Articulation in Down's syndrome adolescents and adults

Speech samples of 20 adolescents and adults with Down's syndrome were analysed and compared with speech samples from 20 normal toddlers. Consonant, vowel and diphthong productions were studied. Error rate, sounds in error, nature of the errors and phonetic characteristics of the errors of both groups were compared. It was found that the similarities between productions of persons with Down's syndrome and the utterances of normal children by far outnumbered the differences. The results of this study strongly support the contention of Lenneberg (1967) that the disordered articulation in subjects with Down's syndrome reflect a delay in speech development.