vocabulary terms

Vocal polyps

Noncancerous growths on the vocal cords that are often caused by vocal strain.

Phonation

Vibrating vocal folds produce an acoustic pressure wave that is the source for speech.

Pitch

The number of vocal fold vibrations per second.

Functional Voice Disorder

A voice disorder caused by improper or inefficient use of voice without structural or neurological abnormalities.

Loudness

The human perception of sound intensity or volume.

Vocal quality

The unique, characteristic sound of a person's voice that distinguishes it from others.

Hyperfunctional voice disorder

When the muscles around your voice box work too hard and become tense, leading to a strained voice.

Hypofunctional voice disorder

Insufficient closure of the vocal folds that results in a breathy voice.

Vocal cord cyst

A noncancerous, fluid-filled or firm mass on the vocal cords that causes hoarseness.

Palilalia

A neurological disorder characterized by the involuntary repetition of one's own words or phrases.

Vocal nodule

Callus-like, benign growths on the vocal cords caused by prolonged voice overuse or misuse.

Phonotrauma

Damage to the vocal folds caused by overuse.

Spasmodic dysphonia

A neurological disorder that causes involuntary spasms in the muscles of the larynx.

Dysphonia

Voice disorder.

Dehydration

A condition where the body loses more fluid than it takes in.

UVFP

Unilateral vocal fold paralysis.

Laryngitis

Inflammation of the larynx that causes loss of voice.

Neurological voice disorder

Caused by a disruption in the nerve supply to the voice box.

Muscular Tension Dysphonia

Voice disorder in which phonation is disturbed by excessive tension in the head and neck muscles.

Affect

The result, outcome, or impact the speaker's words have on the audience.

Dementia

Development of multiple cognitive deficits and memory impairment.

Cortical dementia

Damage to the brain's cerebral cortex affecting cognitive function.

Granuloacuolar degeneration

Degeneration of nerve cells because of the formation of small fluid-filled cavities.

Neuritic plaques

Small areas of cortical and subcortical tissue degeneration that destroy synaptic connections.

Delirium

A mental state marked by confusion and disorientation.

Subcortical dementia

A type of dementia where the damage happens in deep parts of the brain.

Neurofibrillary tangles

Thickened, twisted neurofibrils that are a biomarker for Alzheimer's disease.

Episodic memory

Memory that lets you remember specific events in your life.

Spaced retrieval

A learning technique that improves long-term memory by practicing recalling information.

Errorless learning

Focuses on error elimination or minimization by providing immediate prompts.

Procedural memory

Acquiring skills and habits through practice that results in automatic task performance.

Acalculia

An acquired brain injury that results in the loss of the ability to perform simple mathematical calculations.

Limb apraxia

A neurological disorder that causes an inability to perform skilled movements.

Anosognosia

A neurological condition where a person is unaware of their own deficit.

Agitation

A state of mental and emotional disturbance or physical restlessness.

Logoclonia

A person involuntarily repeats the middle or final syllable of a word.

Constructional impairment

Neurological deficit where a person struggles with tasks requiring drawing or assembling objects.

Inductive reasoning

Making observations and drawing conclusions from those observations.

Deductive reasoning

A reasoning that the first point is considered true, so the second point must also be true.

Cognitive communication disorder

Communication problems resulting from impairment in one or more cognitive processes.

Attention

The ability to attend to perception.

Prosopagnosia

A neurological disorder that prevents individuals from recognizing faces.

Executive dysfunction

The ability to understand who you are, including organization and initiation.

Arousal

A heightened state of physical and mental activation.

Manic

High energy and the belief that you can do anything

Confabulation

False beliefs

Disorientation

A state of confusion where you lose your sense of direction, time, place, or identity due to illness or trauma.

Impulsivity

Making decisions on the fly instead of stopping to think, best to be balanced with impulsive & reflective.

Lability

Sudden, exaggerated, or inappropriate emotional expressions (laughing, crying) that are difficult to control.

Narrative

Conversations, storytelling.

Echolalia

Automatic or involuntary repetition of words or phrases due to impaired language processing or frontal lobe dysfunction.

Lethargy

Rapid changing of emotion.

Perception

The ability to receive, interpret, and make sense of sensory information (visual, auditory).

Left neglect

Failure to attend or respond to stimuli on the left side of the body due to right hemisphere brain damage.

Egocentrism

Difficulty understanding or considering others' perspectives, often leading to self-centered thinking.

Sucking

Tongue is only slightly cupped with vertical movement, tongue movement, mandible to anterior hard palate with a firm lip, normal in later infancy, and uses negative and positive pressure.

Suckling

Tongue is flat, thin cupped or bowl shaped with horizontal movement, mid-lip tongue extension, and loose lip approx, normal in early infancy, fat pads provide stability.

Nutritive suck

A nutritive suck has 20-30 cycles of suck(le)-swallow-breathe followed by 5 5-second pause for 'catch up' breathing, continuous to intermittent burst.

Non-nutritive suck

Twice as fast compared to NS ratio for an NNS, usually 6-8 sucks/swallow, 2/6 sucks per second, is more repetitive and rhythmic.

Malnutrition

Results from reduced food intake, texture modifications, inadequate nutrition, and hydration.

ICH

'Intracranial Hemorrhage' is a rupture of a blood vessel within the brain, common in premature children less than 1500 grams.

Aspiration

When food, liquid, or other material enters the airway instead of the esophagus.

Penetration

When food/liquid stays above the vocal folds (in the laryngeal cavity).

Intubation

Placing a tube through the nose or mouth into the trachea to secure an open airway, allowing for mechanical ventilation, oxygen delivery, anesthesia, medication, or to prevent aspiration.

VFSS

Videofluroscopic Swallowing Study, an X-ray procedure to evaluate the anatomy and physiology of the mouth and throat during swallowing.

FEES

Fiberoptic Endoscopic Evaluation of Swallowing, a procedure that uses a thin, flexible scope with a camera passed through the nose to view the throat during swallowing.

Heterogeneous

A group, audience, or text composed of diverse or varied elements, backgrounds, and perspectives.

Consistent deletion

Removal of a consonant phoneme from a word (ed/ped).

Syllable deletion

Deletion of a syllable ('sit', 'it').

Weak syllable deletion

Removal of an unstressed syllable.

Stridency deletion

Omission of a trident consonant or replacement of a strident consonant with a non-strident phoneme ('sit', 'bit').