Tongue thrust is a serious speech disorder that disturbs learning, leads to poor communication, involuntary control of oral movement, poor feeding, excessive drooling and swallowing. The adverse impact of this disorder demands a therapy to help the vulnerable child particularly where machine is not available. This study therefore investigated the efficacy of oral motor exercise (OME) on tongue coordination rate and laryngeal airflow of children with tongue thrust. A sample of fourteen (14) children was assigned to experimental and control groups for the investigation. The pre-test, post-test control experimental design was used for the study. Eight (8) participants were in the experimental group, while six (6) participants were in the control group. The treatment exercise took eight weeks of intensive oral motor exercise for the experimental group and normal word drill for the control. Data was collected using speech disorder diagnostic scale. The scale was validated and inter-rated by the two researchers with reliability co-efficient of .88 obtained from Scott’s pi (π). The data collected were analyzed using ANCOVA. Findings of the study indicated that oral motor exercise was significantly effective in improving tongue coordination rate and laryngeal airflow. It was therefore recommended that speech therapist should be re-trained to use OME for children with tongue thrust and the clinic be equipped with OME facilities.

Department of Special Education University of Calabar Calabar Nigeria

Federal Neuro Psychiatric Hospital Child and Adolescent Unit Oshodi Yaba Lagos State Nigeria

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