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Special Education

Notes Phonemic Impairment: In this type of speech disorder, the individual is physically unable to produce
certain sounds like 'c' or 't' with the use of tongue, teeth, lips, palate or the facial muscles and nerves.
They always produce an incorrect sound as a substitute.
Treatment for Speech Impairment: Most of these speech impairment can be cured by speech therapy.
A speech and language pathologist should be contacted to find out the type of impairment that has
affected an individual and its possible causes. Some individuals also benefit from their sessions with
an audiologist. Regular sessions and practice is also very helpful. Those with physical impairment
may be helped by surgery. Hearing and speech impairment are closely related. Unless an individual
hears correctly, he can't produce sounds. Some of these impairment are pragmatic speech impairment
where the individual acquires the impairment due to bad practical experiences like verbal abuse,
physical or mental trauma or any other shock that might lead to fear of speech.

What is apraxia?

10.3 Characteristics Speech Impaired Children

A child's communication is considered delayed when the child is noticeably behind his or her peers
in the acquisition of speech and/or language skills.
Speech impairment refer to difficulties producing speech sounds or problems with voice quality.
Characteristics may include:
• interruption in the flow or rhythm of speech such as stuttering (known as dysfluency);
• trouble forming sounds (called articulation or phonological impairment);
• difficulties with the pitch, volume, or quality of the voice;
• trouble using some speech sounds, such as saying "see" when they mean "ski."
A language impairment is an impairment in the ability to understand and/or use words in context,
both verbally and nonverbally. Characteristics include:
• improper use of words and their meanings;
• inability to express ideas;
• inappropriate grammatical patterns;
• reduced vocabulary and inability to follow directions.
Self Assessment
1. State whether the following statements are 'True' or 'False':
(i) Speech impairments may be problems with the way sounds are formed, called articulation or
phonological impairments.
(ii) Aphasia occurs due to damage to the posterior part in the brain.
(iii) Cluttering speech impairment affects the fluency of speech.
(iv) A language impairment is an impairment in the ability to see the words.
(v) "Dysprosody" is a rare speech impairment in which rhythm modulation, timing and intensity
of speech is disrupted.
10.4 Definition: Hearing Impairment

Hearing impairment is a generic term including both deaf and hard of hearing which refers to persons
with any type or degree of hearing loss that causes difficulty working in a traditional way. It can
affect the whole range or only part of the auditory spectrum which, for speech perception, the important
region is between 250 and 4000 Hz. The term deaf is used to describe people with profound hearing

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