Assessment of intelligibility using children's spontaneous speech: methodological aspects

• Published in: International journal of language & communication disorders 2014-03, Vol.49 (2), p.228-239
• Main Authors: Lagerberg, Tove B., Åsberg, Jakob, Hartelius, Lena, Persson, Christina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Annan medicin och hälsovetenskap; Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child clinical studies; Child Language; Child, Preschool; Children; Children & youth; Communication Disorders; Comprehension; continuous speech; Correlation; Disorders of higher nervous function. Focal brain diseases. Central vestibular syndrome and deafness. Brain stem syndromes; Female; Humans; intelligibility; Interrater Reliability; Language and communication disorders; Language Development Disorders - diagnosis; Linguistics; Male; Measures (Individuals); Medical sciences; Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes); Neurology; Oral Language; Other Medical Sciences; PCC; Phonemes; Phonetics; Pronunciation; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Rehabilitation; Reliability; Reproducibility of Results; Speech; speech disorder; Speech disorders; Speech Disorders - diagnosis; Speech Impairments; Speech Intelligibility; Speech Production Measurement - methods; Speech Production Measurement - standards; spontaneous speech; Validity
• ISSN: 1368-2822; 1460-6984
• DOI: 10.1111/1460-6984.12067

Background Intelligibility is a speaker's ability to convey a message to a listener. Including an assessment of intelligibility is essential in both research and clinical work relating to individuals with communication disorders due to speech impairment. Assessment of the intelligibility of spontaneous speech can be used as an overall indicator of the severity of a speech disorder. There is a lack of methods for measuring intelligibility on the basis of spontaneous speech. Aims To investigate the validity and reliability of a method where listeners transcribe understandable words and an intelligibility score is calculated on the basis of the percentage of syllables perceived as understood. Methods & Procedures Spontaneous speech from ten children with speech‐sound disorders (mean age = 6.0 years) and ten children with typical speech and language development (mean age = 5.9 years) was recorded and presented to 20 listeners. Results were compared between the two groups and correlation with percentage of consonants correct (PCC) was examined. Outcomes & Results The intelligibility scores obtained correlated with PCC in single words and differed significantly between the two groups, indicating high validity. Inter‐judge reliability, analysed using intra‐class correlation (ICC), was excellent in terms of the average measure for several listeners. Conclusions & Implications The results suggest that this method can be recommended for assessing intelligibility, especially if the mean across several listeners is used. It could also be used in clinical settings when evaluating intelligibility over time, provided that the same listener makes the assessments.