On one of the forms of acoustic agnosia. Tongue-tie in speech and writing

This article was published more than 70 years ago, but it is still relevant. It embodies several ideas on studying speech that were suggested by L.S. Vygotsky. It was thought that tongue-tie was caused by the weakness of muscle system. The authors, however, assume that the nature of this disability is different. Mechanisms underlying similar symptoms may not be the same at all. This paper discusses tongue-tie caused by sensory impairments and describes several clinical cases. If a person has any writing difficulties, one must expect speech difficulties as well, and the contrary is also true, because these difficulties have the same nature. Basing on L.S. Vygotsky's assumption that perception of meaning is initial, as well as on the notion that phoneme is a part of a holistic system, the authors show experimentally that the described cases are all caused by the deficient development in the sphere of integrating activity of acoustic perception. It is the impaired perception of speech that underlies both speech and writing difficulties.