Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Romish Receptive Aphasia


There is a recent medical phenomenon that I believe I might be the first to have noticed. It is a neurologic condition that involves the senses, in particular, the auditory pathway of reception. It is rather complex and my research is at this point empiric and preliminary but I post in the hopes that other bloggers have noted it. Perhaps with enough data collected, I may be able to formulate a plan of therapy and perhaps, a safe and effective treatment.

I have tentatively called it Romish Receptive Aphasia. In medical parlance, a receptive aphasia is a neurologic condition caused by a cerebrovascular accident leaving the victim incapable of understanding speech via the auditory pathways. Interestingly enough, a person with receptive aphasia can sometimes perceive written language via the visual tracts without difficulty but has marked difficulty in receiving the correct auditory message through the aural pathway(ea
rs).

1 comments:

dorothyeross said...

Actually, this happens fairly often. I don't know of a name for it. Perhaps the closest is "Word deafness", meaning the person can hear, but has difficulty perceiving words or speech sounds. Another description is "decreased phonological awareness", but this term is used more often to describe children who have difficulty acquiring language for various reasons. Aphasia treatment can use the retained ability to read, by seeing the printed word (the stronger ability) at the same time as hearing the spoken word (the weaker ability). Another strategy for helping is to hear a single word while looking at the object or a picture (pairing the heard word to the concept).