By, Mary Williams-Anderson

What is Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)?

• CAS is a motor speech disorder that affects a child’s ability to clearly and correctly produce syllables and words. The child knows what he or she wants to say, but his/her brain has difficulty coordinating the muscle movements necessary to say those words. The child may have significantly limited and/or unclear speech.

What Causes CAS?

• Currently the cause of CAS is unknown. Most often no specific cause is found. Some children may, however, have CAS as a part of a larger neurological diagnosis or as part of a genetic or mitochondrial disorder, (2009 Childhood Apraxia of Speech Association of North America).

Treatment of CAS

• Research shows the children with CAS have more success when they receive frequent (3-5 times per week) and intensive treatment. Receiving feedback from a number of senses, such as tactile/visual/verbal cues is often helpful. With this multi-sensory feedback, the child can more readily repeat syllables, words, sentences, and longer utterances to improve muscle coordination and sequencing for speech (1997-2013 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association)

Products frequently used for treating CAS

Kaufman Speech Praxis Treatment Kit 1 (basic level)

Contains 225 visual referent speech cards targeting the syllable shapes that children with apraxia of speech need to become effective vocal/verbal communicators. The accompanying 52-page manual explains the Kaufman Speech to Language Protocol (K-SLP) methods and how to get children started on the road to combining consonants and vowels to form words.

Word FLIPS for Learning Intelligible Production of Speech

Word FLIPS includes three sections of identical picture words with four tabs in each section that divide the words according to articulatory placement. Begin working on severe CAS by having them repeat identical earlier developing sounds, such as “boo-boo-boo.” Older or more verbal children can practice a variety of sequences, such as “tie-tea-shoe” as a warm-up to practicing sentences.

Proloquo2Go

Proloquo2Go® is an award-winning Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) solution for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch for people who have difficulty speaking or cannot speak at all. Providing a “voice” to over 50,000 individuals around the world, Proloquo2Go enables people to talk using symbols or typed text in a natural-sounding voice that suits their age and character.

APPS for CAS

• Apraxia Ville has multiple levels, both vowel and consonant targets, and the ability to create custom words.
• LinguiSystems Apraxia Cards provides sets of words organized by syllable structures. The app has two activities, a receptive activity called “touch” and an expressive activity called “say.”
• Sly Apraxia: Provides 125 images organized into different syllable structure categories. Sly Apraxia app includes CV, VC, CVC, CVCV & Multisyllabic categories.