Learning Differences:

Glossary
Aphasia
Partial or total loss of ability to use or understand words appropriately;usually the result of brain injury or disease.
Apraxia Loss or impairment of the ability to execute complex coordinated movements, without impairment of the muscles or senses.
Articulation The way sounds are pronounced when spoken.
Asperger syndrome A mild form of autism (or related syndrome) characterized by difficulty understanding and responding to social situations.
Attention Deficit Disorder A physical disorder characterized by distractibility, impulsiveness, and difficulty attending to one task.
Auditory comprehension The ability to understand what was heard.
Auditory processing difficulty understanding what one hears, or problems distinguishing one sound from another.
Autism A form of drain disorder affecting the child's ability to relate to people, things, and events.
Behavior modification Changing of behavior by rewarding those aspects of behavior that are considered desirable, and ignoring or "negatively rewarding" those behaviors deemed undesirable.
CCC-SLP An acronym that stands for Certificate of Clinical Competency, which is awarded by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association upon completion of a master's degree in the field, course work in specified areas, a national exam, and a nine-month period of supervision.
Congenital Present at birth but not necessarily hereditary.
Decoding Receptive processes in the language process;specifically sensory acuity, awareness, discrimination, and vocabulary comprehension.
Directionality Awareness of left, right, up, down, front, back in relation to one's body
Divergent language skills The ability to organize language and respond to open-ended or general questions, such as "Tell me about your trip."
Dysgraphia A form of agraphia,- the total inability to write. It is seen in children who are slow to develop writing skills and in adults who acquire the syndrome because of a brain injury.
Dysfluency The professional term for stuttering.
Dyslexia Problems remembering and recognizing written letters, numbers, and words; may result in backwards reading or poor handwriting.
Echolalia A pattern of responding to questions or comments by repeating what was heard or the last part of it. Echolalia is associated with autism.
Emotionally disturbed

A condition characterized by one or more of the following, demonstrated over a long period of time and to a marked degree:

  • an inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors
  • an inability to build or maintain satisfactory relationships with others
  • inappropriate types of behavior or feelings under normal circumstances
  • a general, pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression
  • a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal or school problems
Encoding The expressive habits in the language process; i.e., response formulation, including word selection, syntax, grammar, and the actual motor production of the response.
Eye-hand coordination harmonious, cooperative movements of eye and hand, in which the eye guides the hand to smooth completion of the task.
Expressive Language The ability to communicate with others.
Fine motor coordination Harmonious use of the small muscles, as in writing
Gross motor activity Movements in which large muscles are used and in which balance is important, as in running, walking, and ball playing.
Hyperactivity disorganized, disruptive, and unpredictable behavior; overreaction to stimuli' a seeming surplus of energy.
Hypoactivity Insufficient motor activity; lethargy.
Imperception Lack of ability to interpret sensory information correctly' a cognitive, rather than sensory, impairment
Language-Learning disability A learning disability affecting the performance of language-related tasks. Most learning disabilities are language-learning disabilities.
Learning disability A demonstrated inability to perform a specific task normally within the capability of individuals of comparable mental age.
Least restrictive environment The placement of each exceptional student in a setting as close to the regular classroom as possible and appropriate
Low Frustration Tolerance The inability to withstand much frustration without either blowing up or withdrawing.
Mainstreaming The practice or principle of including children with handicaps and special educational needs in classrooms along with children not having such special needs.
Maturational lag differential development of a child's ability and/or body;delayed maturity in one or several areas of development.
Metalinguistics The ability to talk about and understand language concepts, such as counting syllables and words or knowing the difference between a letter and a word.
Morphology The sounds or syllables on the beginning or end of a word that affect its meaning. For example, the s on the word cars shows there is more than one car; the plural s gives us information about the car.
Morphological Deficit Difficulty in using a the correct endings (such as the ed in walked) or tenses (ran as opposed to runned) of words.
Motor Pertaining to muscular activity.
Neurology The discipline that studies the structure and function of the nervous system.
Oral-apraxia The inability to plan or carry out movements with precision or ease when using the muscles in the mouth area
OT- Occupational Therapy A profession that employs a purposeful activity to help the client form adaptive responses that enable the nervous system to work more efficiently.
Perseveration The persistent repetition or seemingly senseless continuance of an activity that the child cannot stop when de wants to because he's not able to put on the brakes and/or dies bit realize what he's doing. Also manifested in the child's problems with shifting form one activity to another, accepting changes in routine, and postponing activities.
Pervasive Developmental Delay (PDD) A term used to describe children who display delays in acquiring skills in most or all areas
Phonological disorder A disorder characterized by difficulty understanding the rules used for combining sounds to pronounce words, resulting in significant speech errors.
Processing difficulty The inability to integrate, organize, and make sense out of sensory information. It is organizational rather than interpretational breakdown.
Pragmatics How language is used in social situations.
Psychomotor Pertaining to the motor effects of psychological processes.
Receptive Language Language that is understood and comprehended. This can be heard, read, or interpreted from body language.
Semantics The way words are sued to convey the intended meaning
Sensory Integration The organization of sensory input to help a person interact effectively with the environment and feel more in control of him/herself.
Sensory-motor Pertaining to the combined functioning of sense modalities and motor mechanisms.
Sequencing difficulty knowing and being able to carry through procedures in a particular order. People with learning differences may have difficulty with sequencing.
Syndrome The cluster or pattern of symptoms that characterizes a specific disorder
Tactile Pertaining to the sense of touch on the skin.
Tactile defensiveness A sensory integrative dysfunction in which tactile sensations cause excessive emotional reactions, hyperactivity, or other behavior problems.
Task Analysis The ability to analyze a task, break it down to the smallest steps, and know the sequences so it may be learned step-by-step.
Visual discrimination The ability to perceive similarities and differences among shapes, colors, numbers, and similar visual stimuli.
Visual-motor Pertaining to the ability to relate visual stimuli to motor responses in an appropriate way.
Word retrieval deficit Difficulty in thinking of a familiar word on the spot.
?If you are searching for a word not on the chart, e-mail Dawn Reinarz, CCC-SLP and she will try to help you!

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