Abstract
BackgroundChildhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a speech sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired in absence of neuromuscular deficits. It is important to differentiate between language disorders and CAS to avoid misdiagnosis. The objective of this study was to develop a test battery for CAS in order to identify its possible presence in Arabic-speaking children, thus allowing the planning of appropriate therapy programs. The constructed test battery for CAS was administered to 70 monolingual Arabic-speaking Egyptian children including 10 children with suspected CAS, 20 children with phonological disorders, and 40 typically developing children. Participants’ responses were statistically analyzed to assess the validity and reliability, and to evaluate sensitivity and specificity of the test battery.ResultsStatistically significant differences were found between the three groups as regard all subtotal and total scores of CAS test battery with good validity and reliability of the test.ConclusionsThe constructed test battery for diagnosis of CAS is a reliable, valid, and sensitive tool that can be used to detect the presence of CAS in Arabic-speaking children and differentiate between it and phonological disorders.
Highlights
Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a neurological childhood speech sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired in the absence of neuromuscular deficits
The aim of this work was to develop an Arabic screening test for CAS in order to identify its possible presence in Arabic-speaking children, allowing the planning of appropriate therapy programs for these children
Group I consisted of 10 children with suspected CAS based on analysis of speech output obtained through spontaneous speech sample and articulation test, and children in this group were selected as they displayed some or all of the characteristics suggested by Davis et al [12] which are markedly reduced speech intelligibility, limited phonemic repertoire, predominant use of simple syllable shapes, high incidence of vowel errors, increased errors on longer units of speech output, inconsistent articulation errors, frequent omission errors, and prosodic abnormalities
Summary
Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a speech sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired in absence of neuromuscular deficits. Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a neurological childhood (pediatric) speech sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired in the absence of neuromuscular deficits (e.g., abnormal reflexes and abnormal tone). Forrest [2] stated that the most common speech behaviors proposed to characterize CAS were inconsistent productions, difficulty with oral motor skills, difficulty with imitation of sounds, poor sound sequencing, increasing difficulty with increased utterance length, struggle, and groping [3]. Both receptive and expressive language deficits were frequently reported in CAS, with receptive skills often being superior to expressive skills [4]. The complex of behavioral features associated with CAS leads to severely reduced speech intelligibility even to family members [5]
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