MISARTICULATION

WHAT IS ARTICULATION?

Articulation is the process of modifying air coming from vocal folds by the help of different articulators like tongue, teeth, jaw, lips and palate to form sound, syllables or words. On the other hand, misarticulation is a problem where a person may not be able to modify his/her articulators which makes sound unintelligible or distorted in such a way that listeners find it difficult to comprehend.

IS BABY TALK AND MISARTICULATION SAME?

The simple answer is “NO”. Baby talk is called a “Phonological processes’ , which are sound errors made by children during development due to inability to coordinate the articulators to produce a sound correctly. This can be seen during the initial 7 years of life and later normalizes.

Whereas, misarticulation consists of errors which can be present later in life which is characterized by distortion, omission, substitution or addition of phonemes deteriorating quality of speech.

WHAT COULD CAUSE MISARTICULATION?

In absence of any physical deformity it could simply be faulty learning

CAN ACCENT CAUSE MISARTICULATION?

Yes, people unfamiliar with certain languages or accents can cause difficulty in property sound production but it can be corrected with help of a Speech Language Pathologist.

WHO CAN HELP WITH MISARTICULATION?

Our Speech Language Pathologists are professionally trained to evaluate and provide help to both children and adults with articulation problems.

Getting help early, especially for children with severe misarticulation problems, is very vital.

HOW DOES THERAPY HELP?

The prognosis can depend on various factors like the amount of therapy sessions, severity of problem, cause, age of intervention, response from the patient and family, overall support etc.

The speech language pathologist works with the child or adult using unique techniques and approaches thus maximizing the quality of speech production by minimizing errors. Immersing a child early for a speech therapy program facilitates proper and correct learning which in turn helps with issues with regard to misarticulation. Therapy also includes counselling and techniques for adults and caregivers which help generalize therapeutic strategies thus building the client’s self confidence further enabling an ease of conversation with others