Journal of Special Education and Rehabilitation (Nov 2009)
ARTICULATION CHARACTERISTICS IN CHILDREN SUFFERING FROM SLI IN EARLY SCHOOL AGE
Abstract
Getting closer to the articulation segment of SLI is important for diagnosis of children in early school age. Phonologic and articulation status of this population is specific, and acknowledging it, will secure adequate rehabilitation.The theory offers wide analysis of physiology of all speech-language aspects of the developmental period, as well as its pathology. The emphasis is put on the articulation segment in children with SLI.The goal of this study was to establish direct relation between speech-language development delay and the process of sound forming in children with SLI, and in the same time comparing it with the normal speech-language development.In this study a group of 35 children with SLI, and a group of 35 children without this problem were included.The examination was performed with four relevant tests: Global articulation test, Test for examining articulation, Articulation test for analytic estimation of phonologic and articulation disorders and Test for understanding speech.For processing data from empiric frequencies for specific categories in both tested groups, c2 test was used. In the same time, establishing correlation level between groups of different characteristics in examinees, quotient of contingency was included. Since the necessary confirmation of results correlation among different test results scored in both groups, Pearson test of correlation was also used. The results showed some important characteristics of phonologic-articulation disorders. Children suffering from SLI have approximately 20 well pronounced sounds. The biggest problem is pronunciation of sounds from fricative and affricate group, medial position of sound in a word, and the most frequent sound disorder is substitution. Detailed analysis resulted with dominant problem with the place of sound production, except in cases of sound mispronunciation of vowels and nasals.When estimating sound quality in word and sentence order, deviation of pronunciation for more than one degree occurred. This deviation happens as a result of bad hearing memory, bad hearing discrimination, bad phonology awareness and inelasticity of peripheral speaking organs.Interaction between articulation status and speech understanding is a direct consequence of the problem of sound successiveness in words. By the influence of oral dyspraxia, it is impossible a word well pronounced in isolated situation, to be well pronounced in word complex.As a conclusion, it should be stressed out that poor phoneme structure, phoneme capacity, as well as bad speech understanding in children with SLI have specifies and instability up to the level of terminal inadequacy, shown by pronunciation determined by instable and yet variable mechanisms, which do not obey to hierarchy built phoneme structure of a standard language. In fact, the guideline is to start phoneme correction, after achieving the stage of specific level in receptive speech, as well as expressive speech after achieving simple sentence construction.
