New syndrome SPEEDY Babies Is this pure verbal apraxia/dyspraxia?!

[Guest guest]

We know pure verbal apraxia/dyspraxia is rare...they say this is around 1 to 2

percent of children. Also Tanner was very advanced in some of his motor skills

-and behind on some that should have been " easy " Some may have thought him to

be a " SPEEDY Baby " when he climbed to the top of the monkey bars and down at

3...but they could have missed him going up the stairs to the slide one foot one

foot. Interesting huh?!

SPEEDY Babies; A New Behavioral Syndrome

ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2009) — Children's speech and language disorders caused

by unknown factors are common. The disorders vary in type and manifest

themselves differently in different ages. Delayed motor development is widely

known to coexist with speech and language disorders. However, hardly any

attention has been paid to children in whom delayed speech development is

associated with learning to walk unassisted at an early stage.

Dr Marja-Leena Haapanen from the Phoniatric Division of the Helsinki University

Central Hospital has studied and described these children and observed a

recurrent pattern in their behavioural phenotype. The children were examined by

a multi-disciplinary research group over an extensive period in time.

Usually these children, known as SPEEDY babies, have good language comprehension

skills, but their speech is very unclear, although they may start speaking early

on and can be quite talkative. In some cases, the speech production is delayed,

the child speaks less, and the speech maybe unclear, especially when speaking

long sentences. What makes the child's speech unintelligible are words and

sentences that are produced incorrectly, but each time in a different way, in

addition to consistent sound distortion. Consistent sound distortions are

associated with tongue dysfunction and are manifest in sounds in which the tip

of the tongue is used.

SPEEDY babies develop motor skills early, and often start walking unassisted at

ten months. They are often avid runners, climbers and eager to jump and skip,

and all in all, are quite agile and physically active. They are usually in good

physical health, and do not typically suffer from respiratory infections, ear

infections or allergies. The intellectual skills structure is usually divided so

that their vision-based performance is above the average for their age group and

better than their linguistic performance.

According to Dr Haapanen, some one to two per cent of children are SPEEDY

babies. " The phenotype of these children combines three qualities: atypically

speedy motor development, unclear speech, and tongue carriage dysfunction, "

Haapanen says. " These characteristics seem to form a triad to the extent that we

can talk about a syndrome that has been named `SPEEDY baby'. "

The term SPEEDY refers to speed in the development of motor skills as well as

problems related to speech development (SPEE – speech and DY – developmental

verbal dyspraxia, dysphasia, tongue dysfunction).

Dr Haapanen points out that physical activeness and unclear speech may have

adverse psychosocial effects and overshadow these children's true skills.

" SPEEDY babies may not receive the recognition they deserve for their advanced

motor skills and activeness and intellectual performance, because these may be

overshadowed by their problems, which cause trouble and disappointments, "

Haapanen says. " It would be important to accurately identify this particular

syndrome in these children, so that their parents and other carers could receive

appropriate and timely information and the children could thereby have the

support they need. "

Journal reference:

1. Haapanen ML, Aro T and Isotalo E. SPEEDY babies: A putative new behavioral

syndrome of unbalanced motor-speech development. Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat., 2008

Dec; 4(6):1225-33

Adapted from materials provided by University of Helsinki, via AlphaGalileo.

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University of Helsinki (2009, April 23). SPEEDY Babies; A New Behavioral

Syndrome. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 23, 2009, from

http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2009/04/090423082752.htm

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