Helpful Definitions

Anticonvulsants = Medications prescribed to prevent or control epilepsy

Articulation = The way sounds and speech are produced

Aspiration = Food or liquids entering the airways (lungs)

Ataxia = Difficulty with co-ordinating smooth movements

Auditory = The sense of hearing

Auditory Processing = difficulty with listening and processing what they hear.

Bilateral = Both sides

Cognition = Is a persons ability to plan, think, learn and problem solve. Involves most daily activities like dressing, time management, memory etc.

Dysphagia = Problems or difficulties swallowing.

Dysarthria = A neurological deficit effecting the nerves and muscles used for swallowing and speech.

Dyspraxia = Problems or difficulties with planning motor movements. Often effects speech as well as hand and gait movements.

Expressive Language = A child's ability to use words etc to express themselves. Includes verbal and written communication.

Gross Motor Skills: Gross motor skills are those skills which use large muscles of the body, for example walking, running, sitting and crawling.

Hemianopia = This is loss of vision involving one half of the visual field usually affecting both eyes (homonomous hemianopia) and due to damage to the visual pathways in the brain

Hemiplegia = Paralysis or difficulty moving one side of the body, may be upper limb, lower limb or both.

Metalinguistics = Higher level language abilities include the child's ability to conceptualise, manipulate and judge the content and meaning of language. These skills allow a child to discuss, think and talk about language as an object that can be analysed.

Modified Barium Swallow = An xray assessment of a person swallowing.

Occipital lobe = is the area of the brain where information processed by the eyes is decoded and information about what we see (colour, shape and distance) is understood.

Oral Musculature Assessment (OMA) = An assessment of the muscles and nerves used for swallowing and speech.

Phonological Disorder = When a child can make a sound may use or combine it with other sounds inappropriately eg. "tat" for cat.

Post Traumatic Amnesia (PTA) = The period of loss, of day to day memory, inability to store new information and the inability to learn new concepts.

Post Traumatic Epilepsy = Epilepsy as a result of brain injury

Pragmatics = Refers to the social use of language ie. the why, how, who and when we communicate.

Pre-morbid = The condition of the child/person before the brain injury.

Receptive Language = A child's ability to understand language, may include different areas eg. following directions, understanding concepts, auditory processing, sequencing etc

Tactile = The sense of touch

Visual Acuity = Sharpness of vision

Visual Field = Total area of space that one can seePrecocious Puberty

Voice Disorders = Nerve or muscle disorders that effect phonation (voice and sound production from the larynx). A disorder of movement of the vocal cords.

Word Retrieval Difficulties = "word finding problems" are when a person knows and understands a particular word, but has difficulty retrieving it and using it in their speech.