Speech Development Between 30 and 119 Months in Typical Children III: Interaction Between Speaking Rate and Intelligibility.

Purpose: Earlier work has established developmental benchmarks for intelligibility and articulation rate, but the intersection of these two variables, especially within individual children, has received limited attention. This study examines the interaction between intelligibility and speaking rate in typically developing children between the ages 2;6 and 9;11 (years;months) and evaluates whether children show a speed-accuracy trade-off in their habitual speech production.

Method: Speech samples of varying lengths were collected from 538 typically developing children.

Intelligibility in Context Scale: Growth Curves for Typically Developing English-Speaking Children Between Ages 2;6 and 9;11.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to quantify the clinical utility of the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS) English version by characterizing the growth patterns of the ICS composite scores and seven ICS individual item scores of typically developing American English-speaking children.

Method: Parents of 545 typically developing children aged 2;6-9;11 (years;months) completed the ICS. Using a proportional odds model, we regressed ICS composite scores on age and computed for model-estimated mean and lower quantile ICS composite scores.

Developmental Cut-Points for Atypical Speech Intelligibility in Children With Cerebral Palsy.

Purpose: Early identification of speech motor involvement (SMI) in children with cerebral palsy (CP) is difficult because of overlapping features with many aspects of typical speech development. Quantitative measures of speech intelligibility have the potential to differentiate between children with SMI and those with no SMI (NSMI). We examined thresholds for speech intelligibility development in children with CP relative to the low end of age-specific typical developmental expectations.

Lexical Predictors of Intelligibility in Young Children's Speech.

Purpose: Speech perception is a probabilistic process, integrating bottom-up and top-down sources of information, and the frequency and phonological neighborhood of a word can predict how well it is perceived. In addition to asking how intelligible speakers are, it is important to ask how intelligible individual words are. We examined whether lexical features of words influenced intelligibility in young children.

Perceptual measurement of articulatory goodness in young children: Relationships with age, speech sound acquisition, and intelligibility.

Speech language pathologists regularly use perceptual methods in clinical practice to assess children's speech. In this study, we examined relationships between measures of speech intelligibility, clinical articulation test results, age, and perceptual ratings of articulatory goodness for children. We also examined the extent to which established measures of intelligibility and clinical articulation test results predicted articulatory goodness ratings, and whether goodness ratings were influenced by intelligibility.

Longitudinal change in speech classification between 4 and 10 years in children with cerebral palsy.

Aim: To examine speech impairment severity classification over time in a longitudinal cohort of children with cerebral palsy (CP).

Method: A total of 101 children (58 males, 43 females) between the ages of 4 and 10 years with CP participated in this longitudinal study. Speech severity was rated using the Viking Speech Scale (VSS), a four-level classification rating scale, at 4, 6, 8, and 10 years (age 4 years: mean = 52 months [3 SD]; age 6 years: mean = 75 months [2 SD]; age 8 years: mean = 100 months [4 SD]; age 10 years: mean = 125 months [5 SD]).

Speech Development Between 30 and 119 Months in Typical Children II: Articulation Rate Growth Curves.

Purpose We aimed to develop normative growth curves for articulation rate during sentence repetition for typically developing children. Our primary goal was the development of quantile/percentile growth curves so that typical variation in articulation rate with age could be estimated. We also estimated when children became adultlike in their articulation rate, and we examined the contributions of age and utterance length to articulation rate.

Speech Development Between 30 and 119 Months in Typical Children I: Intelligibility Growth Curves for Single-Word and Multiword Productions.

Purpose We extended our earlier study on normative growth curves for intelligibility development in typical children from 30 to 119 months of age. We also determined quantile-specific age of steepest growth and growth rates. A key goal was to establish age-specific benchmarks for single-word and multiword intelligibility.

Performance of Forced-Alignment Algorithms on Children's Speech.

Purpose Acoustic measurement of speech sounds requires first segmenting the speech signal into relevant units (words, phones, etc.). Manual segmentation is cumbersome and time consuming.

Longitudinal Growth in Intelligibility of Connected Speech From 2 to 8 Years in Children With Cerebral Palsy: A Novel Bayesian Approach.

Aim The aim of the study was to examine longitudinal growth in intelligibility in connected speech from 2 to 8 years of age in children with cerebral palsy. Method Sixty-five children with cerebral palsy participated in the longitudinal study. Children were classified into speech-language profile groups using age-4 data: no speech motor impairment (SMI), SMI with typical language comprehension, and SMI with impaired language comprehension.

Longitudinal Growth in Single-Word Intelligibility Among Children With Cerebral Palsy From 24 to 96 Months of Age: Effects of Speech-Language Profile Group Membership on Outcomes.

Purpose We examined whether there were differences among speech-language profile groups of children with cerebral palsy (CP) in age of crossing 25%, 50%, and 75% intelligibility thresholds; age of greatest intelligibility growth; rate of intelligibility growth; maximum attained intelligibility at 8 years; and how well intelligibility at 36 months predicts intelligibility at 96 months when group membership is accounted for. Profile groups were children with no speech motor impairment (NSMI), those with speech motor impairment and language comprehension that is typically developing (SMI-LCT), and those with speech motor impairment and language comprehension impairment (SMI-LCI). Method Sixty-eight children with CP were followed longitudinally between 24 and 96 months of age.

Effects of Rate Manipulation on Intelligibility in Children With Cerebral Palsy.

Purpose We evaluated the effects of a speech supplementation strategy to reduce rate and improve intelligibility in children with cerebral palsy. Method Twenty-five children with cerebral palsy ( = 12.08 years) completed a structured speaking task in 2 speech conditions: habitual speech and slow speech.