Speech profile in Down syndrome: speech apraxia x speech disorder of musculoskeletal origin

Abstract

This study presents an analysis of linguistic aspects at the segmental and suprasegmental levels in individuals with Down syndrome with or without a diagnosis of speech apraxia. Ten individuals of both sexes, aged between 13 and 32 years, participated in the study. Data collection was performed, individually and separately, in a video recorded therapeutic session. Speech tasks consisted of word repetition, repetition of sentences and automatic speech. The speech samples were submitted to phonetic transcription with a description and analysis of phonoarticulatory alterations, typology of disfluencies and prosodic alterations. The data were submitted to descriptive and inferential statistical analysis, using the Mann-Whitney test for independent samples and considering p-value≤0.05 as significant. Individuals with speech apraxia (n=6), compared with those without it (n=4), presented a higher occurrence of phonoarticulatory alterations, with a statistically significant difference between the two groups in omission (p=0.018) and articulatory inaccuracy (p=0.030) alterations; a higher occurrence of disfluencies, mainly of the syllable repetition type; and the occurrence of prosodic alterations (83.3%), which was not found in the group without speech apraxia. The importance of the differential diagnosis of speech disorders in Down syndrome is revealed with an evaluation that considers the different linguistic aspects resulting from the differentiation of the characteristics of speech. Clinical intervention should be early and guided by specific parameters.

Orofacial Myofunctional Aspects of Nursing Infants and Preschoolers

“…The correlations between deglutition and certain orofacial structures and functions coincide with the literature that refers to changes in deglutition in the presence of malocclusion and dysfunctions in the motions and posture of the jaw and tongue, 26 in addition to phonoarticulation and muscle tone. 27 Deglutition is thought to be a complicated sensorimotor action involving mouth and tongue muscular processes, therefore any failure in one of these events can affect its functioning. 28 Differences in speech between the sexes were also observed in preschoolers, with boys scoring lower, which corresponds to research that addresses more language usage issues connected to phonological and communicative features, which include articulatory abnormalities in the speaking of boys.…”

“…The correlations between deglutition and certain orofacial structures and functions coincide with the literature that refers to changes in deglutition in the presence of malocclusion and dysfunctions in the motions and posture of the jaw and tongue, 26 in addition to phonoarticulation and muscle tone. 27 Deglutition is thought to be a complicated sensorimotor action involving mouth and tongue muscular processes, therefore any failure in one of these events can affect its functioning. 28 …”

Influence of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on a sample of Egyptian children with Down syndrome

“…A small hippocampal volume, which is important for memory and other cognitive activities, and a small frontal lobe volume, where the expressive language area is located, could potentially have a role [ 23 , 24 ]. Childhood apraxia of speech, prosodic dysregulation, disfluencies, and malocclusions have also been described in children with DS, all of which may contribute to reduced speech intelligibility, aggravate their communication difficulty, and result in low language evaluation scale scores [ 25 ].…”