Early speech and language development in children with cleft lip and palate A longitudinal study

Abstract

The study focussed on analysing phonetic repertoire of children with cleft lip and palate during prespeech vocalisations and verbalisations language development and expressive vocabulary at 30 months of age and comparing them with that of typically developing children learning Tamil as the primary language of communication Twenty children with non syndromic complete cleft lip and palate and ten typically developing children at 08 to 12 months of age residing in and around Chennai city were recruited All children with cleft were operated by a single surgeon at or before 12 months of age using two stage palatoplasty Parent child interaction during routine play at home was recorded every month from recruitment till 30 months of age Language development was evaluated using 3 Dimensional Language Assessment Test at 30 months of age Mothers of children completed the Tamil translation of MacArthur Bates Communication Inventory a parent report inventory analysing expressive vocabulary The recorded samples were categorized into vocalisation and verbalisation phase indicated by presence of at least one meaningful word Childs utterances from each recording was transcribed yielding a corpus of 480404 sounds and analysed The measures of phonetic repertoire and language development were statistically compared between both groups across vocalisation and verbalisation Children with cleft started verbalisation at a significantly later age than typically developing children A developmental trend emerged among vowels and consonants between vocalisation and verbalisation in both groups A distinct protracted pattern of development of consonants was observed in children with cleft compared to typically developing children Size of expressive vocabulary did not differ significantly however language development was delayed in children with cleft at 30 months when compared to typically developing children Implications relating to assessment and management of children with cleft has been discussed newline