Background and Aim: Speech as a motor phenomenon requires repetitive and rapid function of articulatory organs performing extremely fine movements. Practice on motor skills results in facilitation in treatment progress of children with phonological disorders. The purpose of this study was to compare motor skills in 5-year-old children with phonological and phonetic disorders.
Methods: Thirty-two children age 5 years, 16 with phonemical speech sound disorders and 16 with difficulty at a phonetic level participated in this study. TOLD Test was performed for linguistic skills investigation among children. Phonetic test, Wepman test, diadochokinesis and oral assessment was used for diagnosis between phonological and phonetic disorders. The children were also evaluated with Oseretsky motor developmental scale.
Results: In comparison, mean scores of movement skills between both groups showed significant difference (p=0.006) and children with phonetic disorder got significantly higher scores on all part of this test.
Conclusions: The findings of this study support the idea that speech sound disorders are frequently associated with motor problems, and that type of articulation disorder affects the motor performance in a different way. Phonological disorders seem to have more impact on motor performance than phonetic disorders. The results authenticate the need to pay more attention to the motor skills of children with articulation disorders.

Background and Aim: Research conducted since the early 1900s has consistently identified differences between deaf and hearing children on performance of a wide variety of motor tasks, most notably balance. Our study was performed to test static and dynamic balance skills in congenital severe to profound hearing impaired children in comparison with normal age-matched children.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 30 severe to profound hearing impaired and 40 normal children with age 6 to 10 years old. Bruininks-Oseretsky test of motor proficiency 2, balance subset with 9 parts was used for evaluation of balance skills.
Results: Hearing-impaired children showed 16.7 to 100% fail results in 7 parts of the balance subset. In normal children fail result was revealed just in 3 parts of the balance subset from 2.5 to 57.5%, and differences between two groups were significant (p<0.0001). There was a significant difference between two groups in two static balance skills of standing on one leg on a line and standing on one leg on a balance beam with eyes closed (p<0.0001).
Conclusion: It seems that development of static balance skills are longer than dynamic ones. Because severe to profound hearing-impaired children showed more weakness than normal children in both static and dynamic balance abilities, functional tests of balance proficiency can help to identify balance disorders in these children.