Frequency Following Responses in childhood apraxia of speech

Abstract

Objective: to compare the Frequency Following Responses of children with childhood apraxia of speech with typical development children.

Method: this is an observational cross-sectional analytical study approved by Human Research Ethics Committee. Thirty normal hearing children have participated in the study.

They were divided into two groups: 1) study group - composed by 15 children diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech (between the chronological ages of 3 and 11 years, mean age of 5,7 years); and 2) control group: composed by 15 children with typical development, paired by age and gender with study group. Frequency Following Response were recorded using the/da/syllable presentation rate at 10.9 ms.

Results: there was a significant delay in latencies of waves V, A and C of children with apraxia of speech, suggesting difficulties in the ability to process sounds.

Conclusion: The delay on Frequency Following Response's latencies (waves V, A and C) in children with apraxia of speech maybe related to atypical neural coding of speech sounds, suggesting that apraxia of speech must not be purely considered as a motor speech disorder.

Keywords: Apraxia; Frequency following response; Speech discrimination; Speech-evoked auditory brainstem response.