A comparative study of diadochokinesis and the rate of reading and talking in second grade primary students of Tehran, Iran

Since some children with speech and language disorders have a reduced diadochokinesis rates, some researchers have concluded that there is a relation between diadochokinitic and rate of speech but some rejected it. The purpose of this study was to compare the oral diadochokinesis with rate of speech and reading in normal student. In this descriptive - comparative study, one hundred of second grade female students participated. The subjects were asked to read a text of their book, tell a story, and perform some oral diadochokinesis tasks. The time was measured by Cool Edit. Descriptive statistics and compaired t-test were used for analysis. Time taking of diadochokinesis tasks /tâ/, /pa/ and /kâ/ were in the orders 4.10, 4.15 and 4.74. The rate of reading was 3.1 syllable per second and rate of talking was 2.8 syllable per second. There was no relationship between the rate of speech and diadochokinesis but there was a significant correlation between the reading rate and diadochokinesis in /kâ/(p=0.03) and /pâtâkâ/(p=0.00). We can use the relevant diadochokinetic tasks for improving the rate of reading. Reading rate was higher than talking rate and the rate of bilabial diadochokinesis is the highest rate that we can expect in our treatments.