Please contact Florida Speech if you would like further information about articulation treatment, or to schedule an articulation screening and/or evaluation.

Articulation Treatment:

• In simplest terms, articulation is the way we produce speech sounds. We use all of our articulators to produce meaningful speech sounds, including our lips, teeth, tongue, vocal tract, vocal folds, lower jaw, soft palate, cheeks, and uvula. It is in the way, or patterns, that we produce these sounds in order to produce meaningful words.
• Articulation disorders can be caused by many factors. Some causes may be organic in nature, such as dental problems, hearing deficits, a cleft palate or cleft lip, a motor programming problem in which the directions for oral movement from the brain are not efficiently or correctly carried out by the articulators. Others may be functional in nature, such as general delay in developmental speech sound production.
• Some common articulation errors include:

• Sound substitutions: this occurs when one speech sound in a word is replaced, or substituted, by another spe ech sound (i.e.: "wed" for "red").
• Sound omissions: this occurs when one speech sound is deleted, or omitted, from a word and not replaced with another speech sound (i.e.: "say" for "stay").
• Sound distortions: this occurs when a speech sound is produced incorrectly, but still able to be understood by listeners as the intended sound; the sound may sound "slushy" (i.e.: "soap" may sound like "shoap").
• Sound additions: this occurs when speech sounds are added to words (i.e.: "animamal" for "animal").

• Treatment of articulation disorders is dependant upon several factors, such as the individuals age, types of errors produced, the severity of the problem, and whether the problem is due to organic or functional causes. Each articulation treatment plan is individualized, and specifically tailored to suit each client's most functional needs.

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