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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to evaluate a global deficit in sequential processing as candidate endophenotypein a family with familial childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Of 10 adults and 13 children in a three-generational family with speech sound disorder (SSD) consistent with CAS, 3 adults and 6 children had past or present SSD diagnoses. Two preschoolers with unremediated CAS showed a high number of sequencing errors during single-word production. Performance on tasks with high sequential processing loads differentiated between the affected and unaffected family members, whereas there were no group differences in tasks with low processing loads. Adults with a history of SSD produced more sequencing errors during nonword and multisyllabic real word imitation, compared to those without such a history. Results are consistent with a global deficit in sequential processing that influences speech development as well as cognitive and linguistic processing.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the families whose participation made this study possible. Many thanks to the following undergraduate and graduate students for their assistance with the data collection and analyses: Alice Cho, Erica Gonzales, Mariya Legesse, Jonathan Mahaffie, Kyle Middleton, Elaine Nguyen, David Ramm, Kate Sailor and Nancy Yuan. Many thanks to Elias Peter for technical assistance.
Declaration of Interest: The authors gratefully acknowledge the following funding sources: American Speech–Language–Hearing Foundation New Century Scholars Research Grant (B. Peter), NIDCD T32DC00033 (B. Peter), NIDCD 1R03DC010886 (B. Peter), and R01HD054562 (W. H. Raskind). The authors report no conflict of interest.