Effects of Abnormal Oral Reflexes on Speech Articulation in Persian Speaking Children with Spastic Cerebral Palsy

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the presence of abnormal oral reflexes and speech sound production in children with severe cerebral palsy. MATERIALS & METHODS: Seven oral reflexes such as, rooting, mouth-opening, biting, chewing, lip, tongue, and suckling were examined in 52Persian-speaking monolingual children with spastic cerebral palsy (ages 5-10 yr).Phonetic information tests were administered to investigate their ability for articulation of the speech sounds. RESULTS: A significant relationship between three (i.e. the chewing, lip, and biting reflexes) out of the seven abnormal oral reflexes and the speech articulation was noticed. The presence of the chewing reflex was associated with deficits in production of /s, z, š,č/ sounds. The lip reflex was associated with deficits in the production of /p, m, r, j, f, č/ sounds. The biting reflex was associated with deficits in the production of /z, l, y and š/ sounds. No significant relationship was found between the rooting, mouth-opening, tongue, and suckling reflexes and sound articulation. CONCLUSION: The presence of abnormal reflexes in the children with spastic cerebral palsy would suggest a correlation between these reflexes and sound articulation in Iranian children with spastic cerebral palsy. Hence, these observations might suggest some disturbances in normal speech development.