Speech : Increasing Communicative Competence

Aphasia is a communication disorder that affects many adults and families. Aphasia occurs as a result of damage to the language-specific areas of the brain (ASHA, 2014). Individuals with aphasia may experience difficulties with oral language, receptive language, memory, attention writing, and reading. There are a myriad of approaches designed for the treatment of aphasia. Two treatment approaches, Promoting Aphasics Communicative Effectiveness (P.A.C.E.) and Constraint Induced Language Therapy (C.I.L.T.), and their efficacy in regard to available evidence will be discussed below.

Bettering the credibility to text, you don’t even have to talk and can still express your emotions with emoticons when you send a message. “Scientists have discovered that when we look at a smiley face

The advancement of technology has limited the ability to communicate non-verbally. Non-verbal communication is the main channel of communicating as it helps in expressing and interpreting others. It comprises of cues such as facial expressions, postures and gestures. Nowadays, people are using e-mails, texts and social networking sites to interact as well as express themselves. As in “Why Gen-Y Johnny Can’t Read Non-Verbal Cues,” Mark analyzes ,”We live in a culture where young people- outfitted with iPhone and laptop and devoting hours every evening from age 10 onward to messaging of one kind and another- are ever less likely to develop the “silent fluency” that comes from face-to-face interaction” (146). The disadvantage of using technology as a means to communicate with others is people tend to lose fluency in non-verbal cues, as a result misunderstand and offend others. Any number of emoticons used by people cannot measure their depth of their feelings. Non-Verbal aspect of communication should not be replaced by the advancement of

Over the year’s technology has evolved drastically. Technology that involves social media play a huge role in the way people interacts with one another especially when it comes to grammar. Most people communicate using their computers, mobile device or tablets. As technology is changing so has the language. Social media is one of the main forms of communicating with people. Sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Youtube are major social media outlets that are used daily to communicate with individuals near or far. It has formed language using mainly acronyms and emojis (pictures). Emojis has become popular in the past few

“Will We All Speak Emoji Language in a Couple Years” was written by Gretchen McCulloch on August 9, 2015 as a blog post on “Mental Floss”, a site geared towards broadcasting fun facts that ordinary people of today may not be familiar with. In the thesis of this article, McCulloch states that we will not speak in complete emoji language in the years to come because: “…no matter how good you are at emoji…there are some things you just can’t say clearly in any combination of little pictures” (McCulloch). One of the main supporting points used in this article is the recreation of Moby Dick, entitled “Emoji Dick”. McCulloch uses the first and second sentences of Emoji Dick to show that the emoji’s do not create a clear sentence structure and is

Emojis are a big part of our society. Emoji’s should be used, for people to have emotion in written communication. An article published by Los Angeles Times states, “But emojis quickly surpassed emoticon use for two key reasons: There’s a lot more people can communicate with emojis. “I can make an emoji that’s a whale or a penguin,” said Internet language expert Gretchen McCulloch.”I don’t even know how I would do that with emoticons”. McCulloch is saying that he didn’t know how emotion would be like without emojis. And how everyone uses them in everyday life. An article made by Big Think, and written by Orion Jones saying, “Because the tone of a conversation affects how we react, and because physical cues help set tone, emoticons are much

Imagine a life where someone could not force words to come out of his or her mouth, even if he knew what he wanted to say. Such is the life for people who suffer from Broca’s aphasia. Broca’s aphasia is a speech disorder where the Broca’s area in the brain’s left frontal lobe malfunctions, resulting in the inability for a patient to form the necessary movements of the muscles for speech production. This type of non-verbal aphasia is often referenced as motor aphasia because of the lack of motor skills in the brain for speech production. Thousands of people suffer from this disorder, and as a result communication between these people and society is incredibly difficult. Although each person experiences Broca’s aphasia differently, there are

The topic of this annotated bibliography is communicating with people who have Aphasia. Aphasia is neurological condition that occurs when the tissues in the left hemisphere of the brain that are responsible for speech, reading and writing are impaired (National Institute of Neurological Disorders, 2013). The main signs of this disorder are: trouble in articulating oneself when speaking, difficulty understanding speech, and problems with reading and writing. Aphasia is usually caused by a stroke, severe head trauma, brain tumors, and brain infections (National Institute of Neurological Disorders, 2013). Aspasia is more common in elderly individuals, The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) states that Aphasia will occur in 15% percent of persons under the age of 65 and will increase to 43% for people that are 85 years of age and older (National Institute of Neurological Disorders, 2013).

A critical portion in the brain in which speech is produced and controlled is in the “left precentral gyrus of the insula” , which is located behind the anterior temporal lobe (Dronkers). By looking at patients with and without apraxia, who damaged the same general area due to a stroke, this region of the brain was discovered. Authors Juliana Thompson and Margo Mckeever of the Journal of Clinical Nursing compose an article regarding a type of aphasia know as stroke aphasia, where they look at how the patient's health and well being is affected. The article refers to aphasia as a “loss of self” and discusses ways to analyze “self awareness exercises as methods of enhancing compassion skills”(Thompson, Mckeever). Here, what the authors are attempting to convey is the treatment possibilities to a disorder which can cause a patient to feel a type of disconnect due to their inability to communicate

The book Finding My Voice with Aphasia: Walking through Aphasia by Carol M. Maloney, started as a flashback to the author’s years in high school. At first, I thought that the author wanted to highlight her youth years, and remind the reader of her past. As I continued reading, I realized that her life experiences prior to her stroke were vital to her recovery.

reading, writing, speaking, verbal comprehension and gesturing. As such, the manner and process by which patients handle these abrupt changes in their reality, the threat to psychological integrity, social isolation and grievous losses because of aphasia, constitute an individual experience. It is thus reasonable to assume that patients’ desire to communicate their personal suffering to care providers who understand A review of current literatures did not produce any articles specific to my topic on comfort in the aphasic patient. As a result, I had to split my search term into “comfort” and “aphasia” which individually produced and , however A related case A related case is one that than contains a related concept but does not contain the critical attributes of the model case.

In my interview, Michelle described Lisa’s features of Aphasia that were similar to existing studies done on stroke victims that also suffer from aphasia. Symptoms of her language disorder were more prominent during the first year after her stroke, but through intensive therapies she has benefited in her communication abilities. Michelle explains that right after the stroke, her daughter suffered from a period of not speaking at all. She experienced mild paralyzation in the right side of her body and had great difficulties swallowing. After a few weeks, her swallowing ability recovered on its own, and she started speaking again but could not put together a whole sentence. Lisa admits the struggle to find her words was the most frustrating part,

After suffering from a stroke, many victims go through rehabilitation to help regain the language skills they lost from their stroke. Specific abilities that are lost or impaired are speech and language skills, which result in acquiring aphasia. In 2001, constraint induced aphasia therapy (CIAT) was introduced by Friedemann Pulvermuller. It is a therapeutic technique that allows one to achieve their individual vocational communication needs. CIAT is known to be one of the most successful forms of therapy for aphasiac patients with promising and positive outcomes. Because of CIAT’s stringent treatment structure, one’s brain is trained to use its cognitive and vocational abilities that may have been damaged during the stroke. CIAT requires patients to use spoken language instead of other forms of nonverbal communication that they naturally want to use. Unlike many other forms of therapy, CIAT helps one to expand their expressive output abilities and their personal language production skills. Although stroke rehabilitation does not entirely restore brain damage, constraint induced aphasia therapy can significantly help one achieve their vocational communication needs again.

behaviors. Bowie and Harvey hypothesized that within inpatient settings disorganized speech and impoliteness does not impact on peer social engagement, but may do so in other environments. Aphasic clients tended to be more coherent when discussing positive emotions (Borod et al., 2000).

Thesis: While technology plays a huge role in many aspects of Aphasia research, in the field of Aphasia treatment, the use of technology is still largely developing. AAC technology has a lot of potential to aid in the communication abilities of Aphasia patients, however, currently its use in aphasia treatment is not as efficient as its benefits in aphasia patients do not seem to be generalizable to real life communication outside of the treatment setting.