Speech

Respiration

Respiration is the alternation in pressure and flow of air.

In normal speech, the respiratory organs produce continuous stream of air with necessary volume and pressure. This stream of air is modified in the facial and oral tracts during phonation, articulation and resonation processes to produce speech sounds.

Phonation

Phonation or voicing is a process by which the vocal folds in the larynx produce voiced or voiceless sound. E.g. Consonants ‘h’ and ‘k’ are produced without vocal folds vibration, thus they are voiceless sounds. Vowels are produced with vocal folds vibration, thus they are called voiced sounds.

Articulation

Articulation is a series of speech organ movements in the mouth to produce speech sounds in the right place with the right manner. E.g. In producing ‘u’ as in ‘food’, the lips are more rounded and tensed with the tongue retracted in higher position than in ‘foot’.

When a child has similar production pattern with typically developing children but of lower age group, he is considered to be speech delayed. A child with unclear pronunciation and error patterns that are different from that of typically developing children is considered to have articulation or phonological disorders.

Articulation disorder is problem with making the right sound such as producing the sound “b” or “w”.

Phonological disorder has to do with problem with producing sound patterns within the language(s) that a child uses.

Resonation

Resonation is the modification of the sound by the mouth and nasal cavities.

It is a process by which speech sound is modified by the speech organs in the mouth and nasal cavities. For example, ‘b’ is produced with air flowing only through the mouth with no resonation and thus called oral sound. ‘m’ is produced with air flowing through nasal cavity with resonation and thus called nasal sound.

Motor Planning

Children with Developmental Dyspraxia have intact and functioning muscles. They have the ability to produce the correct speech sounds.
However, the muscles cannot produce these sounds at will. They may struggle to produce certain sounds and their speech become unintelligible as the result.

Children with this problem may or may not have difficulties performing oral-motor tasks that are not related to speech since the manifestation of symptoms vary from child to child.
For example, they may or may not have problem with sucking, blowing bubble, or moving their tongue tips.