Speech and Language of People with Fragile X Syndrome

Chang, Son-A; Lee, So-young; Hong, Sung-Do; Lee, Kang Woo

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 1998;3(1): 160-174.

Son-A Chang^` , So-young Lee^` , Sung-Do Hong^` , and Kang Woo Lee^`

장선아(Son-A Chang)| 이소영(So-young Lee)| 홍성도(Sung-Do Hong)| 이강우(Kang Woo Lee)

ABSTRACT

Fragile X syn drome is the s econd most common cau se of ment al r etardat ion nex t t o Down syn drome. T his study was at tempted t o des cribe lan gu ag e an d speech characteristics of patient s with fragile X. T he subject group of this study includes six pat ient s with full mut at ion fr agile X. Full speech - language ev alu at ion s were condu cted on each subject . In addit ion , languag e samples wer e analy zed in th e aspect s of semantics and pragmatics. Speech was observed with respect to dy spraxia, dy sfluency , palilalia, and incomplete articulation . T he result s of language an aly sis r ev ealed that all of the subject s wer e collect ed an d s ev er ely disordered: (1) v ocabulary lev el was compat ible with th at of two to four - y ear - old childr en , (2) lev el of recept iv e and ex pr es siv e language was that of one t o thr ee- y ear - old childr en , (3) their utt er an ces , con sist in g mostly of one word, wer e limit ed t o the semantic categories of entity or deictic , and (4) pragmatics was also extremely defect iv e in that a larg e part of th eir utt er an ces was r espon ses to y es/ no qu es - t ion s with spar se identification s . T he result s of the speech ev aluat ion showed that (1) incomplet e articulation was the most dominant feature, (2) palilalia was not iced quite frequently , (3) symptoms of dy spraxia varied rather widely spanning 3- 37 % of their ut terances , and (4) dy sfluen cy was n ot foun d at all. On th e basis of the r esult s , we conclu ded that a pat ient with fr agile X syndrome could be diagnosed ex clusively with a speech - language evaluation instead of expen sive neuro- behavior al t est s such a s a cyt og enet ic test.