Initial Observations of Lingual Movement Characteristics of Children With Cerebral Palsy

Purpose

This preliminary study compared the speech motor control of the tongue and jaw between children with cerebral palsy (CP) and their typically developing (TD) peers.

Method

Tongue tip and jaw movements of 4 boys with spastic CP and 4 age- and sex-matched TD peers were recorded using an electromagnetic articulograph during 10 repetitions of “Dad told stories today.” The duration, path distance, average speed, and speech movement stability of the movements were calculated for each repetition.

Results

The children with CP had longer durations than their TD peers. Children with CP had longer path distances and faster average speed as compared with their TD peers for both articulators. The TD group but not the CP group had longer path distances and faster average speeds for the tongue than the jaw. The CP group had reduced speech movement stability for the tongue as compared with their TD peers, but both groups had similar speech movement stability for the jaw.

Conclusions

Children with CP had impaired speech motor control of the tongue and jaw as compared with their TD peers, and these speech motor control deficits were more pronounced in the tongue tip than the jaw.

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