Verbal Apraxia and Its Rehabilitation

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.