Articulation Disorders

Short Description or Definition

An articulation disorder is a failure to acquire or difficulty producing a speech sound or sounds of a particular language by the expected normative age due to some type of motoric production problem. Speech sound errors in articulation disorders include:

Substitutions: replacing a standard speech sound with a different standard speech sound, e.g., w abbit for r abbit, thpoon for spoon, or bery for very.

Omissions/Deletions: a standard speech sound is not produced and is deleted or omitted, e.g., ba for bat, gin for green. (Widespread omissions often indicate a phonological disorder.)

Distortions: the replacement of a standard speech sound by a nonstandard sound. The sound may be slightly changed, e.g., s in soup sounds “slushy” or “lateralized.” A, lisp is a distortion.

Additions: insertion of a sound or syllable into a word, e.g., cart for car or bə lack for black. Additions are the least commonly occurring type of articulation error.

While some of...