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The ability to speak is a complex procedure that involves several parts of the body. These include the mouth, the articulators (tongue, teeth, hard palate, soft palate, lips), the respiratory system and the brain. Sometimes, people may experience trauma that affect their ability to speak appropriately. Examples of this include a cardiovascular accident (CVA or stroke) or head and neck

What is Cluttering? Cluttering is a fluency disorder where an individual speaks at a rapid rate, and/or with an irregular speaking rate and demonstrates excessive dysfluencies such as blocks, repetitions, prolongations, etc. Other symptoms can include language or phonological (sound pattern) errors as well as attention deficits. Although there is no “cure” for cluttering, an individual can learn and implement certain techniques to improve speaking

What is VPD? Velopharyngeal Dysfunction (VPD) is a condition where the velopharyngeal valve does not close consistently and completely during speech sound production. Three Types of VPD Velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI): a structural defect that prevents adequate velopharyngeal closure. This is the most common type of VPD, as it includes a short or abnormal velum. This occurs in children with a

Introduction This article focuses on grammatical morphology (i.e. omission of copulas, auxiliaries, articles, regular tense inflections) because it is heavily researched in the field and is a consistent deficit in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). SLI is a language disorder that delays the mastery of language skills in children who have no hearing loss or other developmental delays. Because

Hearing loss is prevalent in the Down syndrome population for a variety of reasons. Primarily, there are abnormalities present in the Eustachian tube, ossicular anomalies and remnant tissue in the middle ear cavity that contribute to the presence of conductive, sensorineural or mixed hearing loss in this population (Tedeshi, Roizen, Taylor, Murray, Curtis & Parikh, 2015). A common disease accompanied

According to ASHA (2017), Traumatic brain injury is a form of brain injury that is caused by sudden damage to the brain. Depending on the location and source of the trauma, the TBI can be a closed head injury, a penetrating head injury, or a deceleration injury. Type of injury Definition Example Open Head Injury When the skill is penetrated

Have you ever been thought to your-self that “life gets in the way?” Well, you are not alone. It is normal for parents who work full time jobs to feel like the day just flies by. However, most parents do not realize the importance of making practicing speech and language at home. Practicing speech and language therapy can mean all

Apraxia Apraxia of speech (AOS) refers to a neurogenic speech disorder that is caused by central nervous system (CNS) damage. AOS is associated with impairment to motor planning and/or programming. Although there is no weakness of paralysis of the muscles, the CNS damage makes it difficult to program and precise movements necessary for smooth articulated speech. Childhood Apraxia of Speech

Language can be defined as a form of social behavior that is shaped and maintained by a verbal community. It is described as a code in which specific symbols that convey meaning. Language is broken down into five major components, morphology, syntax, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics. Morphology is the study of word structure and the construction of word forms. Syntax