A limited vocabulary is typical for children with general underdevelopment of speech and intellectual disabilities, patients with encephalopathies of various origins, dementia, aphasia, epilepsy, mental disorders. Limited vocabulary does not allow you to fully express your thoughts, answer questions in detail, and communicate with others. Diagnostics has two vectors: establishing the cause of a depleted vocabulary (MRI of the brain, EEG, pathopsychological testing) and qualitative and quantitative assessment of vocabulary (speech therapy examination). Expansion of vocabulary is carried out against the background of therapy for the underlying disease.
A large vocabulary is considered a sign of education, a broad outlook, erudition, and intelligence. An extensive vocabulary allows a person to clearly formulate and verbalize his thoughts, better communicate with others. The entire vocabulary is divided into active (words that a person uses in his speech) and passive (words, the meaning of which a person knows and understands).
Lexical stock begins to develop almost from birth. A child normally pronounces 10-12 words per year, by the age of 2 the active vocabulary expands to 250-30 words, by the 3rd - up to 800-1000, by the 4th - up to 2000, by the age of 5 it is 2500-3000, and by 6-7 - 3000-350 words. The active vocabulary of an average adult is more than 3,000 words. words, passive - over 80-85 thousand. Vocabulary is changeable throughout life: a person constantly learns and introduces new words into his lexicon, while he stops using and forgets previously learned ones. It is believed that some decline in vocabulary begins after 55 years.
ZRR is manifested by a delay in the formation of speech function in children under 3-4 years of age. Speech begins to develop late, there is an extremely limited vocabulary, difficulties in the grammatical construction of a phrase, gross violations of the phonemic system. The minimum vocabulary limits the child's ability to communicate, inhibits the development of cognitive processes.
The causes of RRR can be organic or functional (tempo) in nature. The factors provoking RRR are:
The general underdevelopment of speech of the 1st level is characterized by the late appearance of speech activity, the poverty of the vocabulary, ignorance and inaccuracy in understanding the meaning of many words, the inability to semantically and grammatically correctly formulate the statement. In the vocabulary of a child with OHP level 1, there are only separate sound complexes and babble words. With OHP level 2, the child uses extremely limited vocabulary - he names some objects and actions, makes up a phrase of 2-3 words.
OHP level 3 is characterized by an increase in vocabulary, which allows you to build a detailed phrase, but the vocabulary is monotonous, and the understanding of the meaning of words is inaccurate. With OHP level 4, the vocabulary practically corresponds to the norm, only rarely used words are absent in the active dictionary, there are difficulties in the selection of antonyms and synonyms.
At all degrees of OHP, there are also gross violations of sound pronunciation and phonemic development, agrammatisms. ONR is diagnosed in the following types of speech disorders:
Hearing loss leads to systemic underdevelopment of speech function. This means that the child has a significant vocabulary deficit, a distortion of the syllabic composition of words, the pronunciation of many sounds and their auditory differentiation are disturbed.
With congenital or early onset hearing loss (up to 3-5 years), independent speech and its understanding may be absent or in its infancy. Acquired hearing loss not only hinders further speech and mental development, but can also cause the decay of formed speech functions: vocabulary depletion, sound substitutions, voicing defects, the appearance of dysprosody, agrammatisms.
Limited vocabulary
Children with ASD, as a rule, begin to speak much later than their peers (sometimes only at 3-4 years old), do not respond to their name and speech, and do not ask questions. At the same time, they use a limited vocabulary, stereotyped statements.
Autistic children do not use the pronoun “I” when speaking about themselves in the third person, they rarely refer to others by name, to parents - “mom”, “dad”. They have difficulty building sentences, so they often use other people's phrases (echolalia). Even with a relatively normal vocabulary, autistic speech does not serve as a means of communication. Communication difficulties are typical for patients with:
Children with intellectual disabilities have a very limited, primitive vocabulary that practically does not increase and does not change qualitatively over time. They do not perceive verbal information well, they hardly express their thoughts and needs. Any instruction requires repeated repetition, while the phrases should be short, consist of familiar, frequently used words.
Oligophrenia of varying severity (from borderline intellectual insufficiency to idiocy) may be congenital or genetic in nature. Genetically determined mental retardation occurs in syndromes:
A reduction in vocabulary, and then a complete regression of speech and communication skills after a period of successful development of the child, is characteristic of such pathologies as Rett syndrome, Geller syndrome, Landau-Kleffner syndrome.
Limited vocabulary may be a consequence of the aphatic syndrome. Such a manifestation is observed with amnestic (nominative) aphasia, when patients forget the name of objects, phenomena, actions. Instead of the right word, patients use synonyms, descriptions, allegories. The word start hint is usually effective for recalling the entire word.
The narrowing of the vocabulary is demonstrated by patients with dynamic aphasia. It is characterized by a telegraphic style, speech stamps (lack of a predicative dictionary, use of only subject vocabulary), monosyllabic answers. Speech activity is reduced, spontaneous speech is practically absent, echolalia occurs.
Impoverishment of the vocabulary and reduced speech activity - oligophasia - is often found in patients with epilepsy. In the initial stages of the disease, oligophasia is transient and is observed only after an epileptic seizure. Then, as the epilepsy progresses, it persists in the interictal periods. A person forgets words, cannot find a name for an object. But unlike amnestic aphasia, prompting the first and subsequent syllables does not help remember the whole word. A sharply reduced, limited vocabulary is characteristic of epileptic dementia.
Organic brain damage can be caused by CNS infections, head injuries, intoxication, alcoholism, cerebral ischemia, hypovitaminosis. If in acute encephalopathy speech is disturbed by the type of dysarthria or aphasia, then in chronic course there is a gradual intellectual-mnestic decline, a psychoorganic syndrome develops. Vocabulary is reduced, phrases are simplified and become stereotyped, the range of topics for conversation is limited.
Dictionary reduction occurs in patients with mental disorders. So, the stereotypical repetition of the same words and phrases (verbigeration) is observed in catatonic syndrome, bipolar disorder, senile dementia.
With various types of dementia, there is an impoverishment of all aspects of a person's mental activity, a persistent intellectual decline. In the initial period, the patient forgets words, replaces them with others, often not suitable in meaning (verbal paraphasia). Further, the fluency of speech decreases, the vocabulary becomes poor, it loses reading and writing skills (alexia, agraphia). In severe dementia, speech understanding is impaired, speech inactivity develops. Decrease in vocabulary is typical for:
The diagnostic route depends on the suspected causes of the limited vocabulary. At the initial stage, the history of life, previous verbal development, and factors that could affect speech function are studied. Patients receive advice from a neurologist, psychologist or psychiatrist, audiologist, speech therapist, geneticist.
Vocabulary expansion
Corrective speech therapy measures are carried out against the background of the treatment of those pathologies that served as the root cause of the delay in the formation or impoverishment of the vocabulary. The main components of medical rehabilitation:
The task of expanding vocabulary is solved during classes on the development of speech, correction of OHP, dysarthria, aphasia. With speech delays, stimulating techniques are actively used: subject-sensory therapy, finger games, onomatopoeia games. In everyday life, it is necessary to verbalize (pronounce) all the actions of the child. Practical activities (sculpting, drawing, appliqué), theatrical and plot-role-playing games, joint reading of books are useful.
As part of correctional speech therapy classes for patients with a limited vocabulary, the following is used:
To maintain the cognitive functions of the brain in old age, regular physical and mental activity is useful: daily exercise, crossword puzzles, manual labor (embroidery, beading, lace), memorizing poetry, mastering new knowledge and practical skills.