Speech Sound Disorder - Causes

Causes

Most speech sound disorders occur without a known cause. A child may not learn how to produce sounds correctly or may not learn the rules of speech sounds on his or her own. These children may have a problem with speech development, which does not always mean that they will simply outgrow it by themselves. Many children do develop speech sounds over time but those who do not often need the services of a Speech-Language Pathologist to learn correct speech sounds.

Some speech sound errors can result from physical problems, such as:

• developmental disorders (e.g. autism)
• genetic syndromes (e.g. Down syndrome)
• hearing loss
• cleft palate or other physical anomalies of the mouth
• illness
• neurological disorders (e.g. cerebral palsy)