| My Paper on Communication |
| Communication plays a vital role in a person�s daily life. Without sign language, talking, writing, blinking their eyes, or interpreting languages, humans would not be able to express their wants, desires, needs and ideas. These skills for children with Edwards� Syndrome or Trisomy 18 are greatly impacted. They have many physical disabilities, which cause them to lead a short, solitary life. They have loss of vision and functioning of their eyelids, their mouths are small and disfigured, their fingers are often overlapped, their ears are lower set, and their brain is underdeveloped. All of these abnormalities influence how the child communicates with their surroundings and other people. Even though physical abnormalities out number the underdevelopment of the brain, the brain has a larger impact on children with Edwards� Syndrome. The human brain is a complex and highly intriguing control center for the rest of the body. A small tumor or defect could impact the child�s ability to walk, talk, and to understand events that are happening in their surroundings. In children with Trisomy 18, their brain has small lobules and a small cerebellum (Scherez 197). Small lobules impact the brain by causing it to process information at a slower rate, not completely processing all of the information received, and giving a child a higher risk of developing mental retardation. The small cerebellum influences a child�s sense of balance, which can affect how they perceive their environment and sensory information (Myers 61). They can also suffer from a condition called microcephaly, which is when the brain is underdeveloped. This causes a lack of formation and order, such as one large gryi is seen, where three well-defined gyri are suppose to be present (Passarge et al 774, Shipp). It results in the brain being incapable of developing normally and causing moderate to severe mental retardation (�Trisomy 18 Syndrome�, Epstein 22). One effect of mental retardation is that the child does not understand cause and effect; therefore, it becomes harder for the child to realize the meaning of words. An example of this is the child not being aware of the link between a person waving their hand and a greeting. Mental retardation also influences the number of words the child is able to speak and understand. Often children with Edwards� Syndrome only speak a few words and verbalize several consonant sounds. However, older children have been reported using �extensive receptive vocabulary� (Baty et al 190-193). Mental retardation has another contributor the fissures, which are at a more downward slope. This causes the children�s motor skills, sensation skills, and other process of the brain to be affected (Myers 55). Lack of motor skills is seen by the children�s poor muscle coordination. This impacts their ability to use sign language, other adapted forms of communication, and their senses, such as sight (�Mental Retardation�). A main sensor influenced by the brain is vision. Children with Edwards� Syndrome have smaller optic tracts, which entails difficulty seeing and responding to objects. Their lack of sight is also contributed by multiple physical complications to the eyes (Passarge et al 774). One physical complication is coloboma, a cleft extending inferiorly and affecting the iris, ciliary body, or choriod. Coloboma causes children not to see or have distorted vision. In addition to coloboma, ptosis, where an eyelid droops over the pupil of the eye, and cataract influence distortion (Scherz 197). A congenital cataract usually forms in the first trimester of pregnancy and causes bright light to glare, objects are seen in double, and pictures are blurred. Strabismus, another contributor to distortion, is an abnormal ocular condition where the eyes are not pointed in the same direction. Strabismus causes children to perceive their environment abnormally and therefore they respond to their surroundings by reacting at a slower rate (Holmes and Coates 115-117). Other physical abnormalities that cause poor vision are the eyes are widely spaced apart, they have narrow eyelid folds, and have short palpebral fissures, the opening margins between the upper and lower eyelids. However, a child�s low measurable visual perception, which was tested using looking techniques, could be due to the delay of their motor skills and not their poor vision (Holmes and Coates 115-118). All of these physical abnormalities impact how children perceive the world around them and how they establish their surroundings visually. There are abundant mouth abnormalities in Edwards� Syndrome. These abnormalities influence the formation of the child�s mouth and whether or not they are able to speak. Researchers have concluded that children with Trisomy 18 are nonverbal; however, there are a few cases where they are able to speak a few words (Holmes and Coates 115, Baty et al 190). Some characteristics that influence the child�s speaking are high-arched palates in their small mouths, narrow roofs, cleft lips, and micrognathia, where the jaw is underdeveloped, especially the mandible (Scherz 195-197,�Trisomy 18 Syndrome�). These defects alter the way the child can speak, such as having a narrow roof alters the way the child says a specific sound. Cleft lips alter their ability to say the �th� sound and micrognathia affects how children say their alphabet and consonant sounds. Besides influencing the child�s speech, a child�s facial expressions are also impacted. Facial expressions are used by every human being to convey what they are thinking and feeling; however, with children that are not able to speak and hear very well, they are more greatly dependent on the expressions to demonstrate what they are thinking. Janis King, a parent of a child with Edwards� Syndrome says, �A smile conveys happiness and excitement, where sticking their bottom lip out conveys dissatisfaction.� If they have a disfigured face, this could convey the wrong expression to a stranger or a person who has only worked with the child a few times. Their ability to speak is influenced by their ability to hear. The defect that impacts children with Edwards� Syndrome is their ears are lower set than normal (Scherez 197). Stacey Crowder, a Speech Therapy Pathologist at Tammy Lynn Center for Developmental Disabilities, claims, �The displacement of the ears cause children to not be able to hear as well and can result in deafness.� When researchers evaluated the ears of a group of infants with Edwards� Syndrome using an electroencephalograph, they concluded that the infants responded to sound, which was 50 decibels above the average adult (Scherez 200). Therefore, children are able to hear using hearing aides, but most of them feel uncomfortable with the aides in their ears and after learning to take them out, they do so (King). |
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