Childhood Apraxia Of Speech: Article Analysis

There, I had the privilege of seeing an Early-Intervention Speech Therapist work with one of my students. She would sit on the floor and play games with him. Through these games, she was able to elicit verbalization from this child who normally grunted to communicate. Over a course of a year, I witnessed his communication skills enhance little-by-little with the assistance of this therapist. I had not realized how much he had improved until I saw him interacting with his friends at the dress-up center. This little boy who would once play alone on the floor was now requesting different objects and laughing with his friends. Recollecting his progress was phenomenal. Inspired by what I saw, I researched more about the field. While doing so, my mother disclosed to me that she and her father had an articulation disorder. Although my grandfather did not receive services, my mother received therapy in school, which she recalls as an unpleasant experience. Taking into account all that I witnessed and learned about the subject, I realized that I had found the middle ground between teacher and therapist that I had been searching for in Speech-Language Pathology.

The participants consisted of 43 preschoolers with verbalization and sound disorders between the ages of four and five. The participants were selected through clinical recommendations in upstate New York from May 2007 to April 2008. Children were primarily from middle

The second article, A Methodology for Assessing the Functions of Emerging Speech in Children with Developmental Disabilities by Lerman, Parten, Addison, Vorndran, Volkert, & Kodak, 2005 (2005), is about an experimental study aimed to develop and evaluate

There are several therapies that have been developed throughout the years to help children with the disorder. The Applied behavioral analysis (ABA); the educational therapy, which focus on educational and cognitive skills; the medical and related interventions, and the Allied health therapy, that focus on language development, it includes: “speech/language, occupational, and physical therapists, including auditory and sensory integration, music therapy, and language therapies (e.g., Picture Exchange Communication System [PECS])” (Agency for Healthcare research and quality, 2014). However, the main idea of this research paper is to focus on the music therapy approach, which can serve as an important tool to develop basic verbal and nonverbal communication in

The scope of practice of speech-language pathology describes the ethical and clinical responsibility of clinicians to implement therapy techniques, which contains efficacy that is supported by evidence. Non-speech oral-motor exercises (NSOMEs), in particular have raised controversy among speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and researchers when treating children with articulation and phonological disorders. The use of NSOMEs is a debated issue in the profession due to the lack of evidence based practice (EBP), poor clinical assumptions, and the avoidance of meeting the client’s needs.

Outcomes of taught target sounds can generalize to other sounds and contexts if the clinician provides the client with adequate training and opportunities, compared to assuming that acquisition in one setting will automatically generalize (McReynolds, 1989). Clinicians must plan for generalization before the start of treatment (Kearns, 1989). Factors for generalization can include: treatment approach and target phonemes. In order for the client to generalize the treatment, therefore showing true success, the client needs an effective treatment approach. Although not one

The purpose of this evidence based research paper is to evaluate the efficacy of the cycles approach when compared to the traditional articulation therapy approach in the treatment of children who are highly unintelligible. The Cycles Phonological Remediation Approach (Hodson, 2011) is a treatment method for children with severe speech sound disorders. This approach targets phonological pattern errors in a sequential manner. During each cycle, one or more phonological patterns are targeted and after each cycle is complete, another cycle begins. Recycling of phonological patterns continues until the targeted patterns are generalized into the child’s conversational speech. The cycles approach is meant to mirror typical phonological development in children (Hodson, 2011).

Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), also known as central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), is a neurological defect that affects how the brain processes spoken language. It affects about 5% of school-aged children making it difficult for the child to process verbal instructions or to cancel out background noise in the classroom. A child who has Auditory Processing Disorder may have the same kind of behavioral problems as a child who has ADD, and also might be confused with Autism, Asperger’s, Language processing disorder, and Dyslexia. For children who suffer from APD, the understanding of meanings, sound combination, and the categorical order of words are mistaken.

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

The first article, The efficacy of the cycles approach: A multiple baseline design explored three participants from age 4:3 to 5:3 using the cycles approach in cycles of therapy. The cycles approach uses pattern based targets. This could be difficult to implement for Jacob. Jacob does not say any intelligible words consistently. However, the second key component described in this of targeting problematic patterns in a cycles approach without the criteria of meeting proficiency. This study would apply to Jacob’s treatment. Participants in this study exhibited Speech Sound Disorders that greatly influenced their intelligibility. Two out of three participants in the study made rapid improvement. Due to Jacob’s low intelligibility, this method would be beneficial for his improvement.

Communication is vital in life, whether it be from simply having a conversation with someone or trying to understand what they are saying and if a person has a speech disorder, that can make life very complicated. Children with speech disorders may have trouble producing sounds to use spoken language to communicate with people and may have trouble understanding what people are trying to say. Children with speech disorders may have problems with vocal quality, articulation, fluency, hearing, and intellectual abilities. Those difficulties that children may face due to speech disorders can potentially cause setbacks in their everyday life which is why Midlands Therapy Services tries to help children reach their full potential. Midlands Therapy

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

Clinical Implications: Minimal-contrast treatment is effective and efficient for treating children with phonological disability. Avoiding listener confusion is motivating for suppressing process use.

In Intensive Voice Treatment (LSVT LOUD) for Children With Spastic Cerebral Palsy and Dysarthria by Fox, Cynthia Marie, Boliek and Carol Ann, the participants were five children between the ages of 5 and 7 years with a medical diagnosis of predominantly spastic Cerebral Palsy. A telephone screening questionnaire was first given to the parents and then the children went through a face-to-face screening process to be considered for the study. To be selected for this study participants had to have Dysarthria, hearing that was within normal limits or close enough to normal limits, no vocal fold pathology as determined by an otolaryngologist, the ability to follow directions for the study tasks, and on stable medications if needed.

Speech and language delays can be problematic for preschoolers, school aged children and adolescents. These delays range in degree of severity and have many causes; physical and developmentally. Communication plays a specific and important role to all people, especially, preschool children who are developing speech and language skills at fast rate. The consequences of these delays can be devastating for the children affected and can follow them into adulthood. These effects may include academic problems, social and emotional issues and may even lead into mental illness. Children with speech and language delays need professional intervention as young as possible. However even with intervention, some children are still at risk of suffering