia: transcortical sensory, transcortical motor, and mixed transcortical. All of these types are differentiated from others by your ability to repeat phrases, words, or sentences.

Babies must first hear the sounds frequently and memorize them before learning to speak or learn their meaning. For children with hearing impairment, among the many activities that can facilitate listening to sounds are sound-object association activities also known as “learning to listen sounds”.

This type of activity involves associating a sound to a referent, an item such as transportation vehicle or animal with a routine meaningful action. Linking a sound to a referent is considered an important activity for auditory-based intervention because it encourages the child to attend to sounds, facilitate the recognition that sounds are different and help the child understand that different sounds have different meaning.

This activity also develops stored perceptual representation for specific sounds or language-based phonemes. It also develops auditory familiarity with the spoken language.

Considerations

There are some important things to consider when facilitating this kind of activity. One thing is to incorporate toys or personal action for very young child. This allows children to actively participate in the learning and listening process as this activity is meaningful and enjoyable for them.

Another thing is the variation of the supra-segmentals of these sounds. This restructures the auditory schema of a child for a particular sound each time he hears it in a different context. Also, toys used for learning to listen sounds should be simple representational items that are easily recognizable by young children.

Adults should also remember that “hearing comes first” for an effective auditory-verbal strategy. This means that the adult should first vocalize the sound before showing to the child the toy.

Magical Transportation Sounds

An example of learning to listen sound associated with transportation vehicle is aaaah(airplane) which is a good basic vowel and even the deafest kid typically comprehend and use it quickly. The clinician can vary the suprasegmentals of this sound as he shows to the child how he moves the airplane up and down.

Another sound is buhbuhbuh. It is one of the first consonants that the babies learn and besides from that, it is also an easy sound for the babies to imitate and produce on their own. The toy bus can be move around as the clinician vocalizes the sound. Ooooo is one sound that is good for stimulation of pitch variation with the same vowel.

The clinician can use a fire truck as he produces the sound with alternating high-low configuration. Other learning to listen sounds associated with transportation vehicles include brrrrrr(car), p-p-p-p-p(boat), and ch-ch-ch-ch(train). These sounds concentrate on stimulating the lip articulator and develop listening for some high frequency sounds.

Familiar Animal Sounds

Learning to listen sounds is also associated with animal sounds. A common sound that is use by clinicians is mooo(cow) which is a good vowel combined with the initial consonant /m/. This sound is produce with low voice and this change in voice is interesting for children.

The repeated tongue clicking for the hoarse is also a good sound because it is another prespeech skill. Most children are fascinated with the tongue clicking, thus, it is good for stimulation. This sound also exercises the movement of tongue. Meow has some nice vowel transition and clinician may use this to also produce inflectional variations within a two-syllable combination.

Other learning to listen sounds for animals include arfarfarf(dog), ssss(snake), quakquakquak(duck),hop-hop-hop(rabbit), oinkoink(pig), ba-a-a-a(sheep), and squeak(mouse).

There are also learning to listen sounds that can be associated with eating, sleeping, and clock. These sounds are mmmm, shhhhhhh, and t-t-t-t-t correspondingly.