AAC refers to methods of communicating that do not involve direct speech from an individual. These methods include gestures, facial expressions, writing, sign language, communication aids (charts, language boards), and electronic devices.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) is the national professional, scientific, and credentialing association for audiologists; speech-language pathologists; speech, language, and hearing scientists; audiology and speech-language pathology support personnel; and students.

Aphasia is an acquired neurogenic language disorder resulting from an injury to the brain that affects all language modalities. Aphasia is not a single disorder, but instead a family of disorders that involve varying degrees of impairment in four primary areas: spoken language expression, spoken language comprehension, written expression, and reading comprehension.

Articulation Disorders focus on errors (e.g., distortions and substitutions) in production of individual speech sounds. Example: the word “leave” pronounced as “weave”.

Aspiration refers to the entry of secretions, food, or any foreign material into the airway that travels below the level of the true vocal folds. Aspiration may occur before, during, or after the pharyngeal phase of swallowing. It can also occur from reflux of gastric contents.

Auditory Discrimination is the ability to detect differences between specific speech sounds.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is defined as having a marked presence of three distinct disabilities: impairment in social interaction, challenges with communication, and delays in language and cognitive skills. The differences in these areas are usually noticeable prior to three years of age. Autism Spectrum Disorder has many classifications and is the umbrella term that defines a very wide range of behaviors and abilities.

Barium Swallow Study/Esophagram is a fluoroscopic assessment of the esophageal phase of the swallow conducted by a radiologist.

Bolus refers to food, liquid, or other material placed in the mouth for ingestion.

Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) refers to deficits in the neural processing of auditory information. This includes difficulties localizing sound, understanding spoken language in noisy backgrounds, comprehending and following rapid speech, and following complex auditory directions or commands.

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a motor speech disorder. Children with this diagnosis have difficulty planning and consistently producing sequences of speech movements using their tongue, lips, jaw, and palate.

Cleft Lip and/or Palate: A "cleft" is a split or a divide. Cleft lips and palates happen before birth. A cleft lip may be on one or both sides of the upper lip. The split may also be in the upper jaw and gum. A cleft palate is a gap in the roof of the mouth. The back of the palate (towards the throat) is called the soft palate, and the front (towards the lips) is called the hard palate. A cleft can affect the soft palate or both the soft and hard palate.

Cognitive Communication Disorders include problems organizing thoughts, paying attention, remembering, planning, and/or problem-solving. These disorders usually happen as a result of a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or dementia, although they can be congenital.

Deglutition refers only to acts associated with bolus transfer and transport from the oral cavity to the stomach.

Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder affecting the strength, range of motion, speed, and precision of the speech musculature.

Dyslexia is a learning disability. It causes problems in spelling, reading, and writing by affecting word recognition, reading comprehension, phonological awareness and recognition, and decoding of words. This inhibits a child's ability to learn to read, even with normal intelligence and classroom instruction.

Dysphagia is a swallowing disorder. If children have difficulty swallowing food or liquids, they may be suffering from pediatric dysphagia. This means they are struggling with passing food or liquids from the mouth, into the throat, and through the esophagus and stomach during the swallowing process.

Fiberoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing (FEES) is a procedure in which a fiberoptic endoscope is inserted through the nose and into the throat to obtain a direct view of structures, a dynamic view of the oral–pharyngeal transfer, and indirect evidence of the pharyngeal–esophageal transfer during swallows.

Expressive Language refers to what a child is able to say and how it is said. Expressive language delays and disorders include trouble with communicating wants and needs, asking questions, naming objects, using gestures or words, and putting words into sentences.

Feeding Disorders are problems with a range of eating activities that may or may not include problems with swallowing. Feeding disorders can be characterized by one or more of the following behaviors:

• Avoiding or restricting one’s food intake (avoidance/restrictive food intake disorder [ARFID]; American Psychiatric Association, 2016)

  • Refusing  age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate foods or liquids

  • Accepting a restricted variety or quantity of foods or liquids

• Displaying disruptive or inappropriate mealtime behaviors for developmental level

• Failing to master self-feeding skills expected for developmental levels

• Failing to use developmentally appropriate feeding devices and utensils

• Experiencing less than optimal growth

Hypertonia, which means high or too much muscle tone, causes rigidity, spasticity and inflexibility of the muscles.

Hypotonia, which means low muscle tone, causes increased flexibility and looseness of the muscles.

Intelligibility is the percentage of speech that a listener can understand, or the clarity of a speaker's utterances.

Jargon is defined as pre-linguistic vocalizations in which infants use adult-like stress and intonation. Commonly referred to as conversational babbling or “gibberish”.

Language Disorders occur when a person has trouble understanding others (receptive language), or sharing thoughts, ideas, and feelings (expressive language). Language disorders may be spoken or written and may involve the form (phonology, morphology, syntax), content (semantics), and/or use (pragmatics) of language in functional and socially appropriate ways.

Late Language Emergence (LLE) is a delay in language onset with no other diagnosed disabilities or developmental delays in other cognitive or motor domains. LLE is diagnosed when language development trajectories are below age expectations. Toddlers who exhibit LLE are referred to as "late talkers" or "late language learners."

Lisp usually refers to a person’s difficulty producing the /s/ and /z/ sounds because of incorrect tongue placement. The tongue may be sticking out between the front teeth, or the sides of the tongue may not be high enough or tense enough in the mouth. An interdental (frontal) lisp occurs when the tongue sticks out between the front teeth. This error makes /s/ and /z/ sound like “th” (e.g., yeth/yes). A lateral lisp occurs when air escapes over the sides of the tongue. A lateral lisp often sounds “wet” or “slushy” because you can hear the sounds of saliva.

Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders (OMDs) are abnormal movement patterns of the face and mouth. OMDs may interfere with normal growth and development of the muscles and bones of the face and mouth. OMDs may also interfere with how the muscles of the face and mouth are used for eating, talking, and breathing. 

Oral Motor skills refer to the movements of the muscles in the mouth, jaw, tongue, lips and cheeks. The strength, coordination and control of these oral structures are the foundation for feeding related tasks, such as sucking, biting, crunching, licking and chewing. When a child has limited strength, movement and/or coordination of these muscles, chewing, swallowing, and articulation can be affected.

A phoneme is a unit of sound in speech. 

Phonological Disorders focus on predictable, rule-based errors (e.g., fronting, stopping, and final consonant deletion) that affect more than one sound. 

Pragmatics refers to social communication. These are the rules that we follow when we talk, such as changing language depending on situation, body language, facial expressions, and eye contact.

PROMPT is an acronym for Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets. The PROMPT Therapy technique is a tactile-kinesthetic approach that uses touch cues to a patient's articulators (jaw, tongue, lips) to manually guide them through a targeted word, phrase or sentence.

Receptive Language refers to understanding langauge. Receptive language delays and disorders include difficulty understanding what people mean when they use gestures or talk, following directions, answering questions, and pointing to named objects. 

Social Communication Disorders occur when a person has trouble with the social use of verbal and nonverbal communication. These disorders may include problems communicating for social purposes, talking in different ways to suit the listener and setting, and following rules for conversation. Social communication disorders are found in individuals with autism spectrum disorder and other conditions, such as traumatic brain injury. 

Speech and Language Pathologists (SLPs) work to prevent, assess, diagnose, and treat speech, language, social communication, cognitive-communication, and swallowing disorders in children and adults.

Stages of Swallow: Three-stage event of swallowing: oral, pharyngeal, esophageal, including two phases within the oral stage: oral preparatory phase and oral transport phase.

Speech Disorders occur when a person has difficulty producing speech sounds correctly or fluently (e.g., stuttering is a form of disfluency) or has problems with his or her voice or resonance.

Stuttering, the most common fluency disorder, is an interruption in the flow of speaking characterized by repetitions (sounds, syllables, words, phrases), sound prolongations, blocks, interjections, and revisions, which may affect the rate and rhythm of speech.

Telepractice is the application of telecommunications technology to delivery of professional services at a distance by linking clinician to client/patient or clinician to clinician, for assessment, intervention, and/or consultation.

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Most glossary terms adapted from ASHA and Super Duper® Publications