Alalia is what? Alalya: correctional work

Alalia is a complete absence of speech or its underdevelopment in children with normal intelligence and hearing. This disorder is the result of damage to the speech areas of the brain in the process of birth. It can also appear due to a nervous system or severe trauma to the skull suffered by the child in the pre-natal period of life. Initially, Alalia was called a hearing anomaly and was not treated at all.

Alalia can be of varying degrees, from the heaviest, when the child does not speak until the age of 12, to a mild, more reminiscent of the general underdevelopment of speech.

Alalia is a disorder associated with brain damage, which is manifested in the child's lack of ability to talk. It is important to distinguish these patients from those who have impaired hearing and intellect - with mental retardation. Children with alalia can respond to sounds and perceive information. Mental development can be disrupted in a child only because of alienation, pedagogical neglect, the inability to master the curriculum and weak memory.

Classification

There are two main types of alalia - sensory and motor. Both violations are amenable to correction in an integrated approach. In most cases, with timely diagnosis and compliance with all recommendations, children are able to enter the general education school.

Sensory Alalia

This problem is characterized by an initial impairment of speech perception in normal hearing. Sensory alalia occurs due to the defeat of the temporal regions of the brain located in the left hemisphere, which are called the Wernike center.

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 in nature noises (rustle, knock, creak, etc.). In the speech of children with sensory alalia, there are echolalia - this is an automatic, unintelligible repetition of other people's words. Therefore, instead of answering the question, such a child can repeat the question itself.

Leading to sensory alalia is a violation of phonemic hearing, which manifests itself in varying degrees. That is, it can be an absolute non-distinction of speech sounds or their difficult perception, manifested in the difficulties of distinguishing between sounds that are close in sound but different in spelling (daughter-barrel, cancer-lac).

A child with sensory alalia is important to send in a timely manner to a consultation with specialists: an otolaryngologist for hearing research, a psychoneurologist and a speech therapist.

In practice, cases of sensory alalia are quite rare, and a more common form of an ailment is more common-a motor form.

The second type

Motor alalia is a complex of symptoms, both speech and non-verbal, where the mastery of the language is mastering. Motor alalia in children occurs several times more often than sensory alalia . How serious is this problem?

Alalia. Diagnosis and speech signs

Violation of speech in motor alalia captures all its components: lexico-grammatical and phonetic-phonemic side. It is assumed that the first problem is caused by the damage to the front regions of the motor area in the cerebral cortex, and the second - by the disruption of the functioning of the lower parts of the central motor area in the cortex of the dominant hemisphere, where all the stimuli from the muscles and ligaments that arise when performing articulatory movements are concentrated.

In a child with Alalia, it is difficult to form fine motor coordination of the speech apparatus. These disorders are of a different nature, ranging from oral apraxia (paralysis), ending with a disruption in sequence or switchability. There is also a lack of ability to perform certain articulatory movements.

Often children with motor alalia because of insufficient sound perception catch only certain elements of the phrase and are unable to connect them to a common semantic structure. This limited understanding is 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 may be disturbed:

• Phonemic realization of statements;
• Language design of speech;
• Rhythmic organization of the word - chanted speech.

Now consider what motor alalia has symptoms. Vocabulary in children with a similar disorder develops very slowly and is used incorrectly in speech. As a result of the poverty of the stock of lexical and semantic means, there appear substitutions by similarity or contrast, for example, erases - washes, cup-glass, ax - hammer. A set of adjectives and adverbs is small.

At the initial stages of speech development, such a child does not need communication with the use of coherent speech, which is due to the underdevelopment of both general and speech activity. Therefore, the baby more often uses facial expressions, gestures and monosyllabic words when communicating with an adult.

Non-primary signs of ailment

Children with motor alalia underdeveloped not only speech, but also some mental and motor functions. Usually there is a neurological symptomatology, different in degree of severity: from minimal manifestations of cerebral dysfunction to severe disorders. Often physical deficiency and general somatic weakening of the body are also noted.

Children with motor alalia are usually clumsy, have discoordination movements, their movements are slowed or disinhibited. Motor activity is reduced, rhythm is insufficient, dynamic and static equilibrium is disrupted. Particularly manifested violations of fine motor skills.

In children with motor alalia, the higher mental functions (memory, attention, thinking, etc.) are usually underdeveloped at the level of voluntary and conscious perception.

In a number of cases, the pathological qualities of the personality and the character formation along the neurotic type can develop. Children with motor alalia are noted for being withdrawn, self-doubt, irritability, resentment and a tendency to tear.

There is another type of disease - total, or mixed sensory-motor alalia. With this option, both the sensory and motor aspects of speech are disrupted. If the child has sensory-motor alalia, he can not speak. In addition, the patient does not understand the speech addressed to him.

What are the mixed symptoms of alalia? This disease is difficult to diagnose. He is often confused with problems such as autism, hearing impairment, intellect, etc.

Working with children with alalia total often includes in addition to training 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 intrauterine development or in the first year of life of the child.

1. During the intrauterine period, the development of the brain can be affected by infection, hypoxia, placental insufficiency, bad habits of the mother. Damage to the child's brain can occur during childbirth. This includes hypoxia, birth trauma, hypothermia.
2. In the first year of the baby's life, the brain damage is possible because of the transmitted viral infections or craniocerebral injuries.

Symptoms

Alalia, the diagnosis of which is a complex process, is sometimes virtually indistinguishable from some other diseases. It is important to exclude deafness or mental retardation. In alalia, the child experiences impaired activity in certain areas of the brain. A huge role is played by the defeat of two structures of the brain: the speech centers of Brock and Wernicke, who are responsible for the formation of their own speech and its understanding.

Signs of motor alalia

Among the symptoms of the disease can be identified:

• Lack of self-service skills;
• Violation of movement: children do not jump on one leg, can not walk on the board, often stumble, unable to rhythmically dance to music;
• Distinguish several standard levels of speech development in this violation: from its complete absence to the ability to speak with detailed phrases;
• The child most often can not 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 endings, prefixes, prepositions.

Symptoms 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 particular object and sound design;
• The presence of echolalia (automatic repetition of words).

Correcting the problem

Consider how the correction of alalia is made. Since it is a medical-psychological-pedagogical problem, a comprehensive approach to the formation of speech formation and the development of the personality as a whole is needed. Logopaedic work should be conducted against a background of medical and psychotherapeutic treatment. Alalia is a complex disorder, which is not easy to diagnose.

Main features of correctional work

• The process is primarily aimed at the formation of motive, communicative intention, internal program of utterance.
• Attention is paid to fine motor skills: children learn to color, stroke, play with a mosaic, tie knots, etc.
• Effective for the development of speech in children with alalia is the use of rhythmics and logarithmics. In these classes, music, speech and movement are combined in various exercises and form a speech-motor activity. Also there is a development of memory and personal development of children.
• To activate speech, it is important to practice communication at an accessible level to the child: operations with words (repeat, show, name), phrases and phrases.
• It is important to develop the analyzers - visual, auditory and tactile.
• Use only the game form of work.
• It is obligatory to use visual material: various symbols, materials of the environment, pictures, accompaniment of actions by speech, etc.
• The impact should be directed to the general system of speech, clarification of the dictionary, the development of phrase and coherent speech, the production of sounds.

Main stages

1. At the first stage of the work, speech activity is generated and the passive vocabulary is filled, accessible for understanding.
2. Next, a phrase and dialog are formed.
3. In the third stage, special attention is paid to such aspects as coherent speech, communicative skills, in addition, grammatical structures are automatized.

In the process of eliminating the problem, a variety of techniques for performing vocabulary work are actively used. The first option - natural: a demonstration of objects, pictures, actions, situations. The second is verbal: the correlation of new words with those already known by their similarities and opposites.

Use different types of work on the dictionary, which includes the selection of objects to action, for example, to show or say who flies, runs, crawls. No less effective are such methods: naming the individual parts of the whole, for example, the wheel, the headlight, the steering wheel; Selection of single root words, synonyms, antonyms; Guessing of objects by description; Transformation of diminutive words, etc. Also, parallel with the replenishment of the dictionary on general topics (animals, plants, toys, vegetables, fruits, family, etc.) develops the skill of using a certain grammatical form of words (case, singular and plural and etc.).

If a child has alalia, corrective work should be done as it should? When performing actions with objects, children should try to sound them with speech, that is, accompany each action with words: I pour water, pour water, pour water into a bottle, blow on water, etc. Patients at this stage develop the skill to answer questions and try Ask them, come up with suggestions first for one word, and then for reference, using a series of pictures, guess and make puzzles in descriptions, compare the characteristics of several items, etc. At that time, diverse and detailed answers are encouraged , Which, in turn, contributes to an active search and selection of the appropriate grammatical form of the desired word, brings up interest in speech as a means of communication.

Naturally, the child does not explain any rules, information on grammar is not reported. The therapy process provides only a game form and practical familiarization with more frequent patterns in word-change and word-formation, construction of proposals.

The whole order of work 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 the child has motor alalia, how are the classes conducted? The process of practical use of grammatical structures by children with alalia has certain peculiarities, 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.

Constantly, the main task of the work should be visible, which includes the formation of the communication process and the active replenishment of means for communication with the child. The next stage can be considered a gradual transition from dialogue in interpersonal communication to monologic speech in the development of motivation for narration. To do this, the child usually tells about what he has seen or transmits some information.

The letter promotes the development of the structure of words and phrases, and through reading and writing the child with alalia controls and corrects his speech. The training of such children is much longer, and it requires the use of special techniques and techniques. Often in children with a considered ailment in the process of mastering written speech, secondary dyslexia and dysgraphia manifest themselves.

Have a baby alalia? Treatment and correction which features? One of the most commonly used ways to get rid of this problem is to stimulate certain areas of the skin with 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 grounded basis, therefore, when correcting the disease only with its help, there may be no therapeutic effect, hence, the use of the neurostimulation technique of speech zones can not always be justified.

Additional Methods

If a patient has alalia, engaging with a speech therapist is very important. They should be held regularly. Logopaedic massage is actively used in such speech violation, as alalia. The treatment is aimed at stimulating the muscles that participate in the process of sound formation. For this, massage with the help of fingers or special logopedic probes.

Physiotherapy treatment is also used in children with alalia. Among the main methods - laser-, water-, magneto-, acupuncture.

Conclusion

Speech alalia requires a very long treatment and an integrated approach. Most often, the therapy takes place in specialized kindergartens and schools, where children with speech impairment learn. If there are results of treatment, there is a possibility of transferring children to a comprehensive school.

In some cases, the elimination and correction of alalia in a child takes several years, and then requires constant training with a speech therapist to maintain the result. Even after successful therapeutic work, most children need 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 dealing with peers, which can lead to aggression, nervous breakdowns. Therefore, a child with alalia needs help in overcoming fear of communication, isolation.