How to cut the pie is no piece of cake: Toward a process-oriented approach to assessment and diagnosis of speech sound disorders.

Background: 'Speech sound disorder' is an umbrella term that encompasses dysarthria, articulation disorders, childhood apraxia of speech and phonological disorders. However, differential diagnosis between these disorders is a persistent challenge in speech pathology, as many diagnostic procedures use symptom clusters instead of identifying an origin of breakdown in the speech and language system.

Aims: This article reviews typical and disordered speech through the lens of two well-developed models of production-one focused on phonological encoding and one focused on speech motor planning.

Acoustic and tongue kinematic vowel space in speakers with and without dysarthria.

Purpose: The purpose is to investigate acoustic and tongue body kinematic vowel dispersion patterns and vowel space in speakers with and without dysarthria secondary to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Method: Acoustic and tongue kinematic vowel spaces were examined at the same time sampling point using electromagnetic articulography in 11 speakers with dysarthria secondary to ALS and 11 speakers without dysarthria. Tongue kinematic data were collected from the tongue body sensor (∼25 mm posterior from the tongue apex).