Articulation Patterns of Children who Developed Articulation Disorders Associated with Ankyloglossia

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: We investigated articulation patterns in children with ankyloglossia who developed articulation disorders in order to determine the relationship between ankyloglossia and articulation disorders, and to clinically detect children who have articulation disorders associated with ankyloglossia. METHODS: The participants of this study were 23 children with articulation disorders that accompanied ankyloglossia and 55 controls with functional articulation disorders independent of anatomical problems, who were admitted to our hospital from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2012. All children underwent speech-language pathologic evaluation using the Picture Consonant Articulation Test (PCAT; Young-Tae Kim, 1994). We retrospectively compared collected data between the subject and control groups using Fisher's exact test and odds ratio tests with a 95% confidential interval for categorical variables and the independent Mann-Whitney U-test for continuous variables. RESULTS: The number of patients with articulation errors in the velar nasal was lower significantly only in the subject group (P=0.038). The total numbers of articulation errors in the bilabial plosive, velar plosive and velar nasal also were lower (P=0.007, P<0.001, and P=0.034, respectively). There were no differences in the numbers of patients with articulation errors according to phonological changes between the two groups. However, the total numbers of fronting and frication were lower in the subject group (both P<0.001), but the total numbers of plosivation and tensing were higher (P=0.002 and P=0.008, respectively). CONCLUSION: This study showed that the relationship between an articulation disorder and ankyloglossia is doubtful, although some results suggest that ankyloglossia may cause articulation errors only in certain individuals. Therefore, clinicians should be careful when determining the relationship between ankyloglossia and articulation disorders and use caution when making a treatment decision.