Cerebral Palsy is the most common childhood motor disability. (Data and Statistics for Cerebral Palsy, n.d.) The average prevalence of CP across threes ties was 3.3 per 1000. The prevalence was significantly higher in boys than in girls. The most common subtype across all three sites was spastic …show more content…
Sullivan et al. (2000), found that 78% of children who have been diagnosed with CP have speech disorders, which caused delay in their speech development (BOOK). The primary speech impairment of CP patients is dysarthria, a neurologically based speech disorder which is the result of damage to the primary motor function area of the brain (frontal lobe). Dysarthria effects the patient’s speech muscles in speed, strength, steadiness, coordination, precision, tone, and range of motion. There are three categories of dysarthria found in CP patients: spastic, dyskinetic (athetosis) and ataxic dysarthria. Spastic dysarthria involves abnormalities in voluntary movement which include “spasticity, weakness, limited range of motion and slowness of movement”. Athetosis includes disordered regulation of breathing patterns as well as laryngeal dysfunction which results in speech which is monopitch, and a very weak, low and breathy sounding voice. It also causes articulatory dysfunction. Ataxic dysarthria is an oral motor impairment resulting in “imprecise consonants, irregular articulatory breakdown, distorted vowels, excess and equal stress, prolonged phonemes, slow rate, monopitch, monoloudness and harsh voice”. Since there a various degrees of motor dysfunction in CP patients, the extent of the speech