Differences of Apraxia and Phonology

Apraxia and Phonology – What’s the Difference?

Now that we’ve seen the similarities between apraxia and phonological speech disorders, let’s take a look at the differences that will help us decipher them!

Apraxia

• Caused by motor speech and processing difficulty (the child knows what they want to say, but cannot express it)
• Intact oral motor strength and ability
• Vowel and consonant sounds are distorted and limited
• Cannot directly imitate oral motor movements, sounds, words
• Speech mistakes are not repetitive/consistent
• Potential mildly or moderately affected coordination ability of the articulators or body movements
• Oral motor groping present

Phonology

• Articulation errors follow a pattern
• Errors can be categorized into various phonetic disorders, such as: fronting, backing, final sound deletion, assimilation, etc.
• Child can produce longer sentences
• Child has a variety of vowel and consonant sounds in their repertoire
• Can imitate oral motor movements, sounds, words
• Speech mistakes are repetitive and form a pattern
• Possible history of ear infections
• No oral motor groping present