Discriminating Characteristics of Children Having Mild Retardation With and Without Articulation Disorders

Abstract

Two groups of children with mild retardation were compared to ascertain whether certain characteristics differentiate those with articulation disorders from those with normal speech. Subjects were 47 children, ages 6.4 - 14.5, 27 of whom had articulation disorders and 20 normal articulation. Subjects' CA, MA, IQ, right ear dichotic scores, fine motor skills, recall of nouns, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions, and socioeconomic status (SES) were used as factors in a discriminative analysis. Task performance results successfully discriminated 89.3% of the children with articulation disorders and 80% of the children with normal articulation. Fine motor skill subtests, verb and preposition scores, and a measure of SES were helpful in the discrimination of children with articulation disorders from those normal in articulation. For the sample with articulation disorders a moderate prediction of the severity of these disorders was made using scores from noun recall and fine motor skill tasks.