BIOSCIENCES BIOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH ASIA, December 2013. Vol. 10(2), 811-815 * To whom all correspondence should be addressed. Mob.: + 98-917-3090144 E-mail: marmar_vahab@yahoo.com Oral Stereognosis Ability Among Boy Students with Down Syndrome with Mental Age 3 to 5 years Old under Special Education Hashem Shemshadi 1 , Mohammad Majid Oryadi Zanjani 2 , Maryam Vahab 2 *, Masoud Karimloo 3 , Lilli Hayati 4 and Shervin Assari 5 1 Department of Clinical Sciences & Speech Reconstruction Surgery, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran. 2 Department of Speech Therapy, School of Rehabilitation, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran. 3 Depatment of Biostatistics, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran. 4 Department of Speech Therapy, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran. 5 Department of Scientific Writing, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/bbra/1200 (Received: 25 June 2013; accepted: 20 August 2013) Down syndrome (DS) is prevalent among the reasons of mental disability and several researches have been done on it 1 on the present study aims to evaluate the oral stereognosis among individuals with Down syndrome with mental age 3 to 5 years old and its comparison with the similar age group.This study is on 60 students in two groups; control (N:30) and Down syndrom (N:30). The test was consisting of some objects randomly being placed into the mouth of some individuals to identity its form among three pictures and then the correctness and incorrectness of the questions with the time to present each object to present the first response by an individual was calculated. By the increase of the mental age of the children with Down syndrome, oral stereognosis ability is fixed from 3 to 5 years and the increase of the number of correct identification was not significant (P>0.05). By the increase of mental age from 3 to 5 years, the time spent on stereognosis was reduced significantly (P<0.05). The number of correct identification among the children with Down syndrome was significantly less than healthy control group with the same age (P<0.05). There was no significant difference between the identification time in both groups (P>0.05). Key words: Oral Stereognosis ability, Down syndrome, Special education, Intra-mouth senses, speech therapy, speech disorder. Stereognosis is the ability to recognize the shapes of objects and is a component of the epicritic sensations which involve fine aspects of touch and include the ability to identify the position that is touched (topognosis), discern vibration and determine its frequency and amplitude, and also to resolve by touch spatial details such as the texture of surfaces and two-point discrimination 2 . Oral stereognosis is placing the object into the mouth of a person to recognize its shape 3 . Voice and speech production, taste and hearing senses are closely associated with stereognosis issue. It seems that gender is not effective here 3, 4 . Oral Stereognosis is an important sensory function in speech production. There is an association between speech production disorder and the low oral stereognosis ability. (Ringel) et al. showed that