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Unit 5: Identification, Causes, Problems of Physically Challenged

2. Unpleasant voice quality-nasality, (too much sound through nose hoarseness, harshness Notes
(irritation), breathiness.
3. Defective voice-too high or too low; too loud or too soft; monotonous voice.
4. Stuttering, cluttering.
5. Difficulty in understanding meaning of spoken words/sentences.
6. Difficulty in formatting oral sentence.
Speech is defective when it deviates so from the speech of other people that it calls attention to itself,
interferes with communication, or causes the possessor to be maladjusted. Language problems should
be considered significant if they interfere with communication if they cause the speaker to maladjusted
or if they cause problems for the listener "Gearhart and Weigharn.
5.3.2 Causes

(1) Organic Causes: The organic causes of speech defects include palatal anomalies, dental
irregulatities, paralysis and tumours of the anomalies, dental etc. In some cases, deformation
of jaw and lips also result in lisping. The articulatory and vocal difficulties of the child with a
cleft-palate can be attributed directly to this type and severity of the cleft.
(2) Functional causes: It is observed that many children, with normal speech mechanisms, have
defects in articulation and/or voice. Studies report that in some cases, imitation of an older
sibling, a playmate or an adult may be the sole cause for this anomaly. It is true that children
learn to articulate, vocalize and use language "by ear". They learn to speak in a fallacious
manner, if they hear faulty vocabularies. Generally, speech faults are based on imitation of
adult's behavior.
(3) Psychogenic Causes: Recent studies of speech defect reveal that many defects of speech are
psychologenic. When the causes of speech defects are not organic or functional, they can be
attributed to children's reactions to the environment, particularly to their parents. In this
study, Wood reported that functional articulatory defects of children are definitely and
significantly associated with maladjustment and undesirable traits on the part of the parents.
(4) Psychological Causes: Speech defects also have emotional and psychological origin. Speech
does not depend only on the efficacy of the speech organs but also on the personal maturity
of the child, his attitude to himself, his relationship with others and the degree to which the
home has stimulated and encouraged speech. Some psychologists are of the opinion that
these defects are the outcome of disturbed feeling or emotions, faulty language habits arising
from social pressures.
(5) Loss of Hearing: Development of speech reception requires normal auditory system. If the
child's hearing is impaired, the auditory input is distorted. Then speech reception skills may
have some deviations or delay in development. Due to this faulty feedback system, this may
affect speech production. Reports say that the degree of hearing loss has a direct bearing on
the production of speech and languages.
(6) Social Influences: Language is a means of communication. This also develops in social context.
In an improverished environment, children lack stimulation. They do not get the chance to
learn new words. For the language achievement of children, stimulating homes, schools and
play pivotal roles. Children from higher professional groups show early speech development.
(7) Cerebral Palsy: Children who are the victims of cerebral palsy often lack stimulation to speak
and hence need to be highly motivated, for speech therapy, spastics, athetoid and ataxic
children often have a good number of speech defects, Observation can easily reveal that a
spastic child would show articulatory deviation and the athetoid child would show slurring
in rhythm and constant change in pitch and infection.

5.3.3 Problems of Speech Impaired Children
Speech impaired children face many problems in daily life. Some of the important problems are
being discussed below:

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