Articulation

The physical production of speech sounds through coordinated movement of the articulators—tongue, lips, teeth, palate, jaw, and respiratory system. Articulation disorders occur when a person has difficulty producing specific speech sounds correctly, which may involve substitutions (saying "wabbit" for "rabbit"), omissions (saying "ca" for "cat"), distortions, or additions. Articulation-based therapy focuses on teaching correct movement patterns of the articulators to produce speech sounds, often progressing from isolated sounds to syllables, words, phrases, and conversational speech. Digital tools for articulation therapy may provide visual feedback showing correct articulator positioning or use automatic speech recognition to evaluate productions.