MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Speech disorders

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Speech disorders

Contents of this page:
Alternative names Definition Causes, incidence, and risk factors Symptoms Signs and tests	Treatment Expectations (prognosis) Complications Calling your health care provider Prevention

Alternative names

Articulation deficiency; Voice disorders; Dysfluency

Definition Return to top

Speech disorders include several speech-related problems that result in impaired or ineffective oral communication. Also see speech impairment.

Causes, incidence, and risk factors Return to top

Speech is one of the primary ways we communicate with our environment. It is also an effective way to monitor normal growth and development as well as to identify potential problems.

Dysfluencies are rhythm disorders that are usually characterized by the repetition of a sound, word, or phrase. Stuttering is, perhaps, the most serious dysfluency.

Articulation deficiencies involve sounds made incorrectly or inappropriately.

Voice disorders involve abnormalities in the quality, pitch, and loudness of the sound.

There are many potential causes of speech impairment:

the most common is mental retardation
hearing impairment
ADD
learning disabilities
autism
schizophrenia
cerebral palsy
cleft palate
vocal cord injury
disorders of the palate
cri-du-chat syndrome
Gilles de la Tourette syndrome

Delayed speech development is one of the common symptoms of developmentally delayed children. It occurs in 5-10% of all children. Boys are three to four times as likely to experience speech disorders as girls.

Symptoms Return to top

Dysfluency:

repetition of sounds, words, or phrases after age 4
frustration with attempts to communicate
head jerking while talking
eye blinking while talking
embarrassment with speech

Articulation Deficiency:

unintelligible speech by age 3
the leaving out of consonants at the beginning of words by age 3
the leaving out of consonants at the end of words by age 4
persistent problems with articulation after age 7
the leaving out of sounds where they should occur
the distortion of sounds
substituting an incorrect sound for a correct one

Voice disorders:

pitch deviations
deviations in the loudness of the voice
quality deviations

Signs and tests Return to top

Denver Articulation Screening Examination
Early Language Milestone Scale
Denver II
Peabody Picture Test Revised

Treatment Return to top

The best treatment is prevention and early intervention by a speech pathologist. Speech training is an involved and time consuming endeavor that can have profound results with consistent treatment.

Expectations (prognosis) Return to top

The prognosis depends on the cause of the disorder. Usually, speech can be improved with speech therapy. Prognosis improves with early intervention.

Complications Return to top

psycho-social problems associated with ineffective communication

Calling your health care provider Return to top

Call your health care provider if your child's speech is not reaching the standard landmarks, if you suspect your child is in a high risk group, or your child is showing other signs of a speech disorder.

Prevention Return to top

Since mental retardation and hearing loss are predisposing factors for speech disorders, at-risk infants should be referred to an audiologist for an audiology exam. Audiological and speech therapy can then be started if necessary.

Stuttering can best be prevented by parents withholding undue attention to dysfluency in their young child. As young children begin to speak, some dysfluency is common. They lack a large vocabulary and have difficulty expressing themselves. This results in broken or dysfluent speech. If parents place excessive attention on the dysfluency, a pattern may develop.

Update Date: 8/3/2003

Updated by: Jason Newman, M.D., Department of Otolaryngology, Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, Washington, DC. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network.

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