Chapter 8 - Therapy for Lexical Disorders

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the therapy for Lexical disorders. Lexical disorder has two possible meanings, one which refers to the form of the disorder—lexical errors—and the other which refers to the origin of the errors—damage to the lexical system. Although lexical errors and errors originating in the lexicon generally coincide it is important to keep this distinction in mind because therapy can be theoretically motivated only in case the origin of the error is taken into consideration and not only its form. The chapter describes that no treatment has been reported for rehabilitation of comprehension. Secondly, no new technique for naming disorders has been reported. Thirdly, the studies represent investigations about which techniques could be efficacious but they do not represent clinical treatments. Models of the acquisition of reading and spelling in normal children are rare and not very detailed. It describes only the sequence of the different stages of the learning process without any further specification. Finally, this chapter explains that the link between the treated disorder and the method used, however, cannot always be clearly stated and the theoretical knowledge cannot be implemented.