Speech Disorders
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Speech Disorders
Speech is simply the sounds that we say. A speech disorder is characterized by difficulty making sounds. This difficulty may be due to a phonological (sound system) disorder or a neuromotor impairment, such as apraxia or dysarthria. Signs of a speech disorder include:
- Not speaking clearly
- Difficulty being understood
- Being less well understood than same-age peers
- Struggling to get sounds out
Speech Disorders Include:
- Phonological disorders: (difficulty saying sounds)
- Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS): the message is not getting through from the brain to the mouth, telling the mouth how to move to make specific sounds.
- Apraxia (in adults): the same problem as in children, except in adults the problem is caused by a brain injury such as a stroke, aneurysm, or head injury.
- Dysarthria: a speech disorder caused by muscle weakness. Dysarthric speech often sounds imprecise or slurred.
- Voice disorders: difficulty with pitch (too high or too low), resonance (too much or too little nasality), loudness (volume), quality (hoarse, breathy).
- Orofacial myofunctional disorders: (abnormal movement patterns of the face and mouth, often coinciding with structural problems, mouth breathing, saliva loss, speech difficulty).
- Stuttering-difficulty speaking smoothly or fluently. You may see repetitions of sounds, syllable, words or phrases or someone getting “stuck” and being unable to make a sound at all.
