If you’ve ever had difficulty figuring out if a child has CAS or dysarthria (or both), take heart. You’re not alone – and there’s a new (free!) tool that can help.

A new open access article reports that a staggering 60% of SLPs say they have “low or no” confidence in diagnosing dysarthria in children.

Adding further to the problem, CAS and dysarthria share many overlapping features, and children can have both of these motor speech disorders at the same time.

To help clinicians with this diagnostic challenge, the researchers drew on the existing literature to develop a checklist of auditory-perceptual features of both speech disorders. Some of the features are only seen in dysarthria, some only in CAS, and some in both.

You can download a free copy of the checklist in the article’s “supplemental material” section. The diagram below offers a visual summary of the features included in the checklist.

In addition to the checklist, the researchers offer a protocol describing how to use it in practice. They suggest observing a child over 3 different speaking tasks. A flowchart on page 2 of the download walks the clinician through the decision-making process.

Clinicians working with the Motor Speech Treatment Protocol may find it helpful to add this checklist to their usual repertoire of forms. It offers a supplement to the CAS checklist that is part of the Motor Speech Treatment Protocol and is included in The Speech & Stuttering Institute’s motor speech training course. This new checklist helps clinicians consider and identify not only CAS but also dysarthria.

Please check out the article for more detailed background information about differentiating CAS and dysarthria, for case study examples (including a video example) and for detailed instructions about using the checklist.

We are grateful to the authors for creating this clinically useful tool to help us all better serve the children in our care!

Full reference for article: Iuzzini-Seigel, J.; Allison, K.; & Stoeckel, R. (2022). A Tool for Differential Diagnosis of Childhood Apraxia of Speech and Dysarthria in Children: A Tutorial. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_LSHSS-21-00164