Aphasia is an acquired language disorder. This disorder is acquired usually in people with brain damage or stroke. People who acquire anomic aphasia would fail to remember names and words. Often confused with dysnomia (less severe word remembrance dysfunction), this dysfunction is also called as nominal/amnesic aphasia. People who suffer from this syndrome would be possessing a lesion in their temporal parietal area.
Anomic Aphasia: Sufferers of this syndrome would get easily frustrated because they know the word but just cannot pronounce it. Due to this very reason, they speak in a circumlocutions (roundabout fashion) order, making their speech quiet fuzzy. Let us understand a few traits of this syndrome.
- Grammar remains unaffected.
- Repetitive skills remain good.
- Auditory comprehension would also remain intact.
- Reading and writing skills would range anywhere between poor to normal. Amnesic sufferers can write what they can’t speak on some occasions.
- The disorder affects the patient’s first language primarily.
- African blacks have a higher chance of suffering from this syndrome when compared to Caucasians.
- 20 percent of all the people who suffer from a brain stroke are prone to be aphasic. In the US alone, 170,000 cases of aphasia are reported every year.
Exercises: The most commonly used words are often forgotten by aphasic sufferers. It is important to consult a speech language pathologist to get the right treatment plan. The traits and symptoms of aphasic patients can easily differ. The following exercises can prove to be useful.
- Have a chart that shows body parts and ask the patient to name them or point out. Do the same with the objects in the room.
- Try teaching synonyms are words that have the same meaning. For instance, not cold means hot. Try teaching such words.
- Ask the patient to name objects upon description.
- Ask the patient to mention the names of objects that belong to the same category. For example, you can say fruits and the patient can name all the fruits.
- Ask them to frame their own sentences from a given word.
- Ask them to solve crosswords and scramble.
Anomic aphasia, unlike any other speech disorder is tough to identify, given it’s similarities with various other syndromes. But, the above mentioned traits can act as a guide in identifying this disorder.
