A speech pathologist cannot prescribe one single medical test to identify the root cause of apraxia of speech. Hence, a concerned individual must undertake a group of tests that will again depend on the set of symptoms they are progressively developing.
Apart from evaluating the patient’s past medical records, the speech-language pathologist (SLP) will also examine other underlying conditions. These include examining the chances of the patient developing:
- Muscle weakness
- Hearing disorder
- Aphasia
Diagnostic procedures are bound to vary depending on the patient's age group. For instance, when a child visits the SLP, the delegated practitioner will follow these procedures:
- Evaluate how well the child can express his/her thoughts to others outside their family members.
- Assess how comfortably and precisely the child can spell out specific vowel and consonant sounds.
- Ask a child to repeat pronouncing a syllable multiple times to notice speech patterns.
- Ask the child to read out loud a pre-set list of long words.
- Assign hearing tests to see whether the child is suffering from active hearing deficits.
SLPs follow the below-listed set of procedures for adults who have suffered a brain injury to determine whether they may develop speech apraxia:
- Ask the patient whether they are facing problems while communicating in their known languages.
- Request the patient to pronounce a few syllables which they otherwise would find difficult to spell out if they had symptoms of the disease.
- Evaluate if there is any noticeable voice change by conducting tests and enquiring about the patient’s family members.
- Evaluate the patient’s knowledge-grabbing capacity.
- Look for signs of muscle weakness by examining the concerned individual’s jaw, tongue and lips.
As a greater part of the diagnostic process, the therapist may assign some nonverbal, writing and reading tasks to the person visiting them.