Aphasia, Apraxia, Dysarthria and cognitive/communication impairment may occur following a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or can occur due to other neurological illnesses.

Aphasia: A person may experience difficulty understanding others (receptive language impairment) or difficulty expressing themselves (expressive language impairment.) There may be experiences with difficulty “getting the word out” or having the word “on the tip of the tongue” (word finding impairment). People may encounter difficulty reading and understanding printed material or have difficulty writing their name, letters, numbers.

Dysarthria: People with dysarthria experience “slurred” or “mumbled” speech due to limited lip, tongue and jaw movement. There may be changes in pitch, or vocal quality (there may be hoarseness or breathiness).

Apraxia: People with apraxia know what they want to say but have difficulty with the complex neurological coordination of the muscle movements required to say individual speech sounds. People with apraxia have difficulty producing and imitating speech sounds. The errors can include sound distortions, omissions, and substitutions and the error patterns are inconsistent.