What are Word-Finding Issues
Word finding issues are common for the person that has had a head injury. This affects almost every head injury patient to some degree, even if they speak normally, they are easy to understand and speech flows evenly.
Anomia
They will have a problem, in which they know a word they want to use, by cannot come up with the correct word to say. This is referred to as “anomia” by professionals, which translates to “can’t name.” This is something that can happen to anyone, at any time occasionally, but for the person with a head injury, it happens frequently.
If the person has to deal with people all day, or talk in public in front of groups of people, while having difficulty finding the right words it can be a difficult situation. This can lead to poor self-esteem, since they cannot say exactly what they mean any longer. There can also be a similar issue, where the wrong word is used by the individual. They may be asking for someone to pass a spoon, but it comes out as pass the noon or even a completely different word that makes no sense. In this case, it could be pass television, instead of pass the spoon. The worse part of this is the individual may not notice they have said anything different than what they meant, until another person points it out to them.
Technique 1
Speech pathologists are the professionals that commonly work with this issue and can teach the head injury patient tricks and techniques to decrease saying the wrong words, instead of the one they are thinking they should say. One of these techniques that will be taught is referred to as “circumlocution,” which is a way of talking around the word. As an example, if the word spoon cannot be said, then the individual might ask to pass the utensil to eat soup with. Sometimes the description may be longer, and more drawn out, but people will eventually get the meaning, such as asking to use the phone, the word phone may be the problem, and the person can explain by saying the thing you dial and talk on.
Technique 2
Another method that is taught by the professional pathologist is going through the alphabet to get the first letter of the word. Spoon can take a while, since the individual would need to reach S, which is near the end of the alphabet, but it can help trigger the word. The individual is taught to visualize the spelling of the word, or even visualize a blackboard and then writing it out on the blackboard.
Consult a Language Pathologist
The type of techniques that work best will depend on the type of injury. Consulting a speech and language pathologist, along with other head injury professionals is a way to obtain the tools required to deal with this problem.