Speech and language disorders can exist in isolation or co-occur at the same time. Speech language pathologists treat all areas related to both speech and language delays and disorders. Today’s post will discuss speech sound disorders, and language disorders will be discussed in a future post.
Speech is how we produce sounds and words.
There are three components of speech: 1) articulation, 2) voice, and 3) fluency.
Articulation is how we use our lips, tongue, teeth, and oral cavity to produce consonant and vowel sounds correctly. For example, we need to be able to say the “l” sound to say “elephant” instead of “ewephant”.
Voicing involves the use of our vocal cords to produce breath along with a variety of sounds and pitches used during speech. A damaged vocal quality can be described as hoarse, breathy, rough, or strained. Vocal quality can be impacted by vocal hygiene. Talking loudly, lack of hydration, reflux, and smoking are all examples of activities that diminish our vocal quality, making it difficult to speak without pain or to be understood by our communication partners.
Fluency is the rate or rhythm of our speech. Smooth speech flows at a steady rate and rhythm. Our fluency can be impacted when speaking too quickly or too slowly. Stuttering and cluttering are referred to as fluency disorders.
There are different ways to classify speech sound disorders: 1) articulation, 2) phonological, and 3) motor speech sound disorders.
What is an articulation disorder?
Articulation disorders occur when an individual is unable to produce speech sounds correctly as a direct result of their articulators moving incorrectly and imprecisely. For example, a child may consistently substitute “th” with “s” (for example, “thnake” for “snake”.
What causes an articulation disorder?
Oftentimes, an articulation disorder occurs with no known cause and in isolation. However, articulation disorders can result from hearing impairment, structural deficits, such as trauma as a result of an injury or surgery, or a cleft lip and palate.
What is a phonological disorder?
A phonological disorder occurs when a child is able to produce the target speech sound correctly, but in the wrong place (for example “god” for “dog”).
What causes a phonological disorder?
There is no known cause for a phonological disorder. All young children use phonological processes, and many are developmentally appropriate, as young children under the age of 4 do not usually have 100% intelligible speech. However, a phonological disorder occurs when these phonological processes are not extinguished by a certain age, or, when a child exhibits too many age appropriate processes, resulting in severe unintelligibility .
What is a motor speech disorder?
The next category of speech disorders are known as motor speech disorders and include apraxia of speech and dysarthria. Apraxia of speech impairs a person’s ability to plan or program the speech sounds that they intend to produce, resulting in inconsistent speech errors, vowel distortions, voicing errors, and more. Dysarthria is a disorder characterized by unclear articulation, resulting in slurred speech due to muscle weakness in the muscles used for speech production.
What causes motor speech disorders?
Apraxia or speech and dysarthria are neurological in nature. They can be developmental with no known cause and either in isolation or co-occurring together and/or with other disorders (learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, etc.) or acquired due to injury or an accident to the area of the brain responsible for speech production.
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