Various Communication Impairment Definitions

Oral-Motor Apraxia: The inability to execute and sequence oral movements in the absence of paralysis or paresis

Verbal Apraxia:Impairment in the ability to execute the oral movements necessary to produce isolated phonemes or to combine oral movements at a basic level.

Severe Verbal Dyspraxia:Impairment of the ability to maintain the syntheseis or sequencing of phonemes and syllables in a simple context within a length of utterance of three or more words. Excessive deletions or replacements occur. Consonant repertoire is limited usually to the simple consonants. Length or complexity disintegrates the system.

Moderate Verbal Dyspraxia:Impairment of the ability to maintain the synthesis or sequencing of phonemes and syllables in context within a length of utterance of three or more words, whereby replacement errors predominate and phonological processes are more consistent. Deletions may still occur on certain sound classes.

Mild Verbal Dyspraxia:Impairment in the ability to maintain the synthesis and sequencing of phonemes and syllables within conversational speech with vulnerability of word length and/or complexity. Single words and short phrases may be error-free, however, intelligibility is compromised with increased oral-motor complexity. Most difficulties will exist on consonant blends and clusters as well as polysyllabic words. Many isolation errors without oral-structure cause will also fit into the category.

Articulatory Disorder:Errors on isolated phonemes only. No word simplifications.