The purpose of this investigation was to compare children's perceptions of the nonspeech characteristics of dysarthric and normal peers. Recordings of six three-word Phrases produced by 16 speakers, eight dysarthric and eight normal-speaking children, were presented to 20 peers for judgments of nonspeech characteristics on a semantic differential scale containing 22 bipolar adjective pairs. Results of the ratings indicated that for all but one of the 22 pairs (95.4%) the normal speakers were judged more positively than the dysarthric speakers. Moreover, for all of the 22 pairs the differences in listeners' ratings between the two speaker groups were statistically significant. Implications of these findings concerning children's perceptions of dysarthric speech and their potential impact on mainstreaming in schools are discussed.
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