Aphasia and Dysgraphia: The Systemics of Language and Learning Disability

What is Aphasia? Aphasia is the inability to communicate or use language. It affects the dexterity to speak, write and comprehend language. The brain is divided into two parts, the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere is in charge of language comprehension, production and reception.

But aphasia comes usually as a result of stroke or head injury. According to the National Aphasia Association, 84.5% of the world's people have never come across Aphasia, 8.8% of people have heard of aphasia and are cognizant of it as language disorder, 34.7% of those that are Aphasia-cognizant either have Aphasia or know someone who has it, while 84.1% make a connection between stroke and brain injury and deficiency in communication.

Again, according to the association, at least two million people in the USA are living with Aphasia, and at least two hundred and fifty thousand people in the great Britain are living with Aphasia. In continuation about one-third (225,000) of stroke cases lead to Aphasia. According to a research in Nigeria, it has proven that 96% of Aphasia is caused by stroke. Other studies has proven that the case of Aphasia following stroke in Nigeria is high.

Aphasia is a problem very difficult to tackle, so, it may be a lifelong problem. In Africa, stroke is the main thing that leads to Aphasia. We have different kinds of Aphasia in which each varies with distinct symptoms. Amongst them are Broca's phasia, Wernicke's aphasia, conduction aphasia, anomic aphasia and global aphasia.

Broca's aphasia is also termers as expressive aphasia, it's one that results in damage of a part of the brain called Broca's area which is in the frontal lobe on the left side of the brain. The part is responsible for speech production and motor movement. Its named after Pierre Broca, a french doctor that discovered the area in the year 1861. A person living with Broca's aphasia will be able to comprehend language but will be inept in speech production. It will be tough for the person to make words or make a complete sentence. They have difficulty in using names correctly and difficulty in reading. They also have difficulty to repeat what people have said.

Wernicke's aphasia, the receptive aphasia, is one type of aphasia that makes it difficult to understand speech. It happens as a result of damage to the Wernicke's area which is in the left hemisphere of the brain. It is also called sensory or fluent aphasia. It is named after a German physician in 1874. People with Wernicke's apahasia make speech but don't make sense because they don't understand the information passed to them.

Conduction aphasia is the associative aphasia. This one is caused by the damage of the arcuate fasciculus that runs between the Broca's and Wernicke's areas. When conduction apahasia happens, the Wernicke's and Broca's areas are disconnected from each other. A person with conduction apahasia will find it hard to repeat words. They find it easy to write, but find it very tough to vocalize. The person is aware of the mistake, but try to make corrections till they get it right.

In anomic type of aphasia, the person finds it hard to find words (anomia). As a result of this, the person is inept in finding the appropriate words to use for speech or writing.

Global aphasia is a type where the part of the brain incharge of language is totally damaged (left hemisphere) which contains the Broca's area, Wernicke's area and Arcuate fasciculus. In this type of aphasia the patient will lack the ability to make a speech, they lost the dexterity to understand the speech made, as they'll also find it hard to read or write.

The main causes of aphasia are stroke, head injury, brain tumour, infection and dimentia. Though aphasia is very serious to treat, but if it is being taken care of it might be cured over time. Speech-language teraphy, nonverbal communication teraphy are major measures taken as cures. The treatment of aphasia is based on the patient's age, type of aphasia, size of the brain lesion and the position of the brain lesion.

Now, what is dysgraphia? This refers to a language or learning disorder that affects the ability to write down one's thoughts. People living with dysgraphia find it difficult to express themselves in written form. They have illegible handwriting and spell words wrongly. According to edutopia.org, it is stated that currently, it’s estimated that students with dysgraphia make up 7 to 15 percent of students in a general education classroom. In order to support all our students, it’s critical that teachers better understand what dysgraphia is, what it looks like, and how to support students who struggle with it in the classroom.

It doesn't necessarily mean people with dysgraphia have difficulty in seeing and perceiving sounds and words. They just have difficulty comprehending what is being said or seen. They have difficulty in capturing visual-related information, they find it difficult to put alphabets together to make words, and they are sluggish in writing.

Types of dysgraphia range from dyslexic to spatial dysgraphia. Dyslexic dysgraphia is is a type of dysgraphia that restrains the person from the ability to read fluently and smoothly write down words. While reading, people with this kind of disorder skip words and stammer. They have difficulty in structuring sentences, and difficulty in spelling.

Another type of dysgraphia is motor dysgraphia. In this type of dysgraphia, the person suffering from it doesn't have a fine-motor skills. People With this have illegible handwriting.

However, people with this may not have difficulty in spelling, punctuation and grammar but do not improve in their handwriting. Using of keyboard has been prescribed as the optimal solution to people living with this type of dysgraphia. According to Wikipedia, motor skill deficits appears to be a common cause of dysgraphia in which 78% of children with the disorder have kinematic difficulties, while 58% of them display issue with pressure skill.

In the spatial dysgraphia type, the person with this kind of dysgraphia have difficulties understanding space and this brings about improper line spacing between alphabets, illegible copied work and illegible unplanned and clumsy written work. Spatial dysgraphia can emanate as a result of damage in the right hemisphere of the brain.

People with dysgraphia have difficulties in putting down their thoughts on paper. Much erasing while writing, slow writing, deficiency in the ability to copy, much reliance on vision to write, size and shapes of letter are bad, poor grip on pen or on any other writing materials and misuse of lines and margins are major features of the disability. As the exact causes of dysgraphia is yet to be known, it's known that it comes as a genetic disorder. It may also come as result of clan history, in which some family members in the past might have suffered.

The ability to write and spell may have genetic basis, in which according to Wikipedia, it has been estimated that up to 10% of children in the world are affected by disabilities like dysgraphia, dyslexia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia.

In conclusion, there is no concrete treatment for dysgraphia. Its known precautionary measures may include treatment of motor disorders so as to make them see writing as a necessity. Occupational therapy is also used in the control of dysgraphia. Some physicians make their patients use computers for writing to deter bad handwriting.