Timmins Claire, Cleland Joanne, Wood Sara E, Hardcastle William J, Wishart Jennifer G
Speech Science Research Centre, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK.
Clin Linguist Phon. 2009 Dec;23(12):911-25. doi: 10.3109/02699200903141271.
Speech production in young people with Down's syndrome has been found to be variable and inconsistent. Errors tend to be more in the production of sounds that typically develop later, for example, fricatives and affricates, rather than stops and nasals. It has been suggested that inconsistency in production is a result of a motor speech deficit. Late acquired fricatives such as /s/ and /integral/ are complex articulations, which may require more precise motor programming and may therefore show highly inconsistent productions. Other factors potentially affecting speech production in this population are abnormal palatal structure, hearing loss, and hypotonia. A group of 20 young people with Down's syndrome were recorded using Electropalatography (EPG), reading a wordlist containing the phrase 'a sheep'. The wordlist contained seven other phrases and was repeated 10 times. Eight typically developing, cognitively matched children and eight adults were also recorded producing the same data set. Articulatory (EPG pattern analysis) and perceptual analyses of the 10 productions of /integral/ were carried out. /integral/ production was found to be inconsistent in the young people with Down's syndrome, with more errors both in the auditory analysis and articulatory analysis than in the typical sample, which may be due to a motor programming or motor control problem. There were a greater number of errors in the EPG analysis than in the perceptual analysis. This suggests that some young people with DS were able to produce perceptually acceptable /integral/ with atypical EPG patterns. The use of typical, adult-modelled /integral/ EPG patterns in therapy may be inappropriate for some children with DS who present with atypical palatal structures.
研究发现，患有唐氏综合征的年轻人的言语产生具有变异性和不一致性。错误往往更多地出现在通常较晚发展的语音产生中，例如擦音和塞擦音，而不是塞音和鼻音。有人认为，产生不一致性是运动性言语缺陷的结果。后期习得的擦音，如/s/和/ʃ/，是复杂的发音，可能需要更精确的运动编程，因此可能表现出高度不一致的发音。其他可能影响该人群言语产生的因素包括腭部结构异常、听力损失和肌张力减退。使用电子腭位描记法（EPG）记录了一组20名患有唐氏综合征的年轻人，他们阅读了一个包含短语“一只羊”的单词列表。该单词列表还包含其他七个短语，并重复了10次。还记录了八名发育正常、认知匹配的儿童和八名成年人产生相同的数据集。对/ʃ/的10次发音进行了发音（EPG模式分析）和感知分析。发现患有唐氏综合征的年轻人/ʃ/的发音不一致，在听觉分析和发音分析中出现的错误都比典型样本多，这可能是由于运动编程或运动控制问题。EPG分析中的错误比感知分析中的错误更多。这表明一些患有唐氏综合征的年轻人能够以非典型的EPG模式产生在感知上可接受的/ʃ/。在治疗中使用典型的、成人模式的/ʃ/ EPG模式可能不适用于一些腭部结构非典型的唐氏综合征儿童。
