Phonological Profile Of Greek Children With Familial Mild Mental Impairment Aged 6 To 9 Years Old

摘要

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the speech of Greek children with familial mental impairment (MI), in order to provide data for the differential diagnosis of their speech disorder and to make suggestions for an appropriate test for the assessment of the speech of this population. The sample consisted of seventeen monolingual Greek children (9 boys, 8 girls), age 6 to 9 years old (M=87.88 months, SD=9.34 months), with a diagnosis of familial mild MI. A set of speech and language tests was administered by two experienced speech-language pathologists. Sixteen of the seventeen participants had a phonological disorder. Most of the children had difficulty in the articulation of the fricative, affricate and lateral sounds. The statistical analysis revealed that the children's IQ and language performance didn't seem to affect their phonological and articulatory performance. There was a statistically significant difference in the Percentage of the Consonants Correct index between the standardized test and the sample of spontaneous speech. The appropriate evaluation of speech in children with MI is to administer a standardized picture-naming test and to take a sample of spontaneous speech for an accurate analysis of their speech errors.