Communication difficulties in down syndrome children aged 5-17 having motor speech disorders at Kampala school for physically handicapped

Abstract

To study the communication difficulties in children of Down syndrome aged 5-17 having motor speech disorders at Kampala school for physically handicapped. It was a cross-sectional study to identify communication difficulties in children of Down syndrome aged 5-17 having motor speech disorders. There were 25 participants under this study. The non-probability Sampling technique was used and specifically the purposive sampling technique. This study investigated the prevalence of motor speech disorders and impact of intelligibility, a communication difficulty on the social life and Community Participation of the individuals of Down Syndrome having motor speech disorders. The analysis revealed that: The majority of the participants had dysarthria, comprising 60% of the sample, followed by those children having both CAS and Dysarthria comprising of 28% and those with CAS accounted for the remaining 12%. A total of 38% or over one-third of the 25 participants in the present sample of children with DS met criteria for Low intelligibility. Reduced intelligibility was not significantly associated with the demographic. Significantly more participants with dysarthria or apraxia of speech had lowered intelligibility than High intelligibility, as did a combined group of participants with either dysarthria, apraxia, or both dysarthria and apraxia. The most prevalent impact of intelligibility was related to the child's ability to engage in social interactions at events and presented as a challenge for 64% of the children while the presence of friendships appeared to be affected the least, as only 12% reported not having friend. The high percentage of children with friends indicates that despite communication difficulties, they have successfully established social connections. This emphasizes the resilience and adaptability of these children in forming social bonds.