Phonological Process in Arabic-Speaking Children with Down Syndrome: A Psycholinguistic Investigation

Abstract

No prevalence statistics for articulation and phonological problems in Arabic children with Down syndrome (DS) have been published. The goal of this study was to see how common consonant production errors and phonological processes are in Emirati Arabic-speaking children with DS, and how they relate to their intellectual level and hearing status. Thirty Emirati children with DS, aged 9–12 years, and a control group of the same age, participated. An informal linguistic assessment was used to diagnose all the participants. All the participants were found to have phonological and articulation problems. On total words in mistake and typical segmental errors, there were significant disparities between the normal hearing group and the mild conductive hearing loss group. On the total number of wrong words and normal and atypical segmental errors, there were similar significant disparities between mild and severe intellectual impairments. Furthermore, as the age of the participants increased, the percentage of errors reduced.