Diagnostic Features of Childhood Apraxia of Speech: A Survey Study of Estonian, Finnish, and Lithuanian Speech-Language Pathologists

Abstract

Purpose: The primary aim of this study was to investigate how speech-language pathologists (SLPs) from Estonia, Finland, and Lithuania rate the significance of different features for diagnosing childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) in their languages. Method: An online survey was conducted among 197 Estonian, Finnish, and Lithuanian SLPs who have worked with children with CAS. The SLPs were asked to rate the significance of 63 features for CAS diagnosis in their respective language. Cross-linguistic patterns in diagnostic features were examined with simple correspondence analysis (SCA) and via descriptive statistics. Results: The ratings revealed six to seven diagnostic features that were considered very significant for CAS diagnosis by the majority of respondents in each country. The SCA highlighted differences between Lithuanian SLPs and Estonian and Finnish SLPs. Some possible language-specific associations were noted, such as palatalization errors for Lithuanian and Estonian and diphthong distortions for Estonian. The respondents from all countries rated highly those features that can easily be applied to most languages (e.g., groping) and gave lower ratings to features that may be influenced by the linguistic structure of different languages (e.g., word stress errors). Conclusions: Overall, SLPs provided high ratings to CAS features that occur universally across languages, whereas features specific to languages, such as prosody-related errors, were not as highly rated. Several language-specific features were highlighted, providing direction for future research and emphasizing the importance of language-specific considerations in CAS research and diagnosis.