Apraxia and Phonological Program

APPLE is a program specifically designed to improve speech intelligibility for children with Verbal Apraxia and Phonological Process Disorders.

Verbal Apraxia

Verbal Apraxia is a motor speech disorder. Children with Verbal Apraxia have difficulty coordinating oral motor movements necessary to produce and combine speech sounds to form syllables and words accurately. The child may be able to produce the word once, but unable to produce the word again. It is important to remember that the child knows what he/she wants to say but has difficulty forming and sequencing words.

Phonological Process Disorder

A child with Phonological Process Disorder uses a variety of processes, or error patterns, that cause speech to be unintelligible, but fluent. These children are able to produce the sounds correctly in imitation, but do not incorporate the use of these sounds into speech. In addition, the child is typically highly unintelligible, but unaware that his or her productions are incorrect.

Characteristics of Phonological Process Disorders

• Consistent and predictable sound errors, substitutions and omissions
• May have numerous error patterns
• Fast rate of speech
• Appropriate length of utterances
• Child may be unaware of errors
• Very poor speech intelligibility, especially to unfamiliar listeners
• Familiar listeners may be able to "decode" the child's speech
• Speech is fluent with little struggle

Characteristics of Verbal Apraxia

• Little or no babbling as an infant
• Struggling, groping or labored speech
• Reduced length of utterance
• Words omitted from utterances
• Reduced sound repertoire
• Inconsistent, unpredictable errors
• Frustration with communication difficulty

Benefits

Specialized treatment for children between the ages of 12 months and 14 years. The program includes:

• Individual treatment sessions which focus on intensive speech and language stimulation
• Group treatment sessions which focus on socialization skills, as well as carry-over of speech and language skills
• Direct parent education with observation of treatment sessions to enable the learning of stimulation techniques for use within the home