Speech and oro-motor function in children with Developmental Coordination Disorder: A pilot study

Abstract

The protracted maturation and development of speech articulation underlies the complexity of the skill, and suggests it may be an area susceptible to a general deficit in motor control. Recent research suggests a high co-occurrence between Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) and disordered speech production. Despite this there has been no systematic investigation of speech motor control in children with DCD. We conducted a pilot study which looked at speech motor control in a group of children with DCD (N=5) and a group typically developing (TD) children (N=5). Movements of the upper and lower lip were recorded during non-verbal movements, single words, syllable sequences, and sentence repetition. In the baseline conditions (normal talking speed or an isolated utterance) children with DCD demonstrated a typical pattern of movement, albeit a slower and shorter movement. In contrast, when task complexity was increased the children with DCD showed an atypical pattern of movement. It was concluded that children with DCD demonstrate inferior motor control for complex speech gestures, suggesting that the motor deficit in DCD may indeed be a more generalized phenomenon affecting the speech motor system.

Brief report: Response inhibition and processing speed in children with motor difficulties and developmental coordination disorder

“…It is possible that children with DCD were slower to respond in the verbal task because the effort of producing a word requires some level of motor control. However, a previous study reported that DCD and TD children did not differ in the duration of movements for single syllable words, such as those used in the current study (Ho & Wilmut, 2010), and thus this is an unlikely explanation for the current results. In the MD group, verbal completion times were not significantly different from the TD group, although a trend was identified (p=.054).…”

Development of Multisensory Reweighting Is Impaired for Quiet Stance Control in Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD)

“…DCD affects as many as six in 100 school-age children [1], making it a leading developmental movement disorder. This poor motor coordination, commonly involving posture [2]–[5], upper extremity [6]–[8], and also cranial motor control [9]–[10], interferes with their activities of daily living and/or academic achievement. Studies have demonstrated multiple mechanisms underlying the poor coordination, with known deficits in timing [11]–[12] and force generation [12], as well as the sensory processing [13]–[16] critical to appropriate motor responses.…”

Are children with childhood apraxia of speech a subgroup of children with developmental coordination disorders?

“…According to Visscher et al (2007), speech and language disorders seem to have more impact on motor performance than language disorders, and it seemed that when speech production was affected, motor problems were more pronounced. If we take into consideration the fact that the development of speech articulation throughout adolescence underlines the complexity of this skill, then the underlying deficits in motor control mechanisms in disordered speech could suggest that the development of speech articulation may be an area particularly susceptible to a general deficit in motor function (Ho and Wilmut, 2010). Empirical evidence supports this hypothesis with findings suggesting that fine motor skills between 12 to 18 months and at 24 months predict expressive language skills at 36 months of age in infants (LeBarton and Iverson, 2013).…”

“…Hodge (1998) hypothesized that children with suspected childhood apraxia of speech are a subgroup of a larger population of children who exhibit developmental coordination disorders affecting the speech sensorimotor system. We know that articulation of speech is a mechanical act executed by a complex speech apparatus including infralaryngeal (lungs), laryngeal, and supralaryngeal (tongue, lips), and the underlying deficits in motor control mechanisms in disordered speech suggest that the development of speech articulation may be particularly susceptible to a general deficit in motor function involvement, as well as neural control mechanisms (Ho and Wilmut, 2010). Could this mean that children with DCD might be at risk of having CAS or vice versa?…”