John Munday, M.S., CCC-SLP
T32 Postdoctoral Trainee
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Speech Intelligibility in Children with Low Standardized Articulation Scores
While speech sound development is well studied, there remain questions regarding the functional impact of speech sound errors in children. That disconnect means that knowing the speech errors a child produces does not directly tell clinicians how intelligible they are. This can be problematic as clinicians often include intelligibility goals for a child with a speech sound disorder without knowing if intelligibility is truly reduced. Children who produce speech errors may be at risk of having low speech intelligibility, but the relationship and extent of deficits are unknown. This study investigates three intelligibility outcome measures (listener-rated single-word intelligibility, listener-rated multiword intelligibility, and caregiver-reported intelligibility) in 32 children with below-average standardized articulation scores. We used linear regression models, incorporating age and articulation raw scores to predict each intelligibility outcomes. We also compared relative importance of age and articulation raw score for each intelligibility outcome. Finally, we calculated intelligibility performance for each of the 32 children using normative growth curve data published by our lab. Our results will highlight how age and articulation have different relationships with intelligibility, depending on the outcome measure. We also describe the range of intelligibility performance for children with low standardized articulation scores.
Funding: This work was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Grants R01-DC015653 (awarded to Katherine Hustad) and T32-DC009401 (Awarded to UW-Madison). Support was also provided by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant P50HD105353 (awarded to the Waisman Center).