Accent Reduction: A systematic approach to reducing or eliminating either a regional or foreign accent. This involves changing sound pronunciation (vowels and consonants), parameters of intonation and stress, and rhythm of speech.

Aphasia:  A communication disorder characterized by complete or partial impairment of language comprehension, formulation and use. It is often the result of stroke, but may also be caused by brain tumors, traumatic brain injury and gunshot wounds.

Apraxia:  Apraxia is a motor disorder in which voluntary movement is impaired without muscle weakness. Apraxia of speech is an impairment in the sequencing of speech sounds. Errors are unpredictable, and "groping" for the right sounds/words may be observed. It may be acquired or developmental (childhood apraxia of speech). Acquired apraxia may result from stroke, head injury, brain tumors, toxins or infections. Developmental apraxia is present at birth. Unlike acquired apraxia, there are no specific lesion sites in the brain. Speech may be delayed and feeding problems are sometimes present.

Articulation Disorder:  Mispronunciation of speech sounds characterized by sound omissions, substitutions, distortions and additions.

Auditory Processing Disorder:  Auditory processing refers to the brain's recognition and interpretation of both speech and non-speech sounds. An auditory processing disorder occurs when something adversely affects the processing or interpretation of information. Children with APD may have difficulty in the following areas: Attention, following directions, listening, processing information, academic performance, behavior, syntax, vocabulary, reading, writing and spelling. The cause is often unknown, however APD may be associated with dyslexia, attention deficit disorder (ADD), autistic spectrum disorders, specific language impairment (SLI) or developmental delay.

Dysarthria:  Imprecise, slow and distorted speech resulting from paralysis, weakness, spasticity or incoordination of the speech musculature. Causes may include stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain tumor, Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS).

Expressive Language Delay:  Difficulty with verbal expression. Symptoms can include word finding difficulties (anomia), misnaming items (dysnomia), deficits in syntax (word order), semantics (word meaning) and morphology (changes in verb tense), problems in retelling a story or relaying information and inability to start or hold a conversation. An expressive disorder may be delayed (pattern of development is slow, but normal) or disordered (language is slow to develop and sequence of development/pattern of errors is atypical).

Oral Motor Difficulties:  Problems with chewing, sucking, blowing or making certain speech sounds. Signs and symptoms may include low muscle tone in the face, open mouth posture, drooling, oral hyper- or hypo- sensitivity, unclear speech sounds and feeding difficulties.

Orofacial Myofunctional Disorder:  Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders (OMDs) involve behaviors and patterns created by inappropriate muscle function and incorrect habits involving the tongue, lips, jaw and face. These may include tongue thrust (thrusting the tongue against or between the teeth during swallowing or at rest), thumb, finger, lip and tongue sucking habits, inappropriate tongue resting posture and open-mouth/lips apart resting posture.  OMDs may negatively impact dental eruption patterns, alignment of the teeth and jaws and functioning of the temporomandibular joint. Speech problems, including an interdental lisp may also develop.

Phonological Delay:  Phonology is the science of speech sounds and speech patterns. It is a rule-based system. A phonological delay occurs when a child has not learned the rules for combining sounds in words and creates their own. This affects classes of sounds rather than individual sounds. For example, a child may voice all voiceless consonants (e.g. "p, t, k" are pronounced as "b, d, g") or produce "back" sounds in the front of the mouth (e.g. "tup" for "cup", "tat" for "cat"). Phonological disorders may significantly impede speech intelligibility and can place children at risk for future reading and learning disabilities.

Receptive Language Delay:  Difficulty understanding language. Symptoms may include difficulty following directions, decreased comprehension of "yes/no" and "wh" questions, limited vocabulary, poor understanding of grammatical markers (e.g. verb tenses, possessives) and syntax and difficulty attending to spoken language.

Somatic:  "Of the body." Somatic disciplines focus on unity of mind and body to improve overall function. CranioSacral Therapy, Polarity Therapy, Feldenkrais method and Alexander Technique are some examples of somatic techniques.

Stuttering:  A speech disorder marked by disruptions in the normal flow of speech. These disruptions (also referred to as dysfluencies), often include repetition or prolongation of speech sounds, syllables or words, use of fillers ("um", "like") and laryngeal blocks (difficulty initiating sound). Stuttering events may be accompanied by secondary physical behaviors including eye blinks, nasal flaring, tremors of the lips and/or jaw and tension in the head, neck and shoulders. Stuttering generally begins in childhood, and its exact cause remains unknown.

Voice Disorder:  Any deviation in pitch, intensity, resonance or quality that renders a person's voice "abnormal" to the listener. A voice disorder may be secondary to a number of underlying causes including overuse, neurologic disorders, trauma, surgery, cancer, viral and bacterial conditions and psychological difficulties.