Articulation Disorders
Articulation Disorders may cause a person to person to omit sounds within words, add sounds that are not part of words, substitute and / or distort sounds when speaking.
Types of Articulation Disorders
Frontal lisp is one of the articulation disorders. This child produces "s" with his tongue forward.
Articulation Disorders can become evident as children acquire speech and language. Articulation of speech emerges over time, and is generally imperfect during the early stages of acquisition. This is completely normal. Speech sounds gain precision over time. However, some speech sound errors are not normal, and can indicate a problem. Cobblestone speech-language pathologists can determine if a child has a disorder of articulation based on his or her age. We compare the type of speech errors and the quality of the errors that the child produces with statistical norms and what is expected of the child at his or her age. Developmental guidelines are utilized when assessing a child's speech production.
Young children often make speech errors. For instance, many young children sound like they are making a "w" sound for an "r" sound (e.g., "wabbit" for "rabbit") or may leave sounds out of words, such as "nana" for "banana." The child may have an articulation disorder if these errors continue past the expected age.
Decreased clarity or intelligibility of speech in older individuals can occur for many other reasons including dental problems, accidents, illnesses affecting the mouth and tongue, and more. These problems can be helped through speech therapy as well.
Treatments
SLPs provide treatment to improve articulation of individual sounds or reduce errors in production of sound patterns.
Articulation treatment may involve demonstrating how to produce the sound correctly, learning to recognize which sounds are correct and incorrect, and practicing sounds in different words. Phonological process treatment may involve teaching the rules of speech to individuals to help them say words correctly.
