Apraxia Case Studies

Aphasia is a communication disorder that affects many adults and families. Aphasia occurs as a result of damage to the language-specific areas of the brain (ASHA, 2014). Individuals with aphasia may experience difficulties with oral language, receptive language, memory, attention writing, and reading. There are a myriad of approaches designed for the treatment of aphasia. Two treatment approaches, Promoting Aphasics Communicative Effectiveness (P.A.C.E.) and Constraint Induced Language Therapy (C.I.L.T.), and their efficacy in regard to available evidence will be discussed below.

Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that affects a person’s ability to understand oral and written language, speaking and writing. It is estimated that one third of those who survive stroke have aphasia (Department of Health, 2007). Most patients with aphasia exhibit spontaneous recovery, usually in the first 2-3 months following stroke onset (Godecke, Hird, Lalor, Rai, & Phillips, 2012). However, 30-40% of these patients may experience long-term post-stroke aphasia (Bakheit et al., 2007). Continued rehabilitative treatments with the speech and language pathologists (SLPs) are not as significantly effective due to the current high demands on limited resources (Palmer et al., 2012), which reduced the availability of face-to-face speech

W.C., a 26 year 11 month old woman, was brought to the Florida Atlantic University-Communication Disorders Clinic (FAU-CDC) by her boyfriend for a Speech-Language Evaluation. She was referred to the FAU-CDC by her neurologist for word finding difficulties and a possible articulation disorder after a left hemisphere hemorrhagic stroke one month ago. According to her boyfriend, W.C.’s symptoms began immediately following her stroke and are characterized by word finding difficulties, slowed and choppy speech, and mispronunciation of certain consonants that is affecting intelligibility along with a strained voice.

Those students are always in for a long road of speech therapy as well as, problems with reading. I am interested in new research in the area because these students are typically of average intelligence but struggle in school immensely because of their disorder. According to the webinar on Childhood Apraxia of Speech, CAS is defined as a neurological childhood speech sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired. The main features of the disorder consist of inconsistent errors lengthened, disrupted coarticulatory transitions, and inappropriate prosody. Motor performance is the generalization of learned behaviors while motor learning is the retention or generalization of learned behaviors. Motor learning is the problem that children with CAS encounter. Phonological awareness is important for students with CAS because they have difficulty with reading and spelling. The training of sounds can be done while also training speech sound production. A new therapy technique for CAS is using ultrasound biofeedback to establish a motor skill at the syllable or word level. The benefits of ultrasound are that the student can visually see the elevation of the tongue or retraction on hard to form sounds such as /r/. The disadvantage is that most clinicians do not have access to ultrasound at a reasonable cost to

Nearly one million individuals within the United States experience aphasia resulting from a stroke. The website for the American Heart Association states that strokes are the third leading cause of death in the United States. They are often referred to as a cerebrovascular accident (CVA). This occurs when the blood flow to the brain has been either stopped or interrupted. The deprivation of blood flow and oxygen to the brain results in a stroke. Around 41.2 percent of individuals who suffered from a stroke will have aphasia (Guyomard et al., 2009). Manasco (2014) stated that aphasia is a deficit in language abilities resulting from the brain. It is broken down into, two categories fluent and non-fluent. Individuals with aphasia typically suffer from anomia. This is a condition where word retrieval (anomia) is difficult. “Most unimpaired individuals do not need to put forth any effort to express themselves verbally. However,

We need to expand the Apraxia bubble to the parents who aren't affected by it, to the teachers who know nothing about it, and to the speech professionals who somehow do not know about it. The rewards alone in connecting the Apraxia community to the non-Apraxia community are incredible and slowly, but surely it CAN be done.

Expressive aphasia, also known as Broca’s aphasia, impairs the way in which a person’s language is produced. Although this type of aphasia impairs a person’s ability to speak, they are still able to use the other aspects of language, such as comprehending when someone is speaking to them. Broca’s aphasia may cause long pauses between words, this is called dysprosody, and leaving out important words or endings of words, which is known as agrammatism. This type of aphasia occurs when there is traumatic damage to what is referred to as the Broca’s area of the brain. Treatment of Broca’s aphasia is done by a Speech Language Pathologist, and is different for each person depending on their specific needs. Receptive aphasia, known as Wernicke’s aphasia, impairs one’s ability to understand themselves and others. The way that they speak is barely comprehensible; this is known as logorrhea. Patients with Wernicke’s aphasia may have something called anosagnosia, which makes them believe that what they are saying is being understood. This type of aphasia makes it very difficult for SLP’s to treat because of the anosognosia. Wernicke’s aphasia is caused by damage to what is known as the Wernicke’s area of the

On March 7, 2016, I observed Makenzie Cockerill in room A117 from 10:00-10:45 am. The client was preschool-aged. The clinician informed me that the client had low intelligibility. The objectives of the day were to work on the /b/ sounds and beginning vowel sounds. The clinician also planned to do a mini screening of Child Apraxia of Speech. However, she informed me that she didn’t believe that this was the case in the child, but they wanted to rule it out. The client had multiple speech sounds in error, so the clinician implemented a cyclical strategy.

Speech pathology focuses on aiding individuals who struggle with or cannot use their voice. Without a voice, individuals would not be able to communicate with one another face to face, or even talk on the phone. Within every field, controversy exists. In speech pathology, one such controversy is nonspeech oral motor exercises (NSOME), where a patient does different tasks involving their mouth or fingers. These exercises are believed to have no connection with actually assisting the speech pathological part of the brain, since they do not involve any sort of speech activity. Nonspeech oral motor exercises do not assist in the healing process of patients with actual disabilities, nor are they an efficient practice at a professional treatment center.

Child hood Apraxia of Speech is a motor speech disorder that affects children’s ability to say sounds, syllables, and words. The brain has trouble coordinating muscle movements that are needed for speech. The child knows exactly what to speak, but the brain has trouble coordinating the muscle movements. It is different for every person that has this type of disorder. In some other cases, it can be an unknown cause, meaning it can happen out of the blue, or by mutations. One of the articles is based off of reliability and validity testing and scoring by the Dynamic Evaluation of Motor Speech Skills, while the other has different assessments that were tested and transcribed.

Imagine a life where someone could not force words to come out of his or her mouth, even if he knew what he wanted to say. Such is the life for people who suffer from Broca’s aphasia. Broca’s aphasia is a speech disorder where the Broca’s area in the brain’s left frontal lobe malfunctions, resulting in the inability for a patient to form the necessary movements of the muscles for speech production. This type of non-verbal aphasia is often referenced as motor aphasia because of the lack of motor skills in the brain for speech production. Thousands of people suffer from this disorder, and as a result communication between these people and society is incredibly difficult. Although each person experiences Broca’s aphasia differently, there are

Reference: Edeal, D. M., & Gildersleeve-Neumann, C. E. (2011). The importance of production frequency in therapy for childhood apraxia of speech. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(2), 95-110.

CAS is one of the most difficult disorders to diagnose. Many speech pathologists are worried that it is commonly over diagnosed and misdiagnosed (“Apraxia: Speech Therapy,” 2011). It is not known how many children actually have CAS, but it appears to be on the rise. Certain factors, such as increased awareness of CAS by professionals and families, evaluation and identification

Aphasia is a language disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain that are responsible for language. For most people, these are parts of the left side (hemisphere) of the brain. Aphasia usually occurs suddenly, often as the result of a stroke or head injury, but it may also develop slowly, as in the case of a brain tumor. The disorder impairs the expression and understanding of language as well as reading and writing. “Aphasia may co-occur with speech disorders such as dysarthria or apraxia of speech, which also result from brain damage”. (Sarno 23)

Authors Denice Michelle Edeal and Christina Elke Glidersleeve-Neumann created a study to determine where speech targets cause and increase treatment sessions in children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). To do this they use frequencies for the children so they can produce the require productions for the therapy. This study consisted of two children who have childhood apraxia of speech and they were provided with treatments. They had two different treatments; one child had treatment 3 times weekly for 11 weeks and the other child 2 times weekly for 5 weeks.