Abstract: There are no “typical” manifestations of symptoms when it comes to cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a non-progressive motor disorder caused by congenital or acquired brain damage. It is difficult to say with any certainty what kind of struggles a child with CP will have. This is due to the great variability of how CP manifests. Cerebral palsy symptoms can range in severity and impact any number bodily processes and systems. The effect of CP on speech subsystems is no different, and varies widely due to where the brain injury occurred and the severity of the damage. Due to the diverse nature of cerebral palsy, the purpose of this paper is to shed light on the etiology of CP and the range of general features a child can have, and
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For the sake of brevity, I will touch only on the three main motor types of cerebral palsy, which are spastic, dyskinetic, and ataxic. Spastic CP is caused by damage to upper motor neurons, which results in excessive muscle tone and interruption of voluntary movements. Dyskinetic CP is characterized by variable involuntary movements such as muscular jerks and twitches and is caused by damaged to the basal ganglia. Ataxic CP is the least common type and is characterized by disordered involuntary movement due to damage in the cerebellum. Often these major types of CP are coupled with a characteristic type of dysarthria by the same name (A. Nordberg et. al 2011) Dysarthria is a neuromuscular impairment that results in muscular weakness which affects speech. Not all children who have CP will have dysarthria, but many do, as dysarthria is commonly associated with cerebral palsy. Spastic CP is the most common type of CP and thus it follows that spastic dysarthria is the most commonly seen speech disorder found in children with CP. Thus, it is the speech disorder I will focus on when discussing the implications of CP on …show more content…
For example, a young child with upper body muscle spasticity may have trouble with toy manipulation for tests measuring receptive language. Assessing speech can be equally problematic due to motor or sensory imparements that require a child to interact with a test in a specific way. In a UK survey regarding assessment and treatment for individuals with CP, this led to SLP’s modifying standardized tests, such as enlarging pictures or cutting up response sheets in order to help children complete the task. (Watson and Pennington 2015) Changing the mode of presentation of a standardized test invalidates the test, but may still be useful to compare the skills of a child with cerebral palsy to their normally developing peers “if the responses are motorically and cognitively simple.” (pg. 250) Therefore, there is still much work to be done in regards to formal speech assessments for children with CP. As a result of the complications that can arise with formal assessments, a clinician may want to use more informal assessment tools such as parent reports or observing parent child interactions. This can give an SLP the data needed to measure Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) and calculate number of different words used (NDW) and/or number of correct words (NTW) (Hustad et. al 2014) as well as intelligibililty of the
For the sake of brevity, I will touch only on the three main motor types of cerebral palsy, which are spastic, dyskinetic, and ataxic. Spastic CP is caused by damage to upper motor neurons, which results in excessive muscle tone and interruption of voluntary movements. Dyskinetic CP is characterized by variable involuntary movements such as muscular jerks and twitches and is caused by damaged to the basal ganglia. Ataxic CP is the least common type and is characterized by disordered involuntary movement due to damage in the cerebellum. Often these major types of CP are coupled with a characteristic type of dysarthria by the same name (A. Nordberg et. al 2011) Dysarthria is a neuromuscular impairment that results in muscular weakness which affects speech. Not all children who have CP will have dysarthria, but many do, as dysarthria is commonly associated with cerebral palsy. Spastic CP is the most common type of CP and thus it follows that spastic dysarthria is the most commonly seen speech disorder found in children with CP. Thus, it is the speech disorder I will focus on when discussing the implications of CP on …show more content…
For example, a young child with upper body muscle spasticity may have trouble with toy manipulation for tests measuring receptive language. Assessing speech can be equally problematic due to motor or sensory imparements that require a child to interact with a test in a specific way. In a UK survey regarding assessment and treatment for individuals with CP, this led to SLP’s modifying standardized tests, such as enlarging pictures or cutting up response sheets in order to help children complete the task. (Watson and Pennington 2015) Changing the mode of presentation of a standardized test invalidates the test, but may still be useful to compare the skills of a child with cerebral palsy to their normally developing peers “if the responses are motorically and cognitively simple.” (pg. 250) Therefore, there is still much work to be done in regards to formal speech assessments for children with CP. As a result of the complications that can arise with formal assessments, a clinician may want to use more informal assessment tools such as parent reports or observing parent child interactions. This can give an SLP the data needed to measure Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) and calculate number of different words used (NDW) and/or number of correct words (NTW) (Hustad et. al 2014) as well as intelligibililty of the