Speech features of children with cerebral palsy and typically develovep children in the age of 6-12 is determined by maximum performance tests

Some of the speech components can be affected due to motor speech disorders like dysarthria and apraxia, voice disorders and else. In the assessment of speech disorders and the effectiveness of therapy, Maximum Performance Tests (MPT) which have been used frequently in clinics. The upper limit of individuals' performances are evaluated for the selected speech components like respiration, phonation and articulation by MPTs. In this study, standard Maximum Performance Test procedure was established. With the test applied to the typically developing children and the children with cerebral palsy, norm values of the typical children were provided. The differences were determined between the dysarthria children with cerebral palsy and typical children in terms of test values. Maximum Performance Tests include three tests. These are Maximum Sound Prolongation Test, Maximum Repetion Rate Test, and Fundamental Frequency Range Test. Twenty (10 boys, 10 girls) including children of all ages, total 140 children which show normal motor improvement, without any hearing, vision, mental and neurologic disability, have Turkish as a native language, are in the age span of 6 to 12 participated to the study to form the norm values of the study. Dysarthric children with cerebral palsy whith subgroups of spastic, dyskinetic and ataxic of total 60 children including 20 children in each group participated to the study. In this study, the results of the tests hypothesize dissimilarities between age and gender in typical group, dissimilarities between sub-types in children with cerebral palsy and dissimilarities between typical group and children with cerebral palsy in maximum performance tests. In conclusion, the study shows that age effects on the maximum phonation time and maximum repetition rate included in Maximum Performance Tests effects, however gender does not have any effect on them. The other outcome of this study is that Maximum Performance Tests are notably test in the discrimination of dysarthric speech observed in children with cerebral palsy and normal speech. Key words: Maximum Performance Tests, dysarthria, cerebral palsy, acoustic measurements, evaluation.