What Is Apraxia of Speech?
Apraxia of speech is a motor speech disorder where the transmission of electric signals by the brain is not sent to the appropriate muscles. Due to this, a person with apraxia has difficulty moving their lips, jaw, or tongue in the required manner to say a sound.
Symptoms of Apraxia of Speech
There are distortions or substitutions seen in the speech sounds. The person might either say a word in a different way or might say a similar word that has a different meaning. For eg. instead of saying ‘night’, they might say ‘nime’ or ‘might’.
Groping movements in the lips, tongue, or jaw, where the person tries to approximate their position for speaking.
Delay in giving a response or initiating speech.
Difficulty in transitioning from one sound to another
Giving sound stress to a different sound in the word or giving equal stress to all sounds in a word.
Having a pause between sounds in a word
Difficulty saying longer words compared to shorter words
Difficulty in imitating a sound or word
Errors made are inconsistent. The person might make a different error instead of the previous error while repeating a word.