Childhood Apraxia of Speech

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a neurological childhood (paediatric) speech sound disorder in which the precision and consistency of movements underlying speech are impaired in the absence of neuromuscular deficits (e.g. abnormal reflexes, abnormal tone). The core impairment in planning and/or programming…..of movement sequences results in errors in speech sound production and prosody (ASHA, 2007b, Definitions of CAS section).

The speech muscles and brain are fine, however the difficulty is with getting the message from the brain to the speech muscles in order to say sounds, words and sentences. This results in inconsistent sound errors, difficulty combining sounds into syllables and words in a smooth manner, and problems with prosody. These are not due to muscle weakness, but impaired motor planning and programming.