What is Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)?
Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a speech-sound disorder that impacts a child’s motor planning and programming ability for speech production. This is not a disorder of muscle weakness, but rather difficulty with coordinating oral movements. This means the child knows what they want to say, but have difficulty executing the correct placement of their articulators (lips, tongue, teeth, etc.) in order for accurate sounds and words to come out.
Not all children with CAS are the same and the cause of CAS is unknown; however, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA, 2007), there are 3 diagnostic characteristics for CAS:
1. Inconsistent errors on consonants and vowels in repeated productions of syllables or words. This means if a child repeats the same word over and over, it may sound different every time
2. Lengthened and disrupted coarticulatory transitions. This means the child’s speech sounds choppy, distorted, or disconnected due to trouble transitioning between sounds or words.
3. Inappropriate prosody, with stress between sounds and syllables. This means that the child’s rhythm, intonation, and stress may sound off, they tend to stress the wrong syllables or words, and/or sound robotic.
Overall this impacts the child’s intelligibility, making them difficult to understand. Additionally, children with CAS may have other difficulties such as, deficits with fine motor sills, delayed language, and writing, reading, spelling difficulties.
So, what does the therapist do?
First, the SLP will conduct a comprehensive speech and language evaluation, including an oral-motor examination, and gather case history information on how your child communicates at home or in school.
Next, the SLP will develop an intensive treatment plan based on the severity of your child’s disorder. Many children benefit from drill-based therapy (multiple repetitions and repeated practice of sounds, words, phrases), visual and tactile prompts, and modeling or imitation of targets with the SLP. The SLP will work with the family, teachers, and other healthcare professionals to best serve the child so they can maximize their speech and communication skills.
For more information, contact one of our therapists!
References:
https://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/Childhood-Apraxia-of-Speech/
https://www.apraxia-kids.org
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