Anomia

Anomia

By: Brooke Adams, Ainsley Majer, Molly Amann, and Douaa Soltany

Table of Contents / Navigation

Our presentation contains videos, check-in questions after slides or diagrams, and a final quiz/reflection at the end.

• Anomia Diagnosis
• Strategies to Practice
• Question 6
• Question 7

• Management of Anomia
• Video attached to slide, "Help with Word Finding"
• Question 8
• Question 9
• Read about 4 different management/treatments of anomia
• Question 10
• Question 11
• Question 12
• Final Assessment on Google Forms!

• What is Anomia?
• Video attached to slide: "What is Anomia?"
• What is Lexical Access?
• Levelt's Theory of Lexical Access
• Lexical Access in Relation to Anomia
• Types of Retrieval
• Question 1
• Types of Single Word Retrieval Profiles
• Question 2
• Types of Language Behaviors in Discourse Retrieval Contexts
• Question 3
• Who can be affected by Anomia?
• Students with LD, students who have reading difficulties
• Students who have SLI, students who have fluency difficulties
• Students who have known brain pathology
• Question 4
• Symptoms of Anomia
• Question 5
• Question 6

What is Anomia?

Anomia is a language impairment that occurs when a child knows a word and has it stored in their lexicon but cannot spontaneously retrieve it.

It feels like something is on the tip of your tongue but you just can't remember. Everyone experiences it to some degree, however, children with anomia are affected to a much higher degree. This causes developmental delays and complications in the classroom.

watch this video for more information!

What is Lexical Access?

• Lexical Access is the process of using lexical representations to produce or express meaning
• Lexical access occurs in speaking when the pronounceable word forms are found which encode the concepts the speaker wishes to communicate
• Lexical access also occurs in listening when the meaning is found which is expressed in the word forms the listener has heard

There are different models of Lexical Access: Levelt's Model (1999) assumes that the speaker efficiently transforms the intended message into individual lexically expressed concepts.

Each such concept has a unique lexical representation (the lemma) associated with it. The activation of the concepts expressed i the message causes activation of the lemmas to which they are connected. The syntactic constraints connected with the ideas are contained in the lemmas.

Levelt's Model

Each such concept has a unique lexical representation (the lemma) associated with it. The activation of the concepts expressed i the message causes activation of the lemmas to which they are connected. The syntactic constraints connected with the ideas are contained in the lemmas.

Levelt's Theory of Lexical Access

• Levelt's theory demonstrates what lexical selection is

Purpose: make articulatory score for selected lexical item

Purpose: focus on a singluar lexical item

selected word's articulatory shape is determined

"spelled out" segments-phonnemes as part as the International Phonetic Alphabet

selection of lemma triggers form encoding!

Syllabification is not stored in our lexicon, it is made up as we speak!

final output of form encoding, a string of "syllabic gestural routines" that corresponds to the goal word

Lemma: dictionary form of a word

Types of Lexical Access

• Lexical access in speaking is the process of finding the lexical representations to express the desired meaning

• Lexical access in understanding is the process of finding the lexical representations which correspond to the heard sounds.

• Both speaking and understanding require lexical access, but the two processes are the reverse of one another.

Lexical Access in Relation to Anomia

• Anomia is a defecit in lexical selection - people with anomia are unable to retrieve words

• Levelt's Theory of Lexical Access helps us understand what happens when we look to retrieve a word from our lexicon
• We can use this process to analyze where word retrieval in patients with anomia may be inhibited
• It covers all stages of word retireval during communication, starting from the speaker focusing on the concept to ending with the speaking intiating articulation

Why is Lexical Access relevant to Anomia?

Types of Retrieval

Single-word retrieval Trouble retrieving specific words such as:- Nouns - Verb - Adjective - Date - Number This can translate into difficulty retrieving facts when responding to questions or difficulty recalling specific facts in a story. Example: Teacher: What did you get on Halloween? Student: Oh, dessert...candy. I got candy on Halloween.

Types of Single-Word Retrieval Profiles

Langauge behavior can appear as inaccurate word selection, no response, unique substitutions, and/or extended delays when attempting to say a word.

In response to the question, "What kind of food is on the tree?", students with word-finding difficulties may say:

Types of Retrieval

Discourse retrieval: Trouble retrieving the words to explain an event or experience. This results in short descriptions or lots of word-finding behaviors. Word-finding behaviors include: - word repetition - word reformulation - substitutions - insertions - empty words - delayed speech Example: Teacher: What did you do this weekend? Student: Um, My...mom, my mom...I went to the........I went to the what's that place, the one with the swings and slide, oh I went to the park, um, with my mom, and my um, um, and Buddy, oh yeah, my dog Buddy.

Types of Language Behaviors in Discourse Retrieval Contexts

Who Can be Effected by Anomia?

There are six different main groups of students who may be affected by anomia:

• Students who have specific learning disabilities (LD)

• Students who have reading difficulties

• Students who have specific language difficulties (SLI)

• Students who have fluency difficulties

• Students who have known brain pathology

• Students who have attention difficulties and/or are hyperactive (ADHD)

Students who have Specific Learning Disabilities (LD):

• The existence of word finding difficulties is frequently found in descriptions of students with LD's.
• Recall words slowly, and word finding issues can be a source of difficulty in areas including reading, learning, and expressive language
• In school, students with learning disabilities and word finding issues have difficulty recalling object names, numbers, and letter names or letter sounds.
• Children make these kinds of mistakes even when they are fully aware of the letter names and sounds that they are attempting to recollect.

Students who have Reading Difficulties:

• Among students with reading difficulties, a "double deficit subtype" exists in which naming-speed deficits and phonological impairments co-occur
• Reading problems are frequently associated with phonological retrieval deficits
• The employment of reading strategies by dyslexic adolescents and standard matched readers suggests that dyslexic readers have less access to words in the lexicon
• Poor readers can exhibit minor oral language issues, one of which is a word finding difficulties.
• On rapid automatic naming tests, students with dyslexia and poor readers are slow and imprecise namers.
• Frequent word finding-based oral reading errors

Students who have Specific Language Difficulties (SLD):

In single word retrieval contexts, students with SLDs tend to:

• respond inaccurately or slowly;
• manifest unique substitution responses that are either semantic or phonemic in nature
• manifest error types related to their pattern of language deficit.

Students who have Fluency Difficulties

• The relationship between word finding difficulties and fluency issues, particularly those students who deal with stutters, has been examined heavily.
• Reports have shown that some, not all, students with fluency difficulties may struggle with word retrieval.

Students who have known Brain Pathology:

• Word-finding difficulties have been reported among children with both congenital, present from birth, and acquired conditions
• Children who do not have a fully developed left hemisphere of their brain commonly struggle with word retrieval

Symptoms of Anomia

A child experiencing anomia will:

• Have poor expressive vocabulary

• Describe words without using them (word: shoes ex. the things you wear on your feet )
• Avoid using content words (ex. I left it at school instead of I left my backpack at school)
• Take a long time to answer questions
• Use lots of non-specific words such as thing, there, and stuff

Anomia Diagnosis

Each child's diagnosis is different based on their specific retrieval issues. A speech language pathologist will assess each child's word retrieval difficulties or errors and determine the best treatment plan for them.

Strategies to Practice

• There is no cure for anomia, however there are many strategies to recall a word when you can't retrieve it!
• Describe the word
• Give yourself time to think of the word
• Gesture what the word is
• Draw the word
• Think of a synonym for the word
• Think of the first letter of the word

Management of Anomia

Watch this short video of strategies to help with word retrieval, then answer a few short questions based on the video.

Click to the next slide for the questions!

Question 1:

Question 2:

Management of Anomia (click to go to the page!)

Substitutive Treatments

Restitutive Word Retrieval Treatment

Compensatory Treatments

Pharmacological Intervention

After you read about all of the possible managements and treatments of anomia, click the star to answer some questions!

Substitutive Word Retrieval Treatments

• Promote word retrieval by engaging different cognitive systems
• prosody
• right hemisphere
• Preserved phonological reading and writing abilities
• treatment to help patients learn to think about the spelling of words, so when they can't retrieve it they can use phonemic cues
• Gesture
• treatment to help patients learn pantomime or different gestures that represent meaning

click to go back to treatments page!

Greater generalizing effects of untrained words, more improvement when patients pair gestures with spoken words (Pashek)

Restitutive Word Retrieval Treatments

• linguistic rich environment (reactive and re-learn language
• Cueing hierarchy list

• series of cues when a patient fails to retrieve a word
• sentence completion ("take a drink of _____")
• Semantic Feature Analysis Training (SFA)
• meant to strengthen semantic representations (failure to do so results in the inability to retrieve the correct phonology)
• patients learn specific semantic properties (function, physical properties, category membership, location, etc) to describe the relevant object
• Some restitutive treatments focus more on phonology
• patients consider how a word sounds (syllables, starting sound, words that rhyme, etc)

click to go back to treatments page!

Studies show word retreival treatment is most effective or potent when there is a combonation of semantic and phonological treatment (Maher and Raymer 2004).

Compensatory Methods for Word Retreival Impairments

• Typically used for severe aphasia patients
• "unaided" compensatory techniques
• use of nonverbal communication (pantomime, facial expressions, referential pointing, body language, etc)
• picture naming tasks
• evidence suggests word retrieval during these tasks is "achieved through direct activation of viewed object to phonological representations" (Maher, Raymer).

click to go back to treatments page!

Pharmacological Intervention for Word Retrieval

• Agents that maximize the plasticity of the neurological system have been explored
• Bromocriptine was administered to patients with non-fluent aphasia
• patients documented to have improvements in verbal fluency and improved word retrieval
• All in all, the effects of pharmacologic treatments are still being studied
• helps word retrieval to an extent by reducing response times

click to go back to treatments page!

Managment of Anomia: Check in Questions

Management of Anomia Check in Questions

Managment of Anomia Check in Questions

More Resources On Anomia:

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Click here to view a handout with facts and a summary about anomia! It's a great handout to refresh yourself on the causes and types of anomia.

Click here to read about word-finding difficulties, treatment, diagnosis, and more! Another helpful summary.

Click here to view some worksheets that can facilitate word finding! They include fill in the blanks, complete the phrases and more.

Final Activity!

Please fill out this Google Form now that you've complete the module! It consists of a nine short answer, true or false, and multiple choice questions.

Link

click here!