 longer processing times are common for autistic people. But did you know that many of us have a defined difference in the way that we communicate? A proxy of speech or AOS is expressed as a trouble saying what you want to say correctly and consistently. It's all down to the way that we process plan out speech patterns and coordinate our mouths to produce it. Today we're going to be talking about speech apraxia which is something that's been making its rounds for the autistic community as something that's really come about from some research that they did with some children. They found that a large proportion of autistic children that they taught or they looked at or they studied had some kind of speech apraxia. And going off the fact that a lot of autistic people, a lot of autistic children grow up to be autistic adults, it makes sense that some of us will have some apraxia for the rest of our lives or at least for a large proportion of our life. So you may be thinking, what the absolute hell is speech apraxia? Why are you talking about this? Why is it interesting? It is actually a really, really cool concept because it really explains a lot of the ways that I fumble up when communicating with other people or actually some of the difficulties that I have sometimes with trying to say certain words and then not being able to say them again or saying stuff and then highlighting the bits that I'm not supposed to say with my voice. Basically, the way that it expresses in a lot of people is inconsistencies in error. Oh my God. See, there we go. Inconsistent errors in speech. You may say a complex word right once and then you try to replicate it again and you really struggle. You might want to say discombobulation but then discombobulation, you know. That kind of experience, that's what it sounds like. It can also be groping for sounds and now that might sound a little bit spicy, a little bit near as spicy, but it basically means that you might say something multiple times before saying it right. Another example of it would be to do with prosody. I don't know if I'm saying prosody right but it's basically the rhythm and inflections that you use to emphasize the meaning in what you're saying. You might say that I want to emphasize the meaning in my speech because I want you to make sure that the emphasizing is very, very strong. So that's the kind of the core message that I'm trying to speak, trying to say. But if I say the rhythm or inflections that emphasize the meaning of speech are very important although I'm saying the same words, well I didn't say the same words but the meaning of it changes because I'm highlighting a certain word. That's the kind of experience that I have quite a lot. So things like atypical expressions of rhythm, tone and stress. Speech rhythm is the arrangement of spoken words alternating stressed and non-stressed elements. Rhythm might be someone was going to the shops and then I got on the bus and then I went home and I found my wife in bed with another man. Yeah, so you could say that. So that's kind of a good example of rhythm but you might say, so I got home and then I went on the bus and then I sort of, well I took a little bit of a detour and then I came back and then I found my wife in bed with another man. You know, it doesn't really have the same sort of impact when you say it because you don't really have that rhythm to it. It could also be something like tone. Tone of voice is a non-verbal aspect of speaking. Tone is intonation or is sometimes called an inflection. You know, like the inflections at the end of your speech to signal that you're asking a question. In phonics, stress is the degree of emphasis given to a sound or syllable in speech. Rhythm or inflections is meant to emphasize the meaning of speech rather than rhythm or inflections that emphasize the meaning in speech. I gave the example on my Instagram. I tried my best to try and give a good example but it's really hard to do it when you're not actually speaking. So I gave people a statement like, the car is red as sort of an example of what you might say in order to sort of emphasize what you're trying to get across. But for me, it could turn into the car is of a red color and it's a car that is red. Yes, that's the example that I gave. It's a little bit of an exaggeration but I felt like I had to exaggerate it because trying to express the way that you say things with words other than using a really complex way of sort of setting things out and using punctuation and not even then, like people may not understand. So it's easier for me to explain it with my actual voice. So I guess why I want to ask you is, have you ever experienced, see, happened again, ever, ever, ever experienced speech apraxia? Is it something that you weren't aware of? Aware, oh my God. Ah, is it something that you weren't aware of before coming across this video or you've recently come across it and you've started to kind of look back on things that you say or, you know, whenever you have a conversation with somebody and you slip up and you think, oh, my brain must be off. And I was like, no, it's probably some form of speech apraxia which I guess is similar but it's a very interesting concept and it definitely opened my eyes to the way that I communicate with people and some of the things that, you know, as autistic people with speech apraxia may differ in terms of our communication ability, in terms of our speech socializing. So I hope you have very much enjoyed this. Remember to like your subbie, follow the podcast, lots of cool episodes coming out in season two. There's a few already. Follow the Instagrams, they'll be either side of there. It's probably here, no? Is it there, Tom? Who knows? Anyway, I hope you're doing well and I'll see you in another episode of the Thomas Henley channel. Thomas Henley channel. Oh, my God. Welcome back to the Thomas Henley channel. It's really weird. I usually say the name of my channel but my name is Thomas Henley. So it's, I'm saying my name. I'll have to get back to you on that one. Take care.