Estimates of the prevalence of speech and motor speech disorders in adolescents with Down syndrome.
Erin M Wilson, Leonard Abbeduto, Stephen M Camarata and 1 others
PMID 31221009WHAT IT FOUND
In 45 adolescents with Down syndrome whose speech could be classified, nearly all had speech and motor speech disorders.
Dysarthria was most common, often with apraxia. Ataxic signs predominated, but mixed dysarthria features were frequent.
Key findings
01Among 45 adolescents with Down syndrome whose speech could be classified, 97.8% had a speech disorder and 97.8% had a motor speech disorder.
02Dysarthria was the most common motor speech classification, with 17 of 45 participants meeting criteria (37.8%).
03Of 27 participants with dysarthria or dysarthria plus apraxia, 21 (77.8%) had signs consistent with ataxic dysarthria, and 12 (57.1%) also had signs consistent with other dysarthria subtypes.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The prevalence analyses used 45 of 50 participants, and 5 participants could not be classified because of low verbal output or missing nonword repetition scores. The sample was small and combined from three study sites, with differences in sex, IQ, and language measures between cohorts. The study was low powered for subtype comparisons, and the authors did not adjust inferential statistics for multiple comparisons. The classification methods were behavioural and may not fully separate motor speech subtypes. Reliability for pause coding was low, with 61% intrajudge agreement. The study measured speech at assessment and did not follow participants over time. It cannot show how speech disorders change with age.
Declared interests
The authors report no declarations of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat the 97.8% prevalence as a population estimate for all adolescents with Down syndrome. It is based on 45 classifiable speech samples, and 5 of 50 samples could not be classified.