ABSTRACT

Introduction:

The aim of this thesis is to make a scientific research about the effects of mental deficiency on articulation disorders in mentally retarded children by comparing those children to the regular ones and provide the findings.

Methods:

The sample group of the research consists of 30 children (23 males and 7 females) with mild mental retardation whose ages range from 3 to 7 years old and 30 children (13males and 17 females) with regular mental development. The participants receive education in a special education and rehabilitation centre located. Both of the sample groups have received Ankara Articulation Test (AAT) developed by Ege, Acarlar and Turan (2004). The effects of family income, educational background of the family, gender and age factors on articulation disorders have been examined.Getting a hıgh score from AAT test shows that is articulation disorder.

Results:

Mentally retarded children got higher scores than the children with normal development (p=0,000). When these two groups analysed in terms of gender, it is identified that there is a huge difference between the genders in respect to articulation sores (p˂0,05). When the groups analysed according to their economic situation, mentally retarded children coming from low and lower-middle income families have less articulation problems than those who are in the high- income group (p˂0,05). When the groups analysed according to educational backgrounds of the parents, there is no statistically striking difference (p>0,05), in lower education than high school while there is a noticeable difference in higher education than high school. (p˂0,05).When the groups analysed according to the age factor,articulation points with no meaningful difference in the direction 3-4 years (p>0,05) but significant difference was observed between the two groups in age 5-6-7 (p˂0,05).

Discussion and Conclusion:

Children with mild mental disabilities has articulation disorder more than the normal children.