Timing errors in two children with suspected childhood apraxia of speech (sCAS) during speech and music-related tasks

Impaired speech prosody has been identified as a critical feature of suspected childhood apraxia of speech (sCAS). Lexical stress productions of children with sCAS have been characterized as 'excessive/equal/misplaced'. This investigation examines two potential explanations of this particular deficit, articulatory difficulty and impaired intrinsic timing. Two children with a diagnosis of sCAS (ages 4 years, 3 months and 9 years, 5 months) and two age-matched controls were observed during three speech and three music tasks. Acoustic analysis revealed that in all tasks, the performance of the controls was more accurate than that of the children with sCAS. Timing structures and accuracy are discussed with respect to diagnostic status, age, speech and music tasks, and timing unit size.