Fumiko ANZAKI, Shin-Ichi IZUMI

Department of Rehabilitation, Social Insurance Chuo General Hospital

(Received 26 November 2001; accepted 26 June 2002)

Abstract: We present two sibling cases who had a similar functional articulation disorder involving glottal stop sounds. The boy initially aged 5 years and 8 months and his younger sister aged 3 years and 8 months had average intelligence for their ages and normal velopharyngeal function without any anatomical anomaly of the lips, tongue, or palate. Specifically, they had no apparent weakness of velopharyngeal closure. The speech sounds of the boy requiring tongue tip movements were replaced by those produced by glottal stops. Articulation using the tongue was poor apparently due to the uncoordinated and untimely movements of the tongue. A therapeutic program using speech gesture was indicated to treat his problem. He was trained to move and place his tongue tip between his teeth repeatedly. After 5 months of treatment, the glottal stop sounds in his speech almost disappeared. Subsequently his sister was able to imitate his improved speech without difficulty. We conclude that this particular case of the boy's articulation disorder was developmental verbal dyspraxia, and also suspect that his sister's problem may have come from a certain genetic background. However, we can not deny a possibility that she merely imitated his glottal stop sounds.

Key words: glottal stop, familial tendency, functional articulation disorder, developmental verbal dyspraxia, DVD, or developmental apraxia of speech, DAS, phonological disorder