For a child to speak correctly, its brain has to learn how to make plans that tell his or her speech muscles how to move the lips, jaw and tongue in ways that result in accurate sounds and words. But sometimes this is not the case due to one form of speech disorder or the other. One of such disorders is Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS).
This is an uncommon speech disorder in which a child has difficulty making accurate movements when speaking. Symptoms are usually noticed between the age of 18 months and two years.
For a child suffering from this condition, the brain struggles to develop plans for speech movement which as a result makes it difficult for children to learn accurate movements for speech with normal ease.
It is often thought that in childhood speech apraxia, the speech muscles are weak but this is not so as research has shown that the reverse is the case. They found that the muscles do not perform normally because the brain has difficulty directing or coordinating the movements.
Symptoms
Depending on age and severity, children with this condition may have many speech symptoms or characteristics.
It can also be associated with delayed onset of first words, a limited number of spoken words, or the ability to form only a few consonant or vowel sounds.
Vowel and consonant distortions- separation of syllables in or between words; and voicing errors.
Difficulty getting jaws, lips and tongues to the correct position to make a sound, and also difficulty moving smoothly to the next sound.
Language problems, such as difficulty comprehending speech, reduced vocabulary or difficulty with word order.
Sometimes, other speech disorders are confused with childhood apraxia of speech.
They are explained below:
Articulation or phonologic disorder
A child who has trouble learning how to make specific sounds, but doesn’t have trouble planning or coordinating the movements to speak, may be suffering from articulation or phonologic disorder. In this disorder, a child has difficulty with specific sounds. He or she may leave out the sound or use another sound in its place. The child also has certain sound error patterns, such as difficulty producing sounds in the back of his or her mouth.
Articulation and phonologic disorders are more common than childhood apraxia of speech. Articulation or phonologic speech errors may include substituting sounds, such as saying “fum” instead of “thumb,” “wabbit” instead of “rabbit” or “tup” instead of “cup” or “fog” instead of “frog”
Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder
This is due to weakness, spasticity or inability to control the speech muscles. Making speech sounds is difficult because the speech muscles can’t move as far, as quickly or as strongly as normal. Children with dysarthria may also have a hoarse, soft or even strained voice, or slurred or slow speech. Dysarthria is often easier to identify than childhood apraxia of speech AS. However, when dysarthria is caused by damage to certain areas of the brain that affect coordination, it can be difficult to determine the differences between both disorders.
Some symptoms seen in children with childhood apraxia of speech and can be helpful to diagnose other speech problems. However, some symptoms of this condition are also symptoms of other types of speech or language disorders