Speech feature profiles in Swedish 5-year-olds with speech sound disorder related to suspected childhood apraxia of speech or cleft palate

Purpose: To study the occurrence of speech features commonly associated with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) in Swedish children with suspected CAS (sCAS) or Speech Sound Disorder (SSD) related to Cleft Palate and/or Lip (CP ± L).Method: Thirty-four children (4.10-5.11) with SSD related to sCAS (n = 15) or repaired CP ± L (n = 19) participated. Consensus judgement of presence/absence of CAS features in single words were based on a checklist with operationalised definitions. Speech sound production measures were based on semi-narrow phonetic transcription. Intra- and inter-transcriber agreement was determined.Result: Twelve participants (ten with sCAS (67%) and two with CP ± L (11%)) shared a CAS profile of phonemic speech inconsistency for consonants and vowels and a set of four features: vowel error, voicing error, difficulty achieving initial articulatory configurations or transitionary movement gestures and stress errors. The most frequent speech difficulties in children with non-CAS CP ± L (n = 17) were consonant distortion (88%) and hypernasal resonance (76%). Prosodic impairment was rare.Conclusion: A distinct CAS speech feature profile was found for children with CAS, differing in number and distribution compared to children with CP ± L and SSD. CAS was found more frequently in CP ± L and SSD compared to reported estimates of clinical prevalence.

Speech inconsistency and its association with speech production, phonological awareness and nonword repetition skills

The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between speech inconsistency, speech production skills, phonological awareness and nonword repetition (NWR) in 24 preschool-aged Finnish-speaking children with speech sound disorder (SSD) and in 31 children with typical speech and language development (TD). Speech inconsistency was assessed by a picture-naming task repeated three times during one assessment session. The participants' speech production skills were assessed with the Finnish Test for Phonology and a diadochokinetic (DDK) task. Phonological awareness was investigated by the tasks of Rhyme and initial syllable awareness and Syllable segmentation, and NWR by ten 2-4-syllabic nonwords. The findings indicated that the children with SSD were less accurate in speech production and NWR than the children with TD. No difference was found in phonological awareness. Among the children with SSD, speech inconsistency was correlated with accuracy in overall speech production, DDK task, and NWR. Among the children with TD, speech inconsistency was correlated with accuracy in overall speech production, partly with phonological awareness, and with NWR. The results provide support for the idea that when assessing speech inconsistency in children with SSD, a process-oriented approach may be needed in order to obtain an adequately broad picture of their skill profiles.