The speech and language profile of a child with Turner Syndrome– a case study

ABSTRACT

Background

Turner syndrome is a genetic disorder that affects only females. It has specific cognitive characteristics, but speech and language data are scarce.

Methods and procedures

Prospective case report; we report a girl aged seven’s cognitive and speech and language profile.

Results

Cognitive assessment shows higher performance IQ (PIQ), and atypical cognitive profile for Turner syndrome. Speech and language assessment show a significant difference between receptive and expressive language levels. Although the girl did comprehend most of the language structure, there was a lack of it in spontaneous speech. She demonstrated inconsistency in the use of language morphology and complex linguistic structures, primarily because of significant inconsistency in her sound production. Although she produced the majority of phonemes correctly in isolation, her spontaneous speech production was incomprehensible.

Conclusion

Case studies of speech and language development may reveal a specific characteristic in the cases with Turner syndrome to delineate genetic factors from individual developmental variabilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Turner syndrome
• cognition
• speech and language

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia [Grant No. OI178027 and TR32032].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia [OI178027, TR32032].