Don ’ t Just Teach the Speech

Co-articulation. Prosody. These are key terms when treating childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). A child with CAS exhibits three main criteria: Inconsistent productions with sounds and/or words. Difficulty with co-articulatory transitions. Errors with prosody (stress, intonation, pitch, rate, volume). SLPs who treat apraxia use principles of motor learning and focus on movement gestures or sound sequences. Recently, I’ve noticed an increase in information about CAS. I think ASHA’s addition of apraxia to its Practice Portal helped. The site states, “the majority of treatment approaches for CAS emphasize movement patterns versus sound patterns.” I’m thrilled with this statement, because I find this step alone often takes a child with CAS from nonverbal to verbal. Common approaches for implementing the process include the Kaufman Speech to Language Protocol and PROMPT training. However, I still don’t see a lot of emphasis on co-articulatory transitions or prosody. Kids with apraxia struggle with these elements, but as with speech, SLPs can address them in treatment. In working with CAS clients, we should also focus on helping the child “sound” more natural in their speech. Here’s the thing about apraxia. When kids with apraxia learn a certain motor plan, they learn it well and they consistently say it the same way. This works well in terms of learning the appropriate sound sequences, but we should also consider prosody and co-articulation, so c...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Tags: Speech-Language Pathology Childhood Apraxia of Speech Prosodic Disorders Speech Disorders Source Type: blogs