In AOS, sentence-level speech tends to be:

• A. Often more impaired due to higher motor planning demands
• B. Often easier than single-word production
• C. Unaffected by motor planning
• D. Structured purely by lexical retrieval

Answer: (A)

Longer speech units demand more complex motor planning and sequencing of articulatory movements, timing, and prosody. In apraxia of speech, the difficulty lies in planning and programming the movements for speech, not in pure language or muscle strength. Because sentence-level speech requires coordinating many sounds and transitions, errors, slow initiation, and groping tend to increase with utterance length. Single words are shorter and rely on smaller motor plans, so they’re often produced more accurately despite the planning problems seen with longer sequences. So sentence-level production is typically more impaired due to the greater motor planning demands.