Keywords

Acquired apraxia of speech, traumatic brain injury, fluency, cognitive effort

Abstract

This study was intended to document speech recovery for 1 person with acquired apraxia of speech quantitatively and on the basis of her lived experience. The second author sustained a traumatic brain injury that resulted in acquired apraxia of speech. Over a 2-year period, she documented her recovery through 22 video-recorded monologues. We analyzed these monologues using a combination of auditory perceptual, acoustic, and qualitative methods. Recovery was evident for all quantitative variables examined. For speech sound production, the recovery was most prominent during the first 3 months, but slower improvement was evident for many months. Measures of speaking rate, fluency, and prosody changed more gradually throughout the entire period. A qualitative analysis of topics addressed in the monologues was consistent with the quantitative speech recovery and indicated a subjective dynamic relationship between accuracy and rate, an observation that several factors made speech sound production variable, and a persisting need for cognitive effort while speaking. Speech features improved over an extended time, but the recovery trajectories differed, indicating dynamic reorganization of the underlying speech production system. The relationship among speech dimensions should be examined in other cases and in population samples. The combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis methods offers advantages for understanding clinically relevant aspects of recovery.

Original Publication Citation

Haley, K. L., Shafer, J., Harmon, T. G., Jacks, A. (2016). Recovering with acquired apraxia of speech: The first two years. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 25(4S), S687-S696. https://doi.org/10.1044/2016_AJSLP-15-0143

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2016

Publisher

American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology

Language

English

College

David O. McKay School of Education

Department

Communication Disorders

University Standing at Time of Publication

Assistant Professor

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