CREDIT:
Earn 3 contact hours (0.3 CEUs)
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a challenging disorder to assess and treat which is exacerbated when the child is very young or severe. Typical infant-toddler speech development (including speakers of other languages) will be contrasted with the early features of suspected CAS and how this compares to childhood dysarthria and other types of speech sound disorders (SSDs). Assessment measures, video case studies, treatment strategies will be included.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- Determine how babble/early words could suggest a possible diagnosis of Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)
- Select a measure that could be used to assess a possible diagnosis of CAS in young children
- Choose an early treatment strategy for suspected CAS
- Determine strategies for supporting families with young children with suspected CAS
AUDIENCE:
Therapists working with the birth to three population.
SCHEDULE:
- Babble and early words
- Babble stages
- Characteristics of early words
- Differences by language
- Underlying basis for Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)
- Known genetic bases for CAS
- Features of CAS
- Primary distinctive features
- Concurrent features
- Diagnostic challenges
- Measures
- Overlaps with other speech sound disorders (non-distinctive features)
- Differentiation of CAS vs. childhood dysarthria
- Assessment of infants and toddlers
- Early red flags for CAS
- Measures
- Overlaps with other disorders
- Case study: Assessment
- CAS Treatment: What do we know?
- Overview of findings with older children
- Implications for infants and toddlers
- Studies with infants and toddlers
- Case study: Treatment
- Family impacts
- Partnering with families to maximize engagement and mental health as well as outcomes
- Empowering caregivers to be advocates when it is time to transition into school
- Post-test
Shelley L. Velleman has a Linguistics doctorate in Child Phonology and a masters degree in Speech-Language Pathology. She taught Communication Sciences and Disorders at the undergraduate and graduate level from 1984 - 2023. She also held full-time clinical hospital positions in pediatric speech-language pathology for six years. Dr. Velleman is currently Professor Emerita of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Vermont. Her teaching, research, and clinical work focus on typical and atypical speech development. She has researched prelinguistic vocalizations, early words, and the early speech development of children learning a variety of languages and dialects.
She currently specializes in pediatric motor speech disorders, especially childhood apraxia of speech, including the speech of children with neurodevelopmental syndromes, most notably duplication 7q11.23 syndrome and Williams syndrome, as well as autism and Down syndrome. She has authored many articles and book chapters and three books on these topics. She has presented peer-reviewed papers at scientific conferences and invited clinical workshops around the United States and the world.
Dr. Velleman is an ASHA Fellow and a Distinguished Scholar and Fellow of the National Academies of Practice. She has been a member of the Apraxia-Kids Professional Advisory Council since 2000. Dr. Velleman has mentored more than 20 doctoral students since 2000, including serving as an external examiner on doctoral committees outside her own institution, as distant as Australia and Hong Kong.
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