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Background Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a chronic neurological disorder observed in children. DCD is characterized by slowness in activities and motor impairment that affects the children’s daily living and academic achievements, and later their professional and social behavior. Our aim in this work was to report characteristics frequencies in a group of children with DCD and to propose a subtyping of DCD characteristics. Methods Thirty three clinical DCD characteristics, the mostly reported in the literature, were assessed in 129 patients, boys and girls aged from 4 years to 18 years, and their subtyping was proposed. The statistical analyses were carried out with the Chi square, the t-test and the correlation for the statistical differences, and with the Ward clustering method for subtyping. Results We found that there were 3.17 boys for one girl, all patients were characterized as slow, 47% were left-handers or ambidextrous, 36% and 26% had orofacial and verbal dyspraxia, respectively, 83% were found anxious, and 84% were described as being clumsy. Conclusions It appears from these results that a child with DCD expresses more than a single difficulty. Three subtypes emerged from the statistical analysis in this study: (1) clumsiness and other characteristics except language difficulties; (2) self-esteem and peer relation without clumsiness and language difficulties; (3) language difficulties and orofacial dyspraxia.

Why do some children fail to acquire speech and language skills despite adequate environmental input and overtly normal neurological and anatomical development? It has been suspected for several decades, based on indirect evidence, that the human genome might hold some answers to this enigma. These suspicions have recently received dramatic confirmation with the discovery of specific genetic changes which appear sufficient to derail speech and language development. Indeed, researchers are already using information from genetic studies to aid early diagnosis and to shed light on the neural pathways that are perturbed in these inherited forms of speech and language disorder. Thus, we have entered an exciting era for dissecting the neural bases of human communication, one which takes genes and molecules as a starting point. In the current article I explain how this recent paradigm shift has occurred and describe the new vistas that have opened up. I demonstrate ways of bridging the gaps between molecules, neurons and the brain, which will provide a new understanding of the aetiology of speech and language impairments.

The current study analyzed possible relation between the dialogic interaction of the duo mother-child with praxic limitations and the exercise of maternal function. It tries, specifically, to categorize the types of dialogic interactions found, to analyze the interference or not of praxic limitation of children on the interpretation process by the mother and the reflexes of maternal function over the mother-child dialog. Five mother-child diad took part on the study, with the interaction of these duos being filmed, on which the play, the relation mother-child, as well the exercise of maternal function were filmed. Precarious bonds on the relation mother-child, difficulty on the exercise of maternal function, directive, intrusive or apathetic and away mothers were observed. For subjects, children of mothers that could evolve on the exercise of maternal function, cases which the bond had a significant improvement, it was observed a greater language evolution. The dialogic analyzes demonstrated that verbal dyspraxia doesn't prevent the interpretation process, it can only limit it. However, the exercise of maternal function seems to have a more important effect on the mother-child dialog.

This article describes the development of an intervention for Rory, a thirteen year old male student diagnosed with verbal dyspraxia. The intervention took place in a secondary classroom. The stages in which the consultant to the classroom engaged in the development and delivery of a short‐term intervention are presented. The intervention involved the use of visual cues as a scaffold to writing and the provision of immediate feedback through conferencing. The student was also encouraged to use self monitoring. The aim of the intervention was to improve writing skills, demonstrated by increased sentence length and complexity. Significant progress was made by the student during the trial of the intervention. The process used by the consultant ‐ examining the situation and developing an intervention to specifically match the need of the student, has the potential to provide a model for those engaged in the development of responsive intervention in inclusive settings.

In spite of adequate dietary regimen, many patients with galactosemia have developmental abnormalities. We studied 8 patients with galactosemia, aged 9 months to 19 years who had all been treated with a galactose-free diet from an early stage. Neurological functioning, general developmental, and language and speech development were assessed in all cases. The results show that even medically well treated children and young adults with galactosemia are at risk to develop disabilities, including mental retardation, speech and language disabilities. Verbal dyspraxia was diagnosed in 3 of 6 patients, who had acquired verbal language, all with IQ 70 or below. This may indicate that verbal dyspraxia is just one symptom among others in patients with galactosemia and mental retardation.

The idea of developmental dyspraxia has been discussed in the research literature for almost 100 years. However, there continues to be a lack of consensus regarding both the definition and description of this disorder. This paper presents a neuropsychologically based operational definition of developmental dyspraxia that emphasizes that developmental dyspraxia is a disorder of gesture. Research that has investigated the development of praxis is discussed. Further, different types of gestural disorders displayed by children and different mechanisms that underlie developmental dyspraxia are compared to and contrasted with adult acquired apraxia. The impact of perceptual-motor, language, and cognitive impairments on children's gestural development and the possible associations between these developmental disorders and developmental dyspraxia are also examined. Also, the relationship among limb, orofacial, and verbal dyspraxia is discussed. Finally, problems that exist in the neuropsychological assessment of developmental dyspraxia are discussed and recommendations concerning what should be included in such an assessment are presented.

This paper discusses the relationship between the dysarthrias and verbal dyspraxia in adults and children, and examines these conditions with reference to current theories and a model. The empirical basis for the study described here was the examination in depth of the speech of six subjects, each of whom presented with neurological disorders of different origins: two adults, chosen to exemplify the acquired conditions of dysarthria and dyspraxia, and four children. The speech analyses used profiling techniques of segmental phonological and prosodic assessment, and electropalatographic (EPG) examination, and the profiles thus obtained were compared between subjects and across client groups. The hypothesis was that in-depth analyses would provide distinguishing characteristics between the two neurological conditions, such that the children with suspected developmental verbal dyspraxia would demonstrate differences from those with developmental dysarthria, and clear similarities to the dyspraxic adult. The ...

This paper discusses the relationship between the dysarthrias and verbal dyspraxia in school-aged children. Using perceptual profiling and instrumental (electropalatographic) techniques, the speech of a small subject group was analysed in depth, in order to compare the two neurological conditions. The aim of the study was to provide distinguishing characteristics between the conditions. The rationale for the conclusion from the study is examined in relation to clinical implications.

Patients with classic galactosemia, an inborn error of metabolism, have speech and language production impairments. Past research primarily focused on speech (motor) problems, but these cannot solely explain the language impairments. Which specific deficits contribute to the impairments in language production is not yet known. Deficits in semantic and syntactic planning are plausible and require further investigation. In the present study, we examined syntactic encoding while patients and matched controls overtly described scenes of moving objects using either separate words (minimal syntactic planning) or sentences (sentence-level syntactic planning). The design of the paradigm also allowed tapping into local noun phrase- and more global sentence-level syntactic planning. Simultaneously, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs). The patients needed more time to prepare and finish the utterances and made more errors. The patient ERPs had a very similar morphology to that of healthy controls, indicating overall comparable neural processing. Most importantly, the ERPs diverged from those of controls in several functionally informative time windows, ranging from very early (90-150 ms post scene onset) to relatively late (1820-2020 ms post scene onset). These time windows can be associated with different linguistic encoding stages. The ERP results form the first neuroscientific evidence for language production impairments in patients with galactosemia in lexical and syntactic planning stages, i.e., prior to the linguistic output phase. These findings hence shed new light on the language impairments in this disease.

Speech/language disorders are common in the fragile X syndrome. [Howard-Peebles, 1979: Am J Hom Genet 31:214-222; Renier et al., 1983: J Ment Defic Res 27:51-59; Sparks, 1984: Birth Defects and Speech-Language Disorders, pp. 39-43; Hanson et al., 1986: Am J Med Genet 23:195-206]. Verbal paraphasias have been considered a rare feature and word-finding difficulties have seldom been reported. Here we report on ten Brazilian patients who were evaluated for speech/language disturbances and found that word-finding difficulties were present in 50% of the cases, which is a slightly higher frequency than that of clear dyspraxia. We suggest, therefore, that word-finding difficulties and verbal dyspraxia can be a common feature within the spectrum of this syndrome. Additional speech findings are discussed.

Developmental verbal dyspraxia is examined from four perspectives: clinical, phonetic, linguistic and cognitive. The paper critically discusses the problems encountered when criteria for identifying acquired speech disorders in the adult population are applied to children's speech difficulties without modifications. It is argued that studies of verbal dyspraxia in children have ignored the unfolding nature of this condition and that a developmental perspective has been lacking in the literature. A need for the inclusion of appropriate control groups and longitudinal case studies is identified. The issue and process of differential diagnosis are addressed and a checklist of criteria for identifying developmental verbal dyspraxia is included. It is noted that this process will inevitably be lengthy with data needed from different aspects of a child's development. Phonetic characteristics alone may not be sufficient to recognise this medical condition with its complex psycholinguistic and educational consequences.

The relationship between oral-stereognosis (O.S.) and the nature and severity of verbal dyspraxia was investigated in 16 post-C.V.A. dyspraxic patients. Scores for oral stereognosis were correlated with — (1) repetition of sounds and sentences in the Mayo Clinic Test of Verbal Dyspraxia (Darley, 1975); (2) words and phrases from Speech and Language Disturbances subtest of the Minnesota Test of Differential Diagnosis and Aphasia. In addition, subjects were assigned to one of four groups depending upon their presenting verbal symptoms, i.e., substitution; substitution and perseveration; substitution and initiation; and substitution, perseveration and initiation. Results indicated that O.S. scores correlated highly with the sounds and phrases subtests as well as with errors of substitution providing that the subject did not exhibit difficulties on initiation. Results were discussed in terms of the possible locus of brain lesion. Low scores on the O.S. test may indicate lesions to the post central kinesthetic...

It is our clinical experience that in a number of aphasics, a distinctive articulatory disorder is found in the absence of the observable paralysis or paresis of the speech musculature. The term “motor aphasia” or “Broca's aphasia” has generally been applied to designate this type of disorder.The studies in recent years, however, have disclosed that this kind of disorder, a disorder of programming and executing articulatory movements (verbal apraxia or apraxia of speech), can be distinguished from the disorder of symbolic processes, i. e. aphasia.In this paper, the characteristics of verbal apraxia were described as well as the methods of testing oral and verbal apraxias. The therapy methods of verbal apraxia were reviewed with a special emphasis on the works done by Luria, et al..It was suggested that verbal apraxia, though a clearly definable clinical entity, might not be a homogeneous disorder. More comprehensive investigation of the nature of this disorder will be necessary before we can set up more systematic therapeutic procedures.

The instrumental techniques of electropalatography and pneumotachography are used to examine details of tongue-palate contacts and VOT characteristics of three adult male subjects: two described as dysarthric and one as dyspraxic. A comparison is made between the subjects, and the results are compared with data from four normal speakers. The information is considered with reference to the neurological bases of these disorders of speech, and the advantages of an instrumental investigation over traditional auditory based assessments are exemplified. Some implications for therapy are also considered.

In 1861 Paul Broca described his patient “Tan” as having lost “the memory for the procedure one has to follow in order to articulate words”. This condition he called aphemia but subsequently it became known as Broca’s aphasia. Broca described a disorder in which the patient could understand spoken language, ideas were intact and he could recognize words and phrases which he could not pronounce nor repeat. Subsequent autopsy of Tan’s brain revealed a lesion in the area of the third convolution of the frontal left lobe (later designated Broca’s area). The features of this disorder parallel some of those associated with what later on became known as dyspraxia of speech or verbal dyspraxia. By annexing the word aphasia to Broca’s name a linguistic as against motoric connotation was apparent and this sparked off a volley of controversy which has been maintained with fervour ever since.