Speech

Speech is how we say sounds and words.

Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) is an umbrella term referring to any difficulty or combination of difficulties with perception, motor production, or phonological representation of speech sounds and speech segments.

ARTICULATION
Articulation is the process by which sounds, syllables, and words are formed when your tongue, jaw, teeth, lips, and palate alter the air stream coming from the vocal folds. 

Articulation disorder may be defined as difficulty in producing a single or a few sounds with no pattern or derivable rule. Articulation errors are described as:

  • Substitution (e.g: ‘wabbit’ for rabbit)
  • Omission (e.g: ‘bu_’ for but)
  • Distortion (e.g: ‘su’ for shoe)
  • Addition (e.g: ‘babanana’ for banana)
PHONOLOGY

A phonological process is a patterned modification of the adult speech system. For example, a phonological process called fronting is when BACK sounds /k/ and /g/ that are produced by the tongue moving up in the back, are replaced with FRONT sounds /t/ and /d/ which are made by the tongue coming up in the front (cake/tate, got/dot, etc).

Phonological disorder occurs when a child demonstrates difficulty in acquiring a phonological system; involving organizing the speech sounds into the brain to produce specific sound patterns (output).
 
DYSARTHRIA

Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder which occurs when the muscles required to talk are weak due to brain damage. These include muscles in our face, lips, tongue; and throat, as well as muscles for breathing. 

Signs of Dysarthria

  • Slurred or mumbled speech
  • Speech rate is too slow/fast
  • Quiet, hoarse or breathy voice
  • Sound robotic or choppy
  • Not able to move your tongue, lips, and jaw very well
APRAXIA
Apraxia of speech is a motor speech disorder. It is sometimes called acquired apraxia of speech, verbal apraxia, or dyspraxia.
 
Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a neurological childhood (pediatric) speech sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired in the absence of neuromuscular deficits (e.g. abnormal reflexes, abnormal tone).
 
Apraxia of speech in adults may be a result of brain damage. The message that the brain sends to the muscles for speech do not get through correctly.
 
Signs of Apraxia
 
  • Have difficulty imitating and saying sounds 
  • Say the same words differently on different occasions
  • Able to say common phrases – like ‘hello’ or ‘how are you?’ without much trouble. This is called automatic speech.
  • Move tongue and lips to get them in the right place to try and say the sounds. This is called groping.
  • Speak more slowly
  • Have difficulty with multi-syllabic words and longer sentences
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    (ASHA, 2020)

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What To Do?

Contact your speech therapist for a formal assessment

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