Articulation in apraxia of speech

Abstract

In an attempt to show that aphasics with apraxia of speech have characteristic articulatory patterns, two aphasics with apraxia of speech, and one subject with articulatory problems related to his sensory aphasia, underwent articulation testing. A quantitative measure of distance between error sound and target sound showed that the types of aphasics did not differ on distance, and apraxics could therefore not be said to be closer to the target sound than a sensory aphasic. However, the more severe the communication disorder, the higher was the distance score. A qualitative analysis of the data revealed that the apraxics had substitutions of phonemes as their major error, whereas in the subject without apraxia, substitutions were as prevalent as other errors such as reversals, omissions, augmentations. Aphasics with apraxia of speech may be said to show characteristic types of errors.