Phonological Syntactic Disorder: What It Is, Symptoms, Causes And Treatment
Within the group of communication disorders we can find a fairly heterogeneous group of disorders, with certain common characteristics: appearance in preschool steppe, close relationship with learning disorders, there must be generalized deficiencies and they must not be the result of any alteration motor or sensory, environmental factors or another mental condition.
Phonological syntactic disorder is a type of sound and speech disorder, characterized by the inability to correctly form the sounds of the words of the mother tongue, typical of age and developmentally expected.
In this article we will explain in more detail what phonological syntactic disorder consists of through its characteristics, diagnostic criteria and also its symptoms, and why it is important to seek the help of a specialist.
Phonological syntactic disorder can be found in the main manuals on mental disorders of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV-TR and DSM-5) within the category of “Communication Disorders”, and is called “Phonological Disorder”.
On the other hand, in the manuals of the World Health Organization this disorder has the following names: “Specific disorder of pronunciation”, within the category “Specific disorders of the development of speech and language” (ICD-10) and “Developmental speech sound disorder” (ICD-11), in the category “Developmental speech or language disorders.”
In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) we can find four criteria that should be met in order to make a diagnosis of phonological disorder; These criteria being the ones we are going to comment on below.
First of all, there should be a persistent alteration in the phonological articulation of the language (inability to articulate speech sounds that would be expected for the person’s age and according to the native language), which would generate great difficulty for that person’s speech to be understood, and could prevent verbal communication with other people (Criterion A ). In addition, there is a notable deficiency when it comes to producing spoken sounds, which will interfere with that person’s social participation, as well as their communication, and work or academic development (Criterion B).
These alterations that make the phonological articulation of language difficult, should begin and be detected in the early stages of that person’s evolutionary development (Criterion C).
Finally, articulatory difficulties, in order to make a diagnosis of a phonological disorder, should not have developed due to any acquired or congenital condition (e.g., cleft palate, cerebral palsy, hearing deficits, etc.), nor due to any other neurological or medical disease (Criterion D).
It should be noted that it hardly suffers any changes in terms of criteria with respect to the previous version, the DSM-IV-TR. On the other hand, the ICD-10 proposes diagnostic criteria very similar to those that appear in the DSM. In order to make the diagnosis of phonological disorder, which in this manual would be called developmental speech sound disorder, the ICD-11 mentions that the person’s difficulties and errors should be outside the limits of a normal expected variation of according to the level of intellectual functioning and age.
Characteristics of this speech alteration
Phonological syntactic disorder, in addition to appearing in the DSM-5 under the name “phonological disorder”, also appears in other diagnostic classifications such as the one carried out by Rapin and Allen about “Specific disorders of language development” (TEDL), where this disorder is classified within the subcategory of “Mixed expression-comprehension disorders”.
The main characteristics of phonological syntactic disorder are these:
Main symptoms of phonological syntactic disorder
If the phonological syntactic disorder closely affects language, the person could have notable difficulties when expressing a wide variety of phonemes, so that their language could become intelligible to the people who are listening to what they are trying to express. Below we will see what are the most common errors that can be found due to this communication disorder.
One of the main symptoms that we can see to detect a possible case of syntactic phonological disorder occurs when we see some condition in the processes related to the syllabic structure, such as the following: omit the constants at the beginning (e.g., say ‘ufanda’ instead of saying ‘scarf’), omit the constants at the end (e.g., instead of saying ‘lápiz’, say ‘lapi’), among other types of omissions (e.g., omitting initial unstressed syllables, reducing diphthongs to a single letter, simplifying word groups consonants, etc.).
2. Assimilative processes
Another of the most common symptoms that we can find to detect a possible case of phonological syntactic disorder would be the following: nasal assimilations (e.g. saying ‘tambon’ instead of ‘drum’), alveolar assimilations (e.g., ‘liblo’ instead of saying ‘book’) and many others (e.g., labial assimilations, velar assimilations, interdental assimilations, dental assimilations, etc.).
3. Investment
Among the most frequent symptoms within a possible phonological syntactic disorder we can find “inversion”, which consists of changing the sounds of command words (e.g. saying ‘cocholate’ instead of saying ‘chocolate’).
4. Addition
“Addition” would be another of the symptoms that could be indicative of a phonological syntactic disorder, being characterized by the action by that person of insert a sound (or a letter) that does not correspond to the word next to a sound that you are not able to articulate correctly (for example, when he wants to say the word ‘three’, he inserts a letter and says ‘teres’, or when he wants to say ‘white’, he says ‘balance’.
5. Omission
The “omission” would also be one of the symptoms that could serve as a signal to evaluate a possible case of phonological syntactic disorder, being characterized by the difficulty that a child experiences when pronouncing a phoneme and, therefore, omits it directly (e.g., instead of saying the word ‘zapato’, say ‘apato’), being able to omit the entire syllable (for example, saying ‘lida’ instead of pronouncing the word ‘exit’).
“Substitution” could be another of the possible symptoms of a syntactic phonological disorder that consists of the production of errors when articulating a sound, so that it ends up replacing it with another that can be articulated (for example, a child who has difficulties To pronounce the letter “r”, say ‘can’ instead of ‘rat’.
On the other hand, A “substitution” could also occur when having difficulties in discrimination or auditory perception so that in this type of case the child does not correctly perceive a phoneme and, therefore, emits it later as he had understood it (e.g., saying ‘jueba’ instead of ‘play’).
7. Distortion
Finally, it is worth mentioning “distortion”, since it could be another of the possible symptoms of phonological syntactic disorder, being characterized by being a sound expressed in a distorted manner when given in a deformed or incorrect manner which means that when that person does not use the substitution, they do not make the sound correctly.
Treatment for language and communication disorders
Now that we have seen what phonological syntactic disorder consists of, it is appropriate to give brief information about the general characteristics of intervention for language disorders in general. And in these types of cases you should always seek the help of a specialist.
To this day there are still many questions about what would be the best intervention for language and communication disorders, varying greatly depending on the specific disorder, its severity and the characteristics of each person. Still, it is worth noting that There are some general principles that are usually taken into account in any treatment for this type of disorders these being the following:
