How do families of children with Down syndrome perceive speech intelligibility in Turkey?

Bülent Toğram

doi:10.1155/2015/707134

Abstract

Childhood verbal apraxia has not been identified or treated sufficiently in children with Down syndrome but recent research has documented that symptoms of childhood verbal apraxia can be found in children with Down syndrome. But, it is not routinely diagnosed in this population. There is neither an assessment tool in Turkish nor any research on childhood verbal apraxia although there is a demand not only for children with Down syndrome but also for normally developing children. The study examined if it was possible to determine oral-motor difficulties and childhood verbal apraxia features in children with Down syndrome through a survey. The survey was a parental report measure. There were 329 surveys received. Results indicated that only 5.6% of children with Down syndrome were diagnosed with apraxia, even though many of the subject children displayed clinical features of childhood verbal apraxia. The most frequently reported symptoms of childhood verbal apraxia in literature were displayed by the children with Down syndrome in the study. Parents could identify childhood verbal apraxia symptoms using parent survey. This finding suggests that the survey can be developed that could serve as a screening tool for a possible childhood verbal apraxia diagnosis in Turkey.

Highlights

Intelligibility refers to the level that a listener understands acoustic signals produced by a speaker without any supporting information [1, 2]
Speech intelligibility difficulties are a frequent issue that arises at the early stages of speech production for children with Down syndrome (DS) [3,4,5,6] and it continues during both adolescence and adulthood [6,7,8]
Diagnosing verbal apraxia in both normally developing children and children with developmental delays stands as a major issue

Summary

Introduction

Intelligibility refers to the level that a listener understands acoustic signals produced by a speaker without any supporting information [1, 2]. Speech intelligibility difficulties are a frequent issue that arises at the early stages of speech production for children with Down syndrome (DS) [3,4,5,6] and it continues during both adolescence and adulthood [6,7,8]. The intelligibility level of individuals with DS is far lower than their cognitive age [9]. The effectiveness of their communication with the environment is highly dependent on the level of speech intelligibility even if the expressive language skills of children with DS develop in time [10]. Whereas normally developing children master speech intelligibility within 48 months, intelligible speech production prevails as a major difficulty for individuals with DS throughout their lives [11]. Literature hosts many studies concluding that low level of speech intelligibility is a common problem for individuals with Down syndrome [4, 6, 7, 10, 12,13,14,15,16,17]

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Conclusion