Mental disability is a condition, characterised by impairments in all areas of a persons development and function. The affects on one's speech and language abilities depend on the level of mental disability.
Speech and language disabilities have a strong impact on one's social integration due to diminished ability to communicate with others. People suffering from mental disorders will benefit from long-term training with multisenzor approach enabling them in acquiring new knowledge and skills. Phonomimic method used in the empirical part of this study is one of such training methods.
Empirical part of this master thesis evaluates the impact of logopedic training with phonomimic method on speech intelligibility in children diagnosed with mental disability. In our survey we included a boy diagnosed with a moderate mental diability, moderate speech and language disorder and Down Syndrome, and a girl, diagnosed with a mild mental disability and a mild hearing loss. In year 2017/2018 both of them attended 4th grade of special school. They participated in the above mentioned logopedic training with phonomimic method twice a week from December/2017 to March/2018. This master thesis evaluates the results of assesed articulation and the results of evaluation of speech intelligibility of these children by their parents and their teacher.
Research has shown improvement of speech intelligibility in both children after logopedic training with phonomimic method. They also improved in the area of correct articulation of individual sounds and words. The boy made the most progress in articulation of alveolar and postalveolar fricatives and also plosives, the girl in articulation of alveolar and postalveolar fricatives. Both of them also refined articulation of words, which include those sounds.
In conclusion, logopedic training with phonomimic method had a positive impact on articulation of individual sounds and words and also on speech intelligibility in both children.
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