What is Childhood Apraxia of Speech (AHI)?
Characteristics of Childhood Speech Apraxia
Childhood Apraxia of Speech (AHI) is a type of motor disorder that affects the production of speech. Motor speech disorders are neurological in nature. It means that a child's brain has difficulty coordinating the parts of the body that produce speech. Structures such as the tongue, lips, and lower jaw may be affected.
Researchers believe that deterioration in the speech processing system occurs between phonological coding and the motor execution phase. When children with apraxia try to communicate their ideas to us, they don't do it properly. They struggle to sequence and articulate sounds, syllables and words. This results in difficulty in moving quickly and accurately between sequences of articulatory configurations. These configurations are necessary for the production of continuous and intelligible speech.
Causes of Childhood Speech Apraxia
Children with AHI may also have a disorder in motor sensory areas, such as proprioception. We find an inability to understand the spatial position of the articulatory structures. For the most severely affected children, even initiating speech movement gestures can be difficult. Apraxia is different from other motor speech disorders because it is not caused by muscle weakness, limited range of motion, or paralysis of the muscles.
Apraxia is most often caused by nerve damage due to infection, disease, injury, or trauma. It may also be a secondary feature of other conditions such as genetic, degenerative, metabolic, and even seizure disorders. However, not all children with this type of disorder will have apraxia. There are also cases where the cause of apraxia is unknown and there is no apparent neurological indicator of why a child is exhibiting apraxia in speech.
Manifestations of Childhood Speech Apraxia
AHI is a difficult disorder to identify because of its complexity. Symptoms also vary in severity. However some of its more common features include:
- You're late. This symptom can be shared with many other disorders. However, if your child is considered a "late talker," apraxia may be one reason.
- Articulatory attempts. This is a kind of quest or fighting behavior. Your child tries several times to articulate sounds with his tongue, lips, or lower jaw.
- Inconsistent errors. The child produces different types of errors in the same word when repeating it. Depending on the level of severity, your child may be able to accurately produce the objective statement in context. But, it will be unable to produce the same objective accurately in a different context.
- Automatic speech is better than spontaneous speech. The child's automatic speech and imitated speech will be less affected than spontaneous speech. Has more difficulty with voluntary and self-starting statements compared to learned, automatic, or modeled statements.
- Difficulty in multisyllabic words. Errors increase with the length or complexity of the statements. There is more difficulty in multi-syllabic or phonetically challenging words
- Prosody affected. There is a monotonous speech or emphasis on the wrong syllable or word. Affected speed, time deficit in the duration of sounds and pauses.
- Reduced speech intelligibility. It will be difficult for unknown listeners to understand children with apraxia.
Who can help my child with Apraxia?
If you think your child may be exhibiting symptoms of AHI, it is important to be evaluated by a speech therapist. At Speech Therapist we will be able to provide you with a differential diagnosis. Currently research does not show consistency in which characteristics are most important to support the diagnosis of apraxia of infant speech. It is also unclear which or how many characteristics should be present for diagnosis. Therefore, the speech therapist must be experienced and use her clinical judgment in the diagnosis.
We don't have an easy solution for apraxia, and because it can manifest differently in every child we don't have the same formula for everyone. Rather we offer you a variety of individualized techniques. Treatment outcomes depend on the severity of the child's apraxia, as well as whether there are other associated problems.
Children with Apraxia Del Habla Infantil progress to levels of intelligible speech and effective communication. Many children can become intelligible speakers.
Consistent practice and repetition are important and necessary keys to helping children with apraxia achieve an adequate level of communication, which is why we guarantee a professional and evidence-based approach.
Visit us at our office or contact us at 70928392. We are located in Guadalupe, San José. Remember that neither you nor your child are alone!
Lic Rocío Vargas.