Ashley

~Paige and Ashley~
MAIN IDEA:

This chapter distinguishes between communication disorders that are acquired and those that are developmental. If a learner has a speaking disorder it will also affect their writing.

Acquired communication disorders are brought on by the following v Physiological v Neurological damage
 * o Stoke
 * o Head Injury
 * o Degenerative Neurological Diseases
 * o Head and Neck Cancer

Developmental Disorders are developed throughout the childhood

Writing Disorder

These disorders are often identified by delays or disruptions in development. Examples may be in language use, speaking, writing and problems such as dyslexia. These disorders can be identified as young as two years old, and may affect spoken language. Examples are listed below.
 * Vocabulary Concepts
 * Word morphology
 * Grammar
 * Pragmatics
 * Discourse (story telling and conversation)
 * Production and Awareness of speech

Types of writing that are prominent in writing disorders


 * o Automatic Writing- Patients signature or address
 * o Copying- both meaningful and non-meaningful
 * o Writing to Dictation-Words and sentences
 * o Narrative/Extended Writing-Description of weather or picture description

Types of Writing Disorders *See Handouts*

Acquired Dysgraphia: Writing as an ensemble of different brain functions.
 * Lexical-patients can write to dictation non-words and real words that conform to regular letter-sound correspondences rules, but make many plausible phonological errors in their attempts to write words with irregular spellings.
 * Phonological- Patients are able to accurately write familiar irregular words, but cannot write non-words that follow regular sound-letter correspondence rules.
 * Deep- evidence disruptions in both the lexical and non-lexical production routes.

Anterior non-fluent aphasia: sparse output, frequent phonetic spelling errors, and agrammatic or telegraphic phrases and sentences.

Posterior fluent aphasia: marked by omissions, reversals, substitutions of letters, word choice errors and grammatical or word-ordering errors. *These are caused by a disruption in sensory/motor systems

Left Visual Neglect: Common with lesions on the right hemisphere of the brain. This is when the left side of the text is neglected. Examples may be words and letters having extra right handed strokes.

Hypokinesia (Reduced amplitude of movements) typical of Parkinson’s Disease- Have excessively small script, referred to as micrographia.

Apraxic- Motor programming specific to writing selectively impaired. Intervention for Acquired Dysgraphia
 * o One-on-One therapy/clinical studies
 * o Uses drill like activities
 * o Voice recognition software to facilitate everyday writing on computers. (Can be used as speaking to writing as well)

*Parr argued that the functional improvement in literacy practices seen in adults with aphasia were often dependent on change in their social changes in their social roles, not simply on improvements in autonomous skills.

Intervention to Disorders


 * Process targeted teaching and support
 * Who, what, when, where and why
 * Scaffold cuing strategies
 * Self regulation strategies

A study by Ukrainetz taught 2nd graders to use pictograph or stick writing to group and order their ideas before they wrote the text. They used arrows between the pictures to show sequence in their narrative.

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Unaided Techniques- use own body language, or sign language and gestures.

Aided Techniques- use of technology (communication boards)

Speech Supplementation Strategies- word by word written cues- by pointing to the first letter of each word as they say it.

Periodic cues- pointing to words or phrases depicting the topic of spoken utterance.

Conclusion:

Unfortunately due to the level of difficulty associated with obtaining this type of information, we don’t see a cure being found in the near future. As teachers, we need to be aware of the different writing disorders since they have a negative affect on the student’s communication.