Is this normal? (CAS Edition)
If you are here, I’m guessing you either have a child with suspected or diagnosed apraxia of speech or are an SLP who treats a child with suspected CAS. If you haven’t already, I recommend going back and reading the posts, Is this normal? (Speech Edition) and “What is CAS?’ before coming back here.
There are many factors that need to be considered to differentiate CAS from other speech disorders. It is also completely possible for a child to have an articulation or phonological disorder in addition to CAS. In this case, their underlying phonological language system is impaired AND their motor planning/programming systems are impaired.
For the sake of clarity, this post will stick to the qualities present in CAS that differ from a typical speech sound disorder. These include:
Vowel distortions - The vowel might just sound a little “off” or it may be a substitution of another vowel sound (saying “ma” for me).
Prosody errors - When the stress pattern, rhythm, volume, etc. is “off”, your child might sound robotic, monotone, too slow, too fast, or choppy.
Voicing errors - Saying “ped” for bed, “doe” for “toe”, etc.
Inconsistent consonant errors - When accuracy and errors are inconsistent and unpredictable (sometimes they can say the sounds correctly, and sometimes they cannot).
If you notice the above qualities in your child’s speech and they are difficult for you or others to understand, it may be time to reach out to your local speech pathologist!
Cheers,
The Garden
