Explaining Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)

If you're a speech-language pathologist who diagnoses childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) it's very important to think about how you explain this speech sound disorder to caregivers, families and other professionals.

First of all, let's look at the formal definition of CAS that we have from the 2007 ASHA technical report, that states that 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, abnormal tone). CAS may occur as a result of known neurological impairment, in association with complex neurobehavioral disorders of known or unknown origin, or as an idiopathic neurogenic speech sound disorder. The core impairment in planning and/or programming spatiotemporal parameters of movement sequences results in errors in speech sound production and prosody” (ASHA, 2007). Read my entire guest blog on the Bjorem Speech blog here.