Page and Boucher (1998) also found a high
incidence of oromotor impairments in a group of
children with autism. These authors found that
children with autism had manual and gross motor
impairments, but these were less affected than
oromotor skills. Rapin (1996) found that, despite
the exclusion of children with identifiable neurological
findings, 30% of children with autism had mildto-
moderate sensorimotor deficits (mostly apraxia).
Rapin found that, overall, the children had a higher
rate of oromotor impairments compared to a
group of children with specific language impairments.
Rapin reported that, although intelligibility
and oromotor functioning were highly correlated,
some children with poor intelligibility did not have
associated oromotor impairments. Rapin suggested
that this could be explained by the fact articulation
programming and oromotor functioning are independent
skills, although both could potentially
contribute to children having speech difficulties.
Children’s oromotor skills were not assessed in the present study, so it may be that the children in the
current study who had speech disorders also had
poor oromotor skills, suggesting this should be an
important line of investigation in future research.