Professional Terms

Cognition:

Thinking skills that include perception, memory, awareness, reasoning, judgment, intellect, and imagination

Communication Disorder:

Impairment in the ability to receive, send, process, and comprehend concepts or verbal, nonverbal and graphic symbol systems. A communication disorder may be evident in the processes of hearing, language, and/or speech. A communication disorder may range in severity from mild to profound. It may be developmental or acquired. Individuals may demonstrate one or any combination of communication disorders. A communication disorder may result in a primary disability or it may be secondary to other disabilities.

Congenital:

A condition that is present at birth

Content Vocabulary:

The technical words associated with a specific area, such as science, history, or literature. Often these words have multiple meanings leading to confusion (i.e., square, coordinate, degree).

Developmental Delay:

A delay in the appearance of normal developmental milestones as measured by appropriate diagnostic instruments and procedures in one or more of the following areas: physical development, cognitive development, communication development, social or emotional development, or adaptive development

Discourse:

The way sentences work in sequence to produce coherent stretches of language, such as in conversations, interviews, commentaries, and speeches.

Distortion:

The misarticulation of a standard sound in which the latter is replaced by a sound not normally used in the language. A lateral lisp is a distortion.

Disfluency:

Disruption in the smooth flow or expression of speech, both normal and abnormal

Dysfluency:

Stuttering

Dyslexia:

As defined by the International Dyslexia Organization, dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede the growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.

Echolalia:

The automatic involuntary repetition of heard phrases and sentences.

Expressive Language:

The cognitive processing involved in the transmission of oral, symbolic, or written language.

Executive Functioning:

An umbrella term for the neurologically-based skills involving mental control and self-regulation. They include the ability to initiate and stop actions, to monitor and change behavior as needed, and to plan future behavior when faced with novel tasks and situations. Executive functions allow us to anticipate outcomes and adapt to changing situations. The ability to form concepts and think abstractly are often considered components of executive function.

Fluency disorder:

An interruption in the flow of speaking characterized by atypical rate, rhythm, and repetitions in sounds, syllables, words, and phrases. This may be accompanied by excessive tension, struggle behavior, and secondary mannerisms.

Hard of hearing:

This is defined as a hearing disorder, whether fluctuating or permanent, which adversely affects an individual's ability to communicate. The hard-of-hearing individual relies on the auditory channel as the primary sensory input for communication.

Hearing disorder:

The result of impaired auditory sensitivity of the physiological auditory system. A hearing disorder may limit the development, comprehension, production, and/or maintenance of speech and/or language. Hearing disorders are classified according to difficulties in detection, recognition, discrimination, comprehension, and perception of auditory information. Individuals with hearing impairment may be described as deaf or hard of hearing.

Hoarseness:

Abnormally rough or harsh-sounding voice caused by vocal abuse and other disorders

Hyperlexia:

A young child's ability to read words far above what would be expected at their chronological age or an intense fascination with letters or numbers. Most hyperlexic children display significant difficulty in understanding verbal language.

Inference:

Using reasoning to derive logical conclusions from evidence and/or assumptions. The ability to contrast and compare new experiences with prior knowledge is salient to the ability to make inferences in social situations and in understanding text.

Intelligibility:

The ability to be heard and understood

Intonation:

The use of changing pitch to convey syntactic information, such as when asking a question.

Jargon:

Continuous but unintelligible speech

Language:

System for communicating ideas and feelings using sounds, gestures, signs or marks

Language Comprehension:

The ability to understand communication from others, such as speech, written text, gestures, or sign language

Language disorder:

Impaired comprehension and/or use of spoken, written and/or other symbol systems. The disorder may involve (1) the form of language (phonology, morphology, syntax), (2) the content of language (semantics), and/or (3) the function of language in communication (pragmatics) in any combination.

Laryngitis:

Hoarse voice or the complete loss of the voice because of irritation to the vocal folds (vocal cords.)

Larynx:

Valve structure between the trachea (windpipe) and the pharynx (the upper throat) that is the primary organ of voice production.

Lateral Lisp:

A specific type of lisp in which the airflow courses around the side of the uplifted tongue

Learning Disability:

A disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding and using language spoken or written which may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, spell, or do mathematical calculations.