Effectiveness of the Pre-Verbal Stage Speech Readiness Program in Expressive Language Development of Children Aged Between 1-and-a-half to 3 Years with Down Syndrome - ผลของโปรแกรมเตรียมความพร้อมทางการพูด ระยะก่อนพูด ต่อพัฒนาการด้านการใช้ภาษาของ เด็กกล่มุ อาการดาวน์ อายุ 1 ปี 6 เดือน ถึง 3 ปี

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the pre-verbal stage speech
readiness program in the expressive language development of children with Down syndrome. The
samples were 18 children with Down syndrome aged 1-and-a-half to 3 years who received developmental
stimulation at Rajanukul Institute, Bangkok, during March – June 2012. All samples had
expressive language developmental score less than 30; and were neither deaf nor blind. With proportional
stratified random sampling, 9 participle were selected to be in an experimental group who received
the pre-verbal stage of speech readiness program (validity: 0.80-1.00) for 30 days (60 times)
in addition to the normal program; whereas the other 9 were assigned to be the control group who
received only normal program. The program was comprised of 8 activities: - lip exercise, tongue
exercise, jaw exercise, sound imitating (no meaning), sucking, blowing, biting-chewing-swallowing
and word imitating (meaning). The data analysis instrument used was an expressive language developmental
assessment tool with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for reliability of 0.859. Data analysis was
conducted using descriptive statistic, Fisher‘s exact test and t-test. It was found that, after the experiment
the study group scored significantly higher on expressive language development (p<0.05) both by
before-and-after comparison and comparing with the control group. Thus, the speech readiness program
should be promoted to enhance the expressive language development of children with Down
syndrome.
Key words: Down syndrome, expressive language development, pre-verbal stage of speech readiness program