A dyslalia is a disorder that affects the articulation of speech phonemes.
It is necessary to differentiate the three types of disorders in order to understand how they develop:
- Dyslalia: disorder of phoneme articulation due to the absence or alteration of phonemes in an inappropriate manner.
- Dysglossia: articulation disorder due to organic causes. The main symptom is the production of an alteration in the timbre of the voice.
- Dysarthrias: articulation anomaly as a consequence of lesions of the nervous system that cause a speech alteration.
Within the dyslalias there are different types such as:
- Developmental dyslalias: speech alterations as a consequence of language immaturity at a certain age. In this phase the child does not articulate or distorts sounds, although it is temporary.
- Audiogenic dyslalias: alterations as a consequence of hearing loss or auditory discrimination.
- Functional dyslalias: permanent alterations in the pronunciation of certain sounds due to motor difficulties.
- Organic dyslalias or dysglossias: articulation disorders as a consequence of an alteration in the phonoarticulatory organs.
- Neurological dyslalias or dysarthria: they are the consequence of a peripheral or central neurological disorder.
Processes of simplification of infantile speech
- Processes related to syllable structure: they refer to the reduction of syllables and can manifest themselves in different contexts such as the omission of final consonants, the omission of unstressed syllables, reduplications and the reduction of several consonant clusters into one.
- Assimilatory processes: these occur when one segment resembles another due to proximity in the same word. The child substitutes those sounds that he/she cannot pronounce yet.
- Substitutive processes: whole classes of sounds are substituted in certain words.
Diagnosis of dyslalia
The specialist in Phoniatrics will perform an initial phono-articulatory examination to distinguish what type of disorder the child suffers from and whether it refers to repetitive, directed or spontaneous speech.
- Repetitive speech: a list of words is used in which the tested sound is contained in all of the above situations.
- Directed language: a series of objects or drawings known to the child, whose names contain the phoneme to be tested, are presented. If the child already knows how to read, a reading test can be included to observe the child’s articulation in reading.
- Spontaneous language: the child’s speech is observed in spontaneous language through questions and a conversation directed to the data to be analyzed.
Treatments for dyslalia
The specialist performs articulation, auditory discrimination and myofunctional therapy exercises with the child with the help of pictures, stories and visual aids, among others.