05/20/2026
Behind the scenes at Bridge Therapy 💙
This Apraxia Awareness Month, we want to highlight our team collaborating to review and score the Dynamic Evaluation of Motor Speech Skills (DEMSS), created by Edythe Strand. The DEMSS is an important part of our toolbox for understanding motor speech planning in children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) or suspected apraxia, helping support differential diagnosis and measure progress over time.
The DEMSS requires speech, imitation and attentional skills and can be very challenging for some children! Some benefit from portions of the assessment that still provide valuable information about characteristics of apraxia, while others with more mild CAS may need more advanced tasks that further challenge the motor speech system with increasingly complex multisyllabic words and phrases.
One of the many strengths of the DEMSS is that it specifically examines characteristics of apraxia, including vowels, articulatory accuracy, consistency, and prosody across increasingly complex syllable shapes. It is also unique in that it allows the clinician to give the child feedback, seeing how they respond with support, which helps for treatment planning too.
Because speech therapy for childhood apraxia of speech is so different from other speech sound disorders, accurate identification is super important. We value teamwork, shared expertise, and the thoughtful care behind every evaluation and client we serve 🥰
Image Description: Graphic with a photo of two of our SLPs, Daniela and Stefanie, working together to analyze and score the DEMSS.
