Such disorders may range from hearing speech sounds faintly, or in a distorted way, to profound deafness. Speech and Language Disorders - these disorders affect the way people talk and understand. These disorders may range from simple sound substitutions to the inability to use speech and language at all. The ability to communicate is our most human characteristic. Human communication is essential to learning, working, and social interaction.
Impaired communication can affect every aspect of a person's life.
This kind of hearing loss can often be medically or surgically corrected. Certain sounds are heard less distinctly than others, causing distortion and reduced understanding of speech. Although this kind of hearing loss is usually not medically correctable, people with sensorineural hearing loss can often be helped by using a hearing aid or other amplification device. Some of the causes of hearing loss are chronic ear infections, heredity, birth defects, health problems at birth, certain drugs, head injury, viral or bacterial infection, exposure to loud noise, aging, and tumors. A thorough evaluation by a speech-language pathologist or audiologist is needed to determine a person's communication strengths and weaknesses.