Motor Speech Disorders in Children and Adults

Individuals with motor speech disorders have problems saying sounds, syllables, and words. Muscle weakness or paralysis may or may not be present. The brain has problems planning to move the body parts (e.g., lips, jaw, tongue) needed for speech. The individual knows what he or she wants to say, but his/her brain has difficulty coordinating the muscle movements necessary to say those words.

What are some signs or symptoms of motor speech disorders? General things to look for include the following:

  • Does not coo or babble as an infant
  • First words are late, and they may be missing sounds
  • Only a few different consonant and vowel sounds
  • Problems combining sounds; may show long pauses between sounds
  • Simplifies words by replacing difficult sounds with easier ones or by deleting difficult sounds (although all children do this, the child with apraxia of speech does so more often)
  • May have problems eating early in life
  • Makes inconsistent sound errors that are not the result of immaturity
  • Can understand language much better than he or she can talk
  • Difficulty imitating speech
  • May appear to be groping when attempting to produce sounds or to ones
  • Appears to have more difficulty when he or she is anxious
  • Is hard to understand, especially for an unfamiliar listener
  • Sounds choppy, monotonous, or stresses the wrong syllable or word

Potential Other Problems

  • Delayed language development
  • Other expressive language problems like word order confusions and word recall
  • Difficulties with fine motor movement/coordination
  • Over sensitive (hypersensitive) or under sensitive (hyposensitive) in their mouths (e.g., may not like toothbrushing or crunchy foods, may not be able to identify an object in their mouth through touch)
  • Individuals with motor speech disorders may have problems when learning to read, spell, and write.

How are motor speech disorders diagnosed?

An audiologist should perform a hearing evaluation to rule out hearing loss as a possible cause of the speech difficulties.

A certified-SLP with knowledge and experience with motor speech disorders conducts an evaluation. This will assess the individual’s oral-motor abilities, melody of speech, and speech sound development. The SLP can diagnose motor speech disorders and rule out other speech disorders, unless only a limited speech sample can be obtained, making a firm diagnosis challenging.

What treatments are available for individuals with motor speech disorders?

The focus of intervention for motor speech disorders is on improving the planning, sequencing, and coordination of muscle movements for speech production. Isolated exercises designed to “strengthen” the oral muscles may be assigned if muscle weakness is present.

To improve speech, the individual must practice speech. However, getting feedback from a number of senses, such as tactile “touch” cues and visual cues (e.g., watching him/herself in the mirror) as well as auditory feedback, is often helpful. With this multi-sensory feedback, the individual can more readily repeat syllables, words, sentences and longer utterances to improve muscle coordination and sequencing for speech.

Some clients may be taught to use sign language or an augmentative and alternative communication system (e.g., a portable computer that writes and/or produces speech) if the motor speech disorder makes speaking very difficult. Once speech production is improved, the need for these systems may lessen, but they can be used to support speech or move the individual more quickly to higher levels of language complexity.

Practice at home is very important. Families will often be given assignments to help the individual progress and allow the individual to use new strategies outside of the treatment room, and to assure optimal progress in therapy.

One of the most important things for the family to remember is that treatment of motor speech disorders takes time and commitment. Individuals with motor speech disorders need a supportive environment that helps them feel successful with communication. For individuals who also receive other services, such as physical or occupational therapy, families and professionals need to schedule services in a way that does not make the individual too tired and unable to make the best use of therapy time.

What causes motor speech disorders?


Motor speech disorders may be congenital or acquired. There is something in the individual’s brain that is not allowing messages to get to the mouth muscles to produce speech correctly. In most cases in which the motor speech disorder is congenital, the cause is unknown – however, heredity has been shown to be a potential factor.

It is important to note that for many developmental speech disorders, children learn sounds in a typical order, just at a slower pace. In more severe cases, children do not follow typical patterns and will not make progress without treatment. There is no cure, but with appropriate, intensive intervention, significant progress can be made.

Strokes, brain injury and other neurologic disorders may be the cause of acquired motor speech disorders. The course of treatment for congenital and acquired motor speech disorders is often similar.