What is Prosody of Speech in Apraxia Therapy

What is Prosody of Speech? And why do children with CAS have difficulty with Prosody?

Prosody is: 

The rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech.  

• Stress: the emphasis on a syllable.
• Rhythm: the timing of the stress of syllables in a sentence.
• Intonation:  the way the pitch of your voice goes up and down as you speak. 

Children with CAS often sound robotic, as the child puts equal stress on each syllable in the word.  Sometimes the child prolongs the sounds in the word or pauses too long between words. 

Intonation provides meaning to the word or sentence.  Rising intonation indicates a question while falling intonation indicates an answer.  

It can express mood, feelings and sarcasm.

Dr Strand “when you change the prosody, you change the specifications of the motor parameters”.  The motor program changes. This could mean more lip pressure, varying the jaw height, length of the vowel etc. Therefore, a child with CAS needs practice varying intonation while coordinating their motor programming skills.

As soon as the child can motor plan the movements and sounds in a word, we need to practice the word with varied intonation. 

Practice varied prosody at every level of the DTTC hierarchy.  Practice intonation patterns that are natural, such as whispering, loud, mad, sad and happy.  Click here to receive a printable chart with the DTTC hierarchy.

I also love to use repetitive books, that have stories with emotions, to work on prosody.  

I provided you a link to my Amazon storefront with my favorite books for working on prosody of speech.  You can also reserve the books at your local library or watch them on You Tube.

My Amazon Storefront

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