Author Description

When a young child has a severe speech sound disorder--especially one severe enough to affect the child's intelligibility--it's critical to determine the degree to which motor speech impairment contributes to the disorder. Now there's a psychometrically well-supported tool that helps speech-language pathologists do just that. Dynamic Evaluation of Motor Speech Skill (DEMSS) is a criterion-referenced assessment designed to help with differential diagnosis of speech sound disorders in children with severely impaired speech production. Developed by one of the leading experts on childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and an expert on test development, this tool is an efficient way to assess children who have significant speech impairment, especially reduced phonemic and/or phonetic inventories, vowel or prosodic errors, poor speech intelligibility, and/or little to no verbal communication. USE DEMSS TO Diagnose severe speech sound disorders in children 3 and older Facilitate, confirm, or rule out a diagnosis of CAS Estimate the severity of a child's disorder and what their prognosis might be Inform the development of treatment goals Make decisions about the most effective methods of cueing during treatment How It Works DEMSS is a dynamic assessment administered by SLPs in a clinical setting, usually in about 30 minutes or less. The child is tested on production of 60 utterances, divided into eight grouped sets according to syllable structure. For each item on the DEMSS, the SLP provides a verbal model, asks the child for a direct imitation, and follows up with more cues and supports if the child's first attempt is incorrect. Scoring takes into account overall accuracy in producing the word, vowel accuracy, consistency of production, and accuracy of prosodic features of the word. After administering DEMSS and determining results, SLPs can schedule a follow-up meeting with the child's par