Currently, the number of children with speech disorders has increased. Most modern parents are very conscious and responsible. And when they are faced with such a problem as a violation of sound pronunciation in a child, they immediately ask themselves the question — “What caused this?”. In this article, we will help parents understand what can lead to speech disorders. This information will also be useful for those who would like to prevent the possibility of this deviation in speech development.
The cause of speech disorders is understood as the impact on the body of external (exogenous), internal (endogenous) factors or their influence in combination, which ultimately determines the specifics of a speech disorder. Accordingly, the causes of speech disorders can be divided into two groups: internal and external.
Internal (endogenous) causes of speech disorders:
- Intrauterine pathology, which leads to a violation of the development of the fetus. The most severe speech defects occur when the fetus develops in a period of 4 weeks. up to 4 months
– Intrauterine fetal hypoxia. Toxicosis, gestosis of pregnancy, pathology of the placenta, increased blood pressure in a pregnant woman, as well as various somatic diseases of the mother can cause fetal hypoxia.
– Infectious diseases of the mother during pregnancy (rubella, influenza, scarlet fever, measles, infectious hepatitis, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, toxoplasmosis, herpes, syphilis, HIV infection).
– Injuries sustained by the mother during pregnancy, falls and bruises.
– Incompatibility of the blood of the mother and fetus (Rhesus conflict or conflict in blood type). Rhesus or group antibodies, penetrating the placenta, cause the breakdown of fetal red blood cells. As a result, a substance toxic to the central nervous system, indirect bilirubin, is released from erythrocytes. Under its influence, the subcortical parts of the brain, the auditory nuclei are affected, which leads to specific disorders of the sound-producing side of speech in combination with hearing impairment.
- Birth trauma and asphyxia during childbirth, which lead to intracranial hemorrhages. Various obstetric pathologies (improper presentation of the fetus, multiple pregnancy, polyhydramnios, premature discharge of amniotic fluid, narrow pelvis, prolonged or rapid labor) can lead to asphyxia (or hypoxia) during childbirth.
- Use of alcohol, drugs and tobacco by the mother during pregnancy. Science has described an alcoholic embryonic syndrome, which includes a lag in physical, speech and mental development. Nicotine negatively affects the processes of blood circulation in the uterus and placenta, which leads to a slowdown in the transport of amino acids from mother to fetus.
- Work in hazardous production (excessive physical activity, contact with harmful chemicals, exposure to ultraviolet radiation, ionizing radiation).
- Peculiarities of the mental state of the mother's nervous system during pregnancy (stress, long-term depression, social stress, economic and material difficulties).
- Hereditary predisposition, genetic anomalies. Although speech disorders are not always inherited, such a possibility cannot be ruled out.
- Diseases suffered by a child in the first years of life (infectious viral diseases, neuroinfections, brain injuries and bruises, chronic diseases).
External (exogenous) causes of speech disorders:
- Of no small importance for the development of the child are the social and living conditions in which he grows up. Unfavorable social and living conditions can lead to microsocial pedagogical neglect, vegetative dysfunction, disorders of the emotional-volitional sphere and a deficit in the development of speech.
- The child's speech develops by imitation. Because of this, it is extremely important that the child is surrounded by people with the right speech. And if there are older children in the family with a defect in sound pronunciation, it is important to correct it in a timely manner.
- Stress, fear, a traumatic situation in the family and various other mental traumas can cause speech disorders. In addition to the fact that this delays the development of speech, in some cases it can also lead to psychogenic speech disorders: mutism or neurotic stuttering.
- The very fact of communication is of great importance in the development of speech. It is not enough for a child just to hear sounds (TV, radio), direct communication with adults is necessary. It is important to communicate with the child according to his age. If the norm is to maintain emotional communication with a child of the first year of life, then with an older child (2–3 years old) one should switch to subject-effective communication. If this transition is not carried out, then one should think about the risk of a delay in psycho-speech development.
- Adjusting adults to children's speech (lisping) is one of the types of adverse social influence that can interfere with the development of speech and reinforce incorrect sound pronunciation.
It is possible to classify speech problems in preschool children according to clinical and pedagogical and psychological and pedagogical indicators. Two classifications should be considered in combination: together they help to understand the cause of the violation and determine ways to eliminate it.
Clinical and pedagogical classification is closer to the medical one. She divides speech deviations into oral and written. The former can be phonation or systemic.
With phonation, the source of the problem can be improper voice formation, sound pronunciation, tempo, intonation. That is, the child 100 % understands the speech directed to him, but cannot reproduce it. The following phonation disorders are divided:
Bradilalia is a slow pace of speech.
Dysarthria is a violation due to insufficient innervation of the articulatory apparatus.
Dysglosia — difficulties with pronunciation due to palatine, jaw, and other clefts.
Dyslalia — deviations with full hearing and intact speech apparatus.
Dysphonia is a complete or fragmentary violation of phonation due to an anomaly of the vocal apparatus.
Stuttering — failures of tempo rhythm due to spasms of the jaw muscles.
Rhinolalia is the specificity of the timbre of the voice and sound pronunciation due to articulatory features.
Tahilalia — the child speaks with words.
Systemic deviations are more severe. They are formed due to lesions of the cerebral cortex. The child partially loses the ability to correctly repeat words and phrases, to understand their meaning. There are two types of violations:
Alalia — the inability to speak or underdevelopment due to damage to the speech areas of the cerebral cortex, formed during the development of the fetus or after birth.
Aphasia is a complete or partial loss of speech due to brain damage (stroke, etc.). More often the diagnosis becomes clear after 3 years.
Among the above, severe speech disorders can be distinguished — persistent deviations of the speech system with persistent hearing and intelligence. These include sensory and motor alalia, severe variants of dysarthria, rhinolalia, stuttering, aphasia and other abnormalities. Such problems can affect the formation of the psyche.
Violations of written speech can be noticed in senior kindergarten age or in the first grades of school. This is dyslexia (the child incorrectly recognizes letters and forms words from them, there are difficulties with reading), dysgraphia (when writing, letters are mixed, rearranged or omitted).
To determine how much it is possible to influence the defect and correct it, they came up with a psychological and pedagogical classification. Correction occurs during speech therapy classes.
Deviations from the point of view of psychology and pedagogy are:
– Phonetic-phonemic — the child pronounces phonemes incorrectly, because he also perceives them incorrectly.
– General speech underdevelopment — there are problems with all components of the articular system. The child develops speech late, it is poor, it is difficult for him to pronounce some sounds.
– Stuttering — communication tools are developed correctly, there is a problem only in their application.
According to this classification, children can be divided into 3 conditional groups:
– They do not pronounce individual sounds, there are no other problems.
– There are problems with the perception of sounds and their reproduction. Children do not distinguish some sounds, do not see the articulation and acoustic difference. They rearrange syllables when speaking, write and read poorly, “swallow” the endings of words.
– Have a general speech underdevelopment. They do not combine sounds into syllables, have a small vocabulary, and do not speak coherently. If a speech therapist does not start dealing with such children in time, they may have huge communication problems.
Speech disorders affect the mental functions of a preschooler. The attention of such children is often characterized by instability. They hardly generalize, compare and analyze, perceive verbal instructions. Such children are characterized by impaired coordination, they are slow and awkward, have insufficiently developed fine motor skills. A child with severe disabilities is unsure of himself, is touchy, and has difficulty establishing contacts.
Our country is consistently implementing measures to protect the health of mothers and children. Among them, first of all, we should mention the medical examination of pregnant women suffering from chronic diseases, periodic hospitalization of women with a negative Rh factor, and many others. In the prevention of speech development anomalies, clinical examination of children who have undergone birth trauma plays an important role. Of great importance for preventing the birth of children with speech defects is the dissemination of knowledge about the causes and signs of speech pathology among doctors, teachers and the general population.
