What is it about?

Speech perception often gets overlooked when assessing a child for a speech sound disorder, including childhood apraxia of speech. In many cases, however, poor perceptual skills may be a barrier to successful intervention of speech production. This tutorial offers a summary of the current literature on speech perception and how it relates to speech production, language, and reading abilities for children with childhood apraxia of speech. We offer suggestions for how to assess speech perception and include it in a multifaceted treatment for children with CAS.

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Why is it important?

Children with childhood apraxia of speech often have complex profiles beyond speech sound production. Those with co-occurring language difficulties likely demonstrate poor speech perception. Collectively, these challenges can impact later literacy development. When speech-language pathologists take a multifaceted approach that combines several evidence-based practices for speech production, speech perception, language, and emergent literacy, we may offer quality care for the whole child.

Perspectives

What I enjoyed most about writing this paper was the collaborative nature of this clinician-researcher team. We worked hard to pull in what we know from previous studies and drew from our clinical experience to set realistic expectations and guidance for SLPs for how to set these evidence-driven practice into motion.

Alyssa Boucher
Boston University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Speech Perception Variability in Childhood Apraxia of Speech: Implications for Assessment and Intervention, Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, October 2022, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2022_lshss-21-00170.
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Contributors

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