Narrative Retellings of Children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech: Morphosyntax, Socio-Cognitive Abilities and the Effect of Prosody

Abstract

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a disorder which affects not only speech-motor planning but also language ability more broadly. The present study attempts to explore the morphosyntactic, socio-cognitive, and prosody comprehension skills of children with CAS. Twenty preschool children with CAS and 20 typically developing children listened to a story, while viewing a wordless PowerPoint, picture presentation on a computer screen. Then, they were instructed to retell the story. Each participant listened to two stories, one with “lively” and one with “flat” prosody. The results revealed poor socio-cognitive abilities which were also evident in the use of verb-complement clauses, and poor prosody comprehension skills in the group with CAS. These findings affirm that morphosyntactic deficits are not the core characteristic of CAS, and suggest a connection between the production and comprehension of prosody, and between prosodic and (socio)-cognitive skills.