| Dysnomia | |
|---|---|
| Classification and external resources | |
| ICD-9 | 784.3 |
Dysnomia is a difficulty retrieving the correct words, names, or numbers from memory. Dysnomia is a learning disability present from childhood. It can affect speech, writing, and/or math.[1]
Normal individuals will occasionally suffer problems recalling words, names, and numbers. This normal condition is not a learning disability.
Dysnomia is similar to anomia, but the two conditions are not the same. Anomia is a recall problem caused by brain injuries such as strokes or head trauma.
Word recall problems are classified as dysnomia when they are severe enough to interfere with learning or with daily life. Doctors use neuropsychological and speech-language pathology tests to diagnose the condition.
Dysnomia cannot be cured, but patients can improve their life skills by using coping strategies.
Contents |
Dysnomia is a marked difficulty or impairment in object naming, word retrieval, and short-term auditory memory. It is a learning disability present from birth.
All children and adults have occasional trouble recalling words, names, or numbers. This tip-of-the-tongue situation is normal and increases as people age.
Word-recall problems become a medical condition when severe enough to interfere with a person's daily life. Neuropsychological tests of dysnomic individuals show a significant difficulty recalling words or names.
Dysnomia impairs an individual's ability to succeed in speech and writing tasks.
Doctors and researchers are still clarifiying the definition of dysnomia.[1] These definition problems cover both the nature of the disorder and confusion between dysnomia and anomia.
More recent research shows a trend toward clarifying dysnomia as a congenital learning deficit[1] with a genetic element. Anomia's definition is clarified as an acquired recall problem, most frequently caused by a head injury or stroke.
A review of older research literature shows a substantial mixing of terms dysnomia and anomia. A review of available literature shows:
Some researchers treat dysnomia as a symptom of other disorders rather than as a disorder of its own. Since dysnomia frequently occurs with other disorders, it is often difficult to separate the symptoms.
Dyslexia, in particular, overlaps with dysnomia, with some research pointing to word-recall problems as a key element of dyslexia. [1] This model, "proposes that the deficit in verbal label retrieval creates a short-term memory deficit resulting in difficulty recalling word labels in reading." [2]
Children with attention deficits have problems with rapid naming tests. These difficulties seem to diminish as the children grow older. Dysnomics do better than AD/HD students on reading-related tasks, but do worse with visual sequential memory.[1]
Dysnomia has many similar attributes to expressive language disorder, but dysnomics have normal verbal skills.
Dysnomia is a type of expressive aphasia [4] [5]
Doctors use neuropsychological tests to diagnose dysnomia and anomia. The tests can measure the condition's severity and identify/eliminate other neuropsychological conditions with similar symptoms.
Rapid Automatized Naming is a good example of these tests. Rapid Automatized Naming times how quickly the patient can name common objects or colors. A typical test would have the patient rapidly name five pictures of common objects or colors appearing repeatedly on a computer screen. The doctor compares the completion time against average times for the patient's age group. [6]
Dysnomia cannot be cured, but patients can improve their life skills by using coping strategies. This is a major difference between dysnomia and anomia. Since anomia is aquired by brain damage, speech pathologists can offer more treatment options. [3]
Dysnomia, however, is a congenital learning disability. As a result, dysnomics cannot recover lost functionality. Instead, patients can learn coping skills that can help them work around their memory problems.[4]