Oral and Hand Movement Speeds are Associated with Expressive Language Ability in Children with Speech Sound Disorder

Abstract

This study tested the hypothesis that children with speech sound disorder have generalized slowed motor speeds. It evaluated associations among oral and hand motor speeds and measures of speech (articulation and phonology) and language (receptive vocabulary, sentence comprehension, sentence imitation), in 11 children with moderate to severe SSD and 11 controls. Syllable durations from a syllable repetition task served as an estimate of maximal oral movement speed. In two imitation tasks, nonwords and clapped rhythms, unstressed vowel durations and quarter-note clap intervals served as estimates of oral and hand movement speed, respectively. Syllable durations were significantly correlated with vowel durations and hand clap intervals. Sentence imitation was correlated with all three timed movement measures. Clustering on syllable repetition durations produced three clusters that also differed in sentence imitation scores. Results are consistent with limited movement speeds across motor systems and SSD subtypes defined by motor speeds as a corollary of expressive language abilities.

Two unrelated children with overlapping 6q25.3 deletions, motor speech disorders, and language delays

“…In addition, he completed a keyboard tapping task where, in one condition, one key is pressed repetitively with one finger and, in the other, with two fingers in alternating fashion. We have shown that a slower tapping rate in the alternating condition, compared to the repetitive one, is one of the residual traits of CAS in adults with normalized speech, mirroring our findings in disyllabic versus monosyllabic DDK performance (Button et al, ; Peter & Raskind, Peter, ; Peter et al, ; Peter et al, ). Tapping interval durations in milliseconds (ms) were compared to a sample of 35 control adults, ages 18–56 years (mean = 34.6, SD = 12.3), collected in the context of our previous studies cited above.…”

On the generalizability of post‐stroke proportional recovery

“…Toward that end, we have collected as-of-yet unpublished data corroborating a relationship between hemiplegia improvement and enhanced speech in chronic stroke. The underpinnings of our data are supported by handarm/language literature across diverse fields [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. These combined data increasingly point toward a symbiosis between upper limb and aphasia recovery.…”

Evaluation of Diadochokinesis in Greek Preschoolers With Speech Sound Disorders Using a Diadochokinetic Rates Protocol

“…This measurement evaluates a person’s ability to execute alternating oral movements such as tongue protrusion–retraction accurately and rapidly or one’s ability to articulate different speech sounds, syllables, or utterances accurately at a maximum rate of utterance (Williams & Stackhouse, 2000). Diadochokinesia is generally proposed as a clinical marker for motor speech disorders (Bernthal et al, 2017; Dodd, 2014; Peter, 2012), as the majority of speech-language pathologists agree that fine motor coordination and motor control of orofacial structure is a prerequisite for the precise production of speech sounds (Kent, 2015; Maas, 2017).…”