Auditory-Perceptual Speech Features in Children With Down Syndrome

Abstract

Speech disorders occur commonly in individuals with Down syndrome (DS), although data regarding the auditory-perceptual speech features are limited. This descriptive study assessed 47 perceptual speech features during connected speech samples in 26 children with DS. The most severely affected speech features were: naturalness, imprecise consonants, hyponasality, speech rate, inappropriate silences, irregular vowels, prolonged intervals, overall loudness level, pitch level, aberrant oropharyngeal resonance, hoarse voice, reduced stress, and prolonged phonemes. These findings suggest that speech disorders in DS are due to distributed impairments involving voice, speech sound production, fluency, resonance, and prosody. These data contribute to the development of a profile of impairments in speakers with DS to guide future research and inform clinical assessment and treatment.