WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF A SPEECH IMPEDIMENT?

Symptoms of speech impediment

There are several symptoms that can point to a speech impediment.
These include:

Unintelligible speech – A speech disorder may be present when others have difficulty understanding a person’s verbalisations.
Omitted sounds – This symptom can include the omission of part of a word, for example saying “bo” instead of “boat,” and may include omission of consonants or syllables.
Adding extra sounds and words – This is most often seen in people who stutter.
Substituted sounds – When sounds are substituted or distorted, such as saying “wabbit” instead of “rabbit”.

Use of gestures – When a person use gestures to communicate instead of words.
Inappropriate pitch – Speaking with a strange pitch or volume.

Types of speech disorders

Children and adults can suffer from a variety of speech impairments that may have mild to severe impacts on their ability to communicate.

The most common speech disorders include

stuttering,
apraxia,
dysarthria
and lisps.

Did you know?

Speech disorders affect 5 to 10% of all children.
Boys are four times more likely to have speech disorders than girls.

Stuttering

Stuttering, (also known as fluency disorder or stammering), is one of the most common speech disorders.
The flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetition of sounds, syllables or words, as well as interruptions in speech, or prolonged use of a sound. Speech experts believe that stutterers experience muscle tension in the speech muscles, combined with anxiety and fear that causes stuttering to become worse.

Stuttering often begins in childhood and can last throughout someone’s life. While medical experts haven’t pinpointed an exact cause of stuttering, they believe there may be a genetic component - those who stutter tend to have family members who stutter. In rare cases, stuttering may be acquired in adulthood as the result of a neurological event such as a head injury, tumour, stroke or drug abuse.

Stuttering is variable, which means that in certain situations, such as talking on the telephone, the stuttering might be more severe or less, depending on the anxiety level connected with that activity. Stuttering issues can also be compounded by external factors. Teasing or mocking from others and embarrassment contribute to anxiety, which in turn, tightens speech muscles.

No one stutters in the same way. Some people who stutter have more natural control over their speech than others do. The degree of stuttering will also vary within the individual. How much control they have will depend on the particular situation in which they find themselves, the difficulty of the words they must say, and how they feel, in general, at that moment.

Children may suffer from developmental stuttering, which is stuttering that develops as a child is learning language and speech processes. Approximately 5% of all children go through a period of stuttering that lasts six months or more. Three-quarters of those will recover by late childhood, leaving about 1 per cent with a long-term problem.

Early intervention is vital in order to correct the problem. Treatment involves working with a speech and language therapist. With consistent treatment, many children can overcome stuttering in a few months to a couple of years.

Interesting fact

Most people who stutter when talking don’t stutter when singing.

Apraxia

Unlike stuttering, Apraxia in both children and adults is always neurological and results from some form of blockage or disconnect between a person’s speech-related muscles and the corresponding nerves. This could be genetic or the result of a traumatic brain injury like a concussion, stroke or infection.

If you have apraxia, your tongue and lips aren’t able to move in the correct way to produce sounds. In extreme cases, apraxia can render you unable to speak at all. Like many speech disorders, a person with apraxia is more than aware of what they want to say, but can’t manage to say it. Instead, they will often make the wrong noises or place emphasis on the wrong parts of words. They may not pronounce words the same way twice.

Despite genetic and physical causes, Apraxia can be much improved with the help of a speech therapist.

Dysarthria

Dysarthria differs from apraxia in that the speech muscles are weak due to brain damage. Dysarthria often presents as slurred or prolonged words, and in some cases can progress to a point where the person can no longer speak at all.

Finding the correct treatment depends upon the underlying cause of dysarthria and its severity. Speech and language therpaists may work with you to help slow down your speech and use your breath to speak more clearly. In addition, they will concentrate on training the muscles in your mouth, lips and tongue to make them stronger.

Articulation Disorder

The lisp is probably one of the most ‘well-known’ kinds of speech impediment. It can cause communication difficulties depending upon severity and also knock a person’s confidence.

There are two main types of lisps:

Interdental lisp: This occurs when your tongue pushes past your front teeth and makes a ‘th’- sound for the ‘s’ and ‘z’ sounds. Examples include saying ‘thun’ for ‘sun’ or ‘thoup’ for ‘soup’.

Lateral lisp: This is where the air escapes over the sides of the tongue instead of the front of the tongue. It makes the “s” sound ‘slushy’ and unclear.

Interdental lisps are quite common in children younger than five, and, in most cases, resolve themselves with practice. Lateral lisps, which are not part of normal speech development, are far less likely to fix themselves. Speech therapy for those with lisps includes relearning pronunciation, muscle strengthening exercises, and general annunciation coaching.

Did you know?

Apple is said to have trained Siri to better understand atypical speech by building up a bank of 28,000 audio clips that feature people who stutter, and will be using that information to help its digital assistant understand these types of speaking patterns.