Speech Sound Disorders: Classification & Causes Flashcards

Vocabulary practice cards covering the classification, types, diagnostic markers, and origins of Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) in children.

Differential Diagnosis

The process of ruling out specific disorders to ensure proper treatment for individuals experiencing difficulties with verbal communication.

Phonological Delay

An immature phonological system where a child follows a normal sequence of speech sound development but at a slower rate than typical for their age.

Phonological Disorder

A speech sound condition involving a deviant phonological system where an individual follows an atypical developmental pattern rather than a typical sequence at a delayed pace.

Phonological Impairment

The most common type of speech sound disorder, defined as a cognitive-linguistic difficulty with learning the phonological system of a language, characterized by pattern-based errors like velar fronting.

Inconsistent Speech Disorder

A type of SSD affecting roughly 10% of children with SSD, characterized by inconsistent productions of the same lexical item (word) due to difficulty selecting and sequencing phonemes without accompanying oromotor difficulties.

Articulation Impairment

A motor speech difficulty involving the physical production (articulation) of specific speech sounds, typically involving distortions and substitutions of sibilants and/or rhotics.

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)

A neurological motor speech disorder associated with difficulty planning and programming movement sequences, resulting in dysprosody and speech production errors in the absence of neuromuscular deficits.

Dysprosody

An impairment in the prosody of speech, leading to disrupted speech rhythm, melody, and a tendency toward excessive and equal stress across syllables in words.

Metathesis

A speech error pattern where all correct phonemes for a target word are present but produced out of order.

Articulatory Groping

Searching or struggling motor movements of the articulators observed when a child attempts to achieve initial articulatory configurations or transitionary postures for speech sound production.

Childhood Dysarthria

A motor speech disorder involving difficulty with sensorimotor control processes in speech execution, characterized by slow and uncoordinated movements affecting the respiratory, prosodic, phonatory, and articulatory systems.

Organic SSD Cause

An etiology of speech sound disorder related to a known structural deformity, physical deficit, or sensorimotor impairment.

Functional SSD Cause

An etiology of speech sound disorder attributed to faulty learning where physical structures appear normal, without association to an obvious sensory, structural, or neuromotor deficit.

Down Syndrome

A genetic disorder caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21 occurring in roughly 1 in 700 live births, often leading to cognitive delays, relative macroglossia, reduced muscle tone, and high frequency of otitis media.

Fragile X Syndrome

A genetic disorder caused by a mutation in the FMR1 gene on the X chromosome occurring in roughly 1 in 4,000 live births, characterized by moderate cognitive impairments, distinct physical features, and speech delays.

Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome

A genetic disorder that often causes hemihyperplasia, macroglossia, and cleft palate, frequently resulting in difficulty producing anterior speech sounds.

Hemihyperplasia

Overdevelopment or excessive growth of half of a specific organ, or part or all of the organs and body structures on one side of the body.

Galactosemia

An inherited enzyme deficiency disorder occurring in approximately 1 in 53,000 live births that causes cognitive and speech deficits as well as balance/coordination issues (ataxia).

Cleft Lip and/or Palate

An anomaly of oral structure that serves as a common organic cause of SSD, resulting in hypernasality, abnormal nasal airflow, voice disorder, and reduced consonant inventory.

Speech Sound Disorders Breakdown Chart

A system chart categorizing Speech Sound Disorders into Functional (no known cause: Articulation, Phonology) and Organic (Developmental/Acquired: Motor/Neurological, Structural, Sensory/Perceptual).

Conceptualization of Childhood SSD chart

A classification diagram dividing Childhood SSD into Phonology (Phonological impairment, Inconsistent speech disorder) and Motor speech (Articulation impairment, CAS, Childhood dysarthria).