
Health Dictionary
Reliable, easy-to-read patient information on common medical conditions — written in plain language, free of jargon, and grounded in current evidence. Browse the most frequent diagnoses, understand what they mean for everyday life, and learn which steps and questions help you have a focused conversation with your doctor.
Communication disorder
Introduction
Background
A communication disorder is a disease or condition that partially or totally prevents human communication. The defect can be in producing, receiving or understanding the communication.
Examples of communication disorders:
- autism — a developmental defect that affects understanding of emotional communication
- aphasia — loss of the ability to produce or comprehend language
- Learning disability – Both speaking and listening components of the definition
- Dysnomia – Deficit involving word retrieval
- Asperger Syndrome – Areas of social and pragmatic language
- Semantic Pragmatic Disorder – Challenges with the semantic and pragmatic aspects of language
- blindness — a defect of the eye or visual system
- deafness — a defect of the ear or auditory system
- dyslexia — a defect of the systems used in reading
- dyscalculia — a defect of the systems used in communicating numbers
- expressive language disorder — affects speaking and understanding where there is no delay in non-verbal intelligence.
- mixed receptive-expressive language disorder — affects speaking, understanding, reading and writing where there is no delay in non-verbal intelligence.
- speech disorders such as
- cluttering, a speech organization disorder
- stuttering
- oesophageal voice
- speech sound disorder
- specific language impairment
- dysarthria
See also:
Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]
