Assessment of acquired apraxia of speech: pilot study with the CBO protocol

Acquired apraxia of speech is often a comorbidity that accompanies aphasia. In some cases, it may be difficult to distinguish whether speech errors are phonological (resulting from aphasia) or phonetic (resulting from apraxia of speech).To verify the capacity of the Costa, Brescancini, and Ortiz (CBO) protocol to identify acquired apraxia of speech in persons with aphasia (PWA) among Brazilian Portuguese speakers.This is a cross-sectional and prospective study that included the participation of 7 PWA and suspected apraxia of speech (PWAG) poststroke and 25 neurotypical individuals who formed the control group (CG). All participants were followed the tasks of the CBO protocol, such as spontaneous conversation, description of a thematic card, word repetition, and diadochokinesias (DKK).The protocol differentiated the groups in the spontaneous speech tasks (percentage of errors per word); word repetition list (time, punctuation, quantity, and type of manifestations); and DKK /ka/ and /pataka/. The results showed that the PWAG presented less fluent, slower speech, with more errors than the CG. Additionally, the protocol mapped the nature of the errors.The protocol enabled the identification of acquired apraxia of speech in PWA. It was also possible to analyze the tasks and linguistic variables that most interfered with the motor production of speech in Brazilian PWA.