Cari Ebert – Assessing Minimally Verbal Children with Suspected Apraxia

When childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is suspected, ongoing assessment is critical to identify children who present with motor speech planning difficulties. Many of the young children speech-language pathologists (SLPs) evaluate, however, are minimally verbal, making standardized tests difficult to administer. The burden then falls on SLPs to use their informal assessment skills to determine which children present with characteristics consistent with speech motor planning deficits. This course provides an informal assessment guide for use with young children who are struggling learning to talk along with a discussion of later academic challenges often associated with CAS.

Learning Outcomes:
As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to:

1. Explain the rationale for using informal assessment with minimally verbal young children who are struggling learning to talk.

2. Summarize the atypical acquisition of prelinguistic milestones in young children with suspected childhood apraxia of speech.

3. Integrate informal assessment into the initial evaluation and ongoing diagnostic therapy sessions to assess the integrity of a young child’s motor speech planning system.

Timed Agenda

• Minutes 1-20 Overview of apraxia terms and concepts
• Minutes 21-30 Typical vs. atypical development of prelinguistic sounds
• Minutes 31-80 Characteristics of minimally verbal children with suspected CAS
• Minutes 81-90 Review of recent research by Overby & Caspari
• Minutes 91-109 Informal vs. formal assessment
• Minutes 110-120 Later academic difficulties and CAS

Meet the Speaker

Cari Ebert, MS, CCC-SLP is a pediatric speech-language pathologist in the Kansas City, Missouri area. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa in 1993 and her master’s degree from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 1995. Cari is a therapist, consultant, author, product developer, and nationally recognized speaker who gets paid to do what she loves most—TALK! She specializes in autism, apraxia, and early intervention. Cari’s son has dual diagnoses of autism and apraxia, allowing her to engage audiences both as a professional and as a parent of a neurodivergent child. In 2018, Cari co-authored a book with Dave Hammer titled, The SLP’s Guide to Treating Childhood Apraxia of Speech. In 2020, she published a book on autism titled, The Learning to Learn Program.

Speaker Disclosures:

Financial: Cari Ebert is co-author of the book, The SLP’s Guide to Treating Childhood Apraxia of Speech and she is the creator of a variety of speech therapy products including Cari’s Silly Sounds, Animal Vowels, Talking Letters, Apraxia FAQs, and Is It Apraxia or… which she references in her apraxia trainings. Cari receives royalties from all book and product sales. She also benefits financially from all sales of this self-study course.

Non-financial: Cari Ebert has a son with autism and apraxia and shares personal experiences in her seminars.

Curriculum

• Assessing Minimally Verbal Children with sCAS
• Use Policy
• Welcome and Course Information Video(8:35)
• Course Handouts
• Course Video(123:28)
• Acknowledgement
• Refer a friend
• Post-test
• Course Evaluation and ASHA CEU Form