What is Verbal Apraxia, anyway?

Verbal Apraxia (also known as Developmental Apraxia of Speech or DAS) is a neurologically based speech disorder. It is caused by subtle brain impairment or malfunctioning. No one currently knows exactly what this brain impairment is or what causes it. Apraxia interferes with a child's ability to correctly pronounce sounds, syllables and words. It is the loss of ability to consistently position the articulators (face, tongue, lips, jaw) for the production of speech sounds and for sequencing those sounds into syllables or words. Generally, there is nothing wrong with the muscles themselves. The child does not have difficulty with non-speech activities performed with the muscles such as coughing, chewing or swallowing. However, the area of the brain that tells the muscles how to move and what to do to make a particular sound or series of sounds is damaged or not fully developed. This makes retrieving the "motor plan" for saying a word difficult.

As a result, even though the child knows what he wants to say, he cannot say it correctly at that particular time. Sometimes he cannot even begin. Either the wrong sound comes out, or many sounds are left out all together. These errors are not under the child's voluntary control so he often cannot correct them, even when trying his hardest. Frequently, a child will be able to produce a sound or word at one time and not be able to say it again when he wants to. A parent may hear words when the child is playing alone or when he is angry, but when asked to say the same word, he can't. This can be very frustrating for both the child and the parents.

For a young child with verbal apraxia, a limited speech sound repertoire is frequently the main characteristic of his speech. This simply means that the child has very few speech sounds that he can use automatically so he frequently uses a simple syllable (such as ba) to stand for almost everything. The length of a phrase as an adverse effect on articulation. Generally, the longer the utterance, the worse the speech accuracy. A child may be able to say syllables and short words fairly well but be impossible to understand in phrases or sentences. Apraxic children are usually better at imitating speech than at saying words spontaneously. If you ask a child to say a words right after you, he is likely to say it more accurately than if he said it without your model. Children with verbal apraxia may also lose words. Parents frequently report that the child "used to say that, but doesn't anymore".