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Accommodations:: A change that helps a student overcome or work around a disability. Allowing a student who has trouble writing to give his answers orally is an example of an accommodation. This student is still expected to know the same material and answer the same questions as fully as the other students, but he doesn't have to write his answers to show that he knows the information. Other examples of accommodations include extended time, testing over several days, working one-on-one with the teacher, providing audio taped books, etc.
Advocate:: A Special Education Advocate is a representative that informs parents of their educational rights and assists families in negotiating and resolving disputes with the school district. Advocates are not attorneys.
Apraxia:: A neurological childhood speech sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired despite normal muscle functioning. Errors are often inconsistent and prosody is frequently inappropriate.
Articulation Disorder:: Inability to correctly produce speech sounds (phonemes) in isolation or combined with other phonemes because of imprecise placement, timing, pressure, speed, or flow of movement of the lips, tongue, or throat. The atypical production of speech sounds may be characterized by substitutions, omissions, additions or distortions that may interfere with intelligibility.
ASHA:: The American Speech Language Hearing Association is the professional, scientific, and credentialing association for speech-language pathologists, audiologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists in the United States and internationally.
Asperger's Syndrome:
: A pervasive developmental disorder that affects a person's ability to socialize and communicate effectively with others. Persons with Asperger's often exhibit an all-absorbing interest in specific topics, limited interests, and repetitive behaviors. Speech and language may be characterized by an overly formal syntax, a monotone, and/or an inability to understand figures of speech. Problems with non-verbal communication may include the restricted use of gestures, facial expressions, or eye gaze. Asperger's Syndrome is generally thought to be at the milder or "high" end of the autism spectrum.
Assistive Devices:: Tools and devices such as alphabet boards or text-to-speech conversion software used to help people with communication disorders perform actions, tasks, and activities.
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)/ Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD):: A disorder that is characterized by short attention span, hyperactivity, and poor concentration. The symptoms may be mild or severe and are associated with functional deviations of the central nervous system without signs of major neurologic or psychiatric disturbance. The people affected are usually of normal or above average intelligence. Other symptoms include impairment in perception, conceptualization, language, memory, and motor skills; decreased attention span; and increased impulsivity.
Audiologist:: A trained professional who measures hearing loss, can fit hearing aids, evaluates for balance disorders, and tests for auditory processing disorder. Certification procedures are similar to those of a speech-language pathologist, and they are governed by the same organization, ASHA.
Auditory Processing:: The ability to process auditory messages, distinguish between similar sounds or words, separate relevant speech from background noise, and the ability to recall and comprehend what was heard. These tasks are categorized into auditory attention, discrimination, memory, sequencing, and manipulation. Auditory processing is not related to hearing loss.
Augmentative/alternative communication devices:: These devices attempt to compensate and facilitate, temporarily or permanently, for the impairment and disability patterns of individuals with severe expressive and/ or language comprehension disorders. Augmentative/alternative communication may be required for individuals demonstrating impairments in gestural, spoken, and/or written modalities. These are tools that help individuals with limited or absent speech to communicate. They include communication boards, pictographs, or ideographs (symbols representing ideas.)
Aural Rehabilitation:: This refers to services and procedures for facilitating adequate receptive and expressive communication in individuals with hearing impairment.
Autism:: A complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and is the result of a neurological disorder that affects the normal functioning of the brain, impacting development in the areas of social interaction and communication skills. Both children and adults with autism typically show difficulties in verbal and non-verbal communication, social interactions, and leisure or play activities.
Autism Spectrum Disorders:: A spectrum of conditions characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication as well as restricted interests and repetitive behavior. Autism is not a single disorder, but a spectrum of closely-related disorders with a shared core of symptoms. Every individual on the autism spectrum has problems to some degree with social skills, empathy, communication, and flexible behavior. The level of disability and the combination of symptoms varies tremendously from person to person.
Babbling:: A stage in child development when an infant appears to be experimenting with the sounds of his language (phonemes). Although his utterances carry no meaning, the intonation and stress patterns are similar to the patterning of adult utterances. At about the fifth or sixth month of age, the infant seems to use babbling to get attention or to express a demand. He babbles more in a social context.
Central Auditory Processing Disorders (CAPD/APD):
: These are deficits in the perceptual processing of auditory information not attributed to hearing loss or intellectual impairment. It refers to the efficiency and effectiveness by which the central nervous system utilizes auditory information. CAPD refers to limitations in sound localization, auditory discrimination, auditory pattern recognition, temporal aspects, sequencing, and auditory performance in competing acoustic signals (background noises.) Although abilities such as phonological awareness, attention to and memory for auditory information, auditory synthesis, comprehension and interpretation of auditorily presented information, and similar skills may be reliant on or associated with intact central auditory function, they are considered higher order cognitive-communicative and/or language-related functions and, thus, are not included in the definition of (C)APD. Therefore, only a qualified audiologist can diagnose the presence of this disorder.
Cluttering:: A syndrome characterized by a speech delivery rate which is either abnormally fast, irregular, or both. In cluttered speech, the person's speech is affected by one or more of the following: (1) failure to maintain normally expected sound, syllable, phrase, and pausing patterns; (2) evidence of greater than expected incidents of disfluency, the majority of which are unlike those typical of people who stutter.

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