Which statement about severity in AOS is least accurate?

• A. It uses intelligibility to gauge severity.
• B. It considers error frequency.
• C. It considers functional impact.
• D. It relies solely on age of onset.

Answer: (D)

Severity in AOS is best judged by how clearly the person can be understood, how often errors occur, and how much the speech difficulty affects everyday communication. Intelligibility directly reflects the listener’s ability to understand the speech, so it’s a practical measure of how severe the impairment feels in real communication. Counting the frequency and types of errors provides a concrete sense of the disruption in speech planning and execution. Considering the functional impact ties the impairment to real-life goals and participation, showing how communication limits daily activities. Age of onset, while informative about when the problem began and potentially about prognosis or etiology, does not quantify how severe the speech impairment is, and two people with similar onset ages can have very different levels of severity.