Abstract
Objective:
This study describes a preliminary evaluation of the construct and concurrent validity of the Speech Intelligibility Probe for Children With Cleft Palate.
Design:
The study used a prospective between-groups design with convenience samples.
Participants:
Participants (ages 39 to 82 months) included 5 children with cleft palate and 10 children with typical speech development and no history of craniofacial abnormalities. All children had age-appropriate language skills.
Interventions:
Each child completed the Speech Intelligibility Probe for Children With Cleft Palate by imitating single words. Each child's word productions were recorded and played back to listeners who completed open-set and closed-set response tasks. Recorded utterances that represented a contiguous 100-word sample of each child's spontaneous speech also were played back to listeners for completion of an open-set word identification task.
Main Outcome Measures:
Measures reported include group means for (1) intelligibility scores for the open-set Speech Intelligibility Probe for Children With Cleft Palate and spontaneous speech sample conditions, and (2) percentage of phonetic contrasts correct and correct-distorted from the Speech Intelligibility Probe for Children With Cleft Palate closed-set response task.
Results:
The group of children with cleft palate had significantly lower intelligibility scores, lower percentage of correct phonetic contrasts, and higher percentage of correct distorted items (construct validity). A strong positive correlation (r = .88, p < .01) was found between intelligibility scores from the Speech Intelligibility Probe for Children With Cleft Palate and the spontaneous sample (concurrent validity).
Conclusions:
The results provide preliminary support for the construct and concurrent validities of the Speech Intelligibility Probe for Children With Cleft Palate as a measure of children's speech intelligibility.
Keywords
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