Phoneme articulation in students with cerebral palsy and intellectual disability

Abstract

There are not many studies that analyze the quality of phoneme articulation in students with cerebral palsy who have a cognitive deficit. Studies on articulation abilities in the context of cerebral palsy usually included subjects without cognitive deficits. The aim of this paper was to determine the quality of phoneme articulation in students with cerebral palsy combined with intellectual disability, as well as its relation to age and gender of the participants. The sample consisted of 33 patients with cerebral palsy with combined mild intellectual disability, aged seven to ten years and eleven months (M=8.91; SD=0.947), of both genders. Triage articulation test, which determines the quality of phoneme articulation in the Serbian language (Kostić, Vladisavljević, 1983), was used for data collecting. The participants achieved the best quality of articulation in pronouncing vowels, and the worst in pronouncing phonemes from the group of fricatives. One-way analysis of variance showed no significant differences between the quality of phoneme articulation in the Serbian language and calendar age of the participants (F=1.061, p=0.508). Although boys from the tested sample showed a higher quality of articulated phonemes, that quality was not on the level of statistical significance with regard to the quality of articulated phonemes in girls (F=0.746, p=0.727). The results indicate significant difficulties in phoneme articulation in these students, who were three to seven years behind compared to the expected quality typical of certain age.

Keywords

• cerebral palsy
• phoneme
• combined cognitive deficit