Language Examination in School-Age Dysphasic Children

Abstract

School-age dysphasia is a condition characterized chiefly by delay in learning (generally in reading and writing) which is not due to any provable abnormality in the articulatory apparatus, in hearing, in psychical processes or in intelligence. Nevertheless, articulatory disorders, hearing impairments, emotional disturbances and/or feeblemindedness may accompany the picture, but they are not the cause for it. Language examination in dysphasic schoolchildren must be made in several steps: 1) Spontaneous speech examination (narrating, describing, talking together); 2) Examination of repeated syllabes, words or sentences; 3) Oral and mental repetition of series of words and sentences (with or without change of posture); 4) Hearing perception and comprehension tests (sensibilized audiometric tests); 5) Drawing interpretation or reading; 6) Drawing representation or writing (copy, composition, dictation); 7) Examination of other linguistic systems (singing, kinestetic reading, mathematical calculation, etc.). Every one of these examinations includes several items. For instance, the examination of repeated syllables, words and sentences contains: a) Repetition of the isolate phoneme, of the phoneme in syllable-function and of the phoneme in word-function; b) Repetition of words with different meters; c) Repetition of words similar to each other which present different accents and repetition of words deformed by incorrect accent; d) Repetition of easy words with meaning unknown to the patients, repetition of „difficult” words (with or without meaning); e) Analitical repetition of complete words, first phonetically and then been spelling them; f) Syntetic repetition of words (easy or difficult) fragmented by phonemes, by letters, by syllables or arbitrarily; g) Repetition of series of words which do not require any attention or memory; h) Integrated repetition of incomplete words; i) Oral and mental repetition of series of words and sentences (with or without change of posture); j) Repetition of words and sentences distorted by special procedures and with the use of the audiometer (sensibilized speech audiometry); k) Rapid and slow repetition of series of words enunciated without a change of movement (logometria by repetition); I) Repetition of speech in singing.