2. Difficulty Combining Sounds: The Challenge of Sequencing
Children with CAS often experience significant difficulties when trying to combine sounds. This challenge is rooted in their struggle with motor planning, the primary impairment in CAS.
While typical children gradually learn to combine sounds into syllables, words, and sentences, children with CAS may find this process extremely challenging. They may have difficulty forming consonant-vowel combinations, a crucial stepping stone in language development. Moreover, longer words or phrases can pose an even greater challenge due to the increased complexity of sound sequencing.
The struggles that these children face might become more evident as they attempt to progress from single-syllable utterances to multi-syllabic words and phrases. Their attempts at longer words may result in distorted sounds or syllables being left out entirely.
It’s important to understand that this difficulty in combining sounds stems from a coordination issue, not an inability to comprehend language. These children understand the language; they just struggle with the precise coordination of the muscles involved in speech. (2)
