Oral-diadochokinetic rates among healthy Malaysian-Mandarin speakers: A cross linguistic comparison.

Purpose: This study examined the effects of non-word versus real word, age, and gender on oral-DDK rates among healthy Malaysian-Mandarin speakers. Comparison between non-word of Malaysian-Mandarin and Hebrew speakers was examined.

Method: One-hundred and seventeen speakers (18-83 years old, 46% men) were audio-recorded while performing non-word (repetition of "pataka") and real-word oral-DDK tasks ("butter cake" and " ([pa4ta1kan4])"). The number of syllables produced in 8 seconds was counted from the audio recording to derive the oral-DDK rates. A MANOVA was conducted to compare the rates between age groups (young = 18-40 years,  = 56; middle = 41-60 years,  = 39; older = 61-83 years,  = 22) and gender. In a second analysis, "pataka" results were compared between this study and previous findings with Hebrew speakers.

Result: No gender effects were found. However, rates significantly decreased with age ( < 0.001). Repetition of real words was faster than that of non-words - English words (5.55 ± 1.19 syllables/s) > non-words (5.29 ± 1.23) > Mandarin words (4.91 ± 1.13). Malaysian-Mandarin speakers performed slower than Hebrew speakers on "pataka" task.

Conclusion: Aging has a large impact on oromotor functions, indicating that speech-language pathologists should consider using age-adjusted norms.