What might lengthened and disrupted transitions between sounds indicate?

Lengthened and disrupted transitions between sounds are characteristic features of apraxia of speech. This condition involves difficulty in planning and coordinating the movements required for speech, leading to inconsistent articulatory errors. Individuals with apraxia may struggle to produce sounds in a fluid manner, resulting in abnormal pauses or hesitations between sounds. These disruptions indicate that the brain is having trouble sending the appropriate signals to the muscles used for speech, which causes the elongation of transitions as the speaker attempts to articulate words.

In contrast, dyslexia primarily relates to difficulties with reading and does not typically manifest in the physical process of producing speech sounds. Stuttering involves interruptions in the flow of speech that are often marked by repetitions or prolongations of sounds, syllables, or words, which differs from the difficulties seen in apraxia. Speech fluency broadly refers to the smoothness of speech, but it does not specifically address the sound transition issues that are indicative of apraxia. Therefore, the connection between lengthened and disrupted transitions between sounds makes apraxia of speech the most fitting diagnosis in this scenario.