Motor speech skills in children with Down syndrome: A descriptive study.

PURPOSE: Motor speech characteristics of children with Down syndrome (DS) have historically been viewed as either Childhood Dysarthria (CD) or, more infrequently, as Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). The objective of this study was to investigate motor speech deficits in a systematic manner, considering characteristics from both CAS and CD. METHOD: Motor speech assessments were carried out on seven 3;4-8;11-year old children with DS in comparison with younger, typically-developing children using a Language-Neutral Assessment of Motor Speech for young children (LAMS). Additionally, the motor speech and non-speech oral motor skills of all participants were analysed qualitatively using an investigator checklist of characteristics of CAS, CD and Motor Speech Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (MSD-NOS). RESULT: Results indicated that the children with DS exhibited symptoms of CAS, CD and MSD-NOS, with variability within the group and overlapping symptoms of the disorder types. This finding is different from previous assumptions that children with DS have either CD or CAS. CONCLUSION: The motor speech disorder accompanying DS is complex. The data provide some preliminary descriptions of motor speech disorders in this population and some tools that clinicians would find useful when assessing motor speech skills of young children with DS.

Phonological processes in Kannada-speaking adolescents with Down syndrome.

Phonological process analysis was carried out using a 40-word imitation task with 30 11;6-14;6 year old Kannada-speaking persons with Down syndrome in comparison with 15 non-verbal mental age matched typically developing children. Percentages of occurrence were significantly higher for the Down syndrome group with certain exceptions. Some phonological processes were observed only in the Down syndrome group. Kannada is a non-Indo European language spoken in the southern Indian state of Karnataka that has not had much research attention, especially with respect to persons with communication disorders. This paper highlights the phonological processes observed in school-aged persons with Down syndrome, some of which are similar to those observed in English and Dutch (cluster reduction, stopping, gliding, consonant harmony) and others that differ owing to differences in Kannada's phonology (e.g. retroflex fronting, degemination). The study gives a cross-linguistic perspective to the study of phonological processes in Down syndrome.