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Take this Test to Check Your Articulation

By: Alyssa Dillard, MS, CCC-SLP, CBIS

Many different conditions can cause speech impairments, including, but not limited to, a stroke, a traumatic brain injury (TBI), a brain tumor, a neurodegenerative illness such as Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis, or a congenital diagnosis such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy. However, the most common cause for motor speech impairment is a stroke.

Speech is affected by motor planning, or the brain’s ability to program the movements needed for speech to occur. Motor planning difficulties include apraxia, the inability to translate thoughts into intentions, or dysarthria, slow and slurred speech due to muscle weakness.

If any of the above impairments apply to you or a loved one, continue reading to test your speech. Grab a friend and see if they can help you with this assessment.

Time yourself saying “Ahh” for as long as you can without straining your voice.

A healthy adult female should be able to sustain this for 15-25 seconds, while a healthy adult male should be able to sustain this for 25-35 seconds. If your time is below the normal range, you may have an impairment with your breath support for your speech, meaning you’re not efficiently and effectively managing the breath from your lungs to produce voice.

2. Do about 20 repetitions of saying “puh,” “tuh,” and “kuh” as fast as you can. Afterward, put all of those sounds together to say “puh tuh kuh” about 10 times as fast as you can.

This should be challenging, but doable for most people. If this is very challenging for you, there could be a motor-planning impairment in your speech that makes it difficult to coordinate certain sounds. People with motor-planning impairments are likely to make errors with increased complexity of sounds such as words with multiple syllables, longer phrases or sentences, or repeating the same word with inconsistent errors during the production of each word.

3. Practice your favorite tongue twister, such as “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?”

Once again, this should be challenging, but doable for most people. Are you able to say this like you used to, or do you feel yourself stumbling over your words? If this is the case, it may be time to consult with a speech-language pathologist to fully assess your speech.

Consulting with a professional will help determine what is normal and what you can do to help compensate for any impairments.

To schedule a consultation with a speech-language pathologist at Sheltering Arms Institute, please call (804) 764–1000 or visit www.shelteringarmsinstitute.com/contact-us.

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