Speech Services

Speech sound disorders are diagnosed when a child is difficult to understand because they are omitting, substituting, or distorting speech sounds. Articulation disorders are diagnosed by comparing your child's intelligibility (how well they are understood) to children of the same age. As a general rule of thumb, unfamiliar adults should understand a two-year-old 50% of the time, a three-year-old 75% of the time, and a four-year-old 100% of the time. 

 

Speech sound disorders can be a result of an underlying motor/neurological, structural, or sensory/perceptual cause (e.g., hearing loss), or can be idiopathic in nature (no known cause). 

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Signs and symptoms of functional speech sound disorders include the following:

• omissions/deletions—certain sounds are omitted or deleted (e.g., "cu" for "cup" and "poon" for "spoon")

• substitutions—one or more sounds are substituted, which may result in loss of phonemic contrast (e.g., "thing" for "sing" and "wabbit" for "rabbit")

• additions—one or more extra sounds are added or inserted into a word (e.g., "buhlack" for "black")

• distortions—sounds are altered or changed (e.g., a lateral "s")

• syllable-level errors—weak syllables are deleted (e.g., "tephone" for "telephone")

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Assessment of speech sound disorders may involve gathering case history information, conducting a thorough assessment of your child's oral structures to rule out structural or functional causes, completing an articulation assessment to identify speech sound errors or patterns of errors, and observing your child to gather information on how your child speaks in a more organic manner. The assessment information will be used to determine goals for treatment and determine the frequency and intensity of services needed to remediate the speech sound disorder.