When we diagnose it, we rule out issues that are more related to language, and we also have to rule out that the adult or child doesn't have a problem with muscle weakness, or anything that affects the way they make sounds. We are looking at this disorder as an issue of articulatory programming, or a timing problem. Although different people will look at it different ways, I think of this disorder as a motor programming disorder. Depending on what your readers may read, the treatment from my perspective that is having the most success is the motor programming underlying timing approach. What happens in the speech of people who have apraxia of speech is that their sound production is often distorted in some way.
Sounds can be too long, for example, or substituted, added or repeated.
The disorder also can have an affect on the rate of the person's speech, the way in which sounds are made in the throat, and resonance of the sounds. And all of this, I think, is due to a mistiming, and that takes us back to the neurological motor programming. When you look at the errors of apraxia of speech, there are certain places, certain specific sounds that are more affected than others. Sounds more towards the back of the mouth are often more in error. Sounds that are grouped, like K and L together, are harder than consonances singly.