Intelligibility of 4-Year-Old Children With and Without Cerebral Palsy

Purpose: The authors examined speech intelligibility in typically developing (TD) children and 3 groups of children with cerebral palsy (CP) who were classified into speech/language profile groups following Hustad, Gorton, and Lee (2010). Questions addressed differences in transcription intelligibility scores among groups, the effects of utterance length on intelligibility, the relationship between ordinal ratings of intelligibility and orthographic transcription intelligibility scores, and the difference between parent and naive listener ordinal ratings. Method: Speech samples varying in length from 1 to 7 words were elicited from 23 children with CP (M-age = 54.3 months) and 20 TD children (M-age = 55.1 months). Two hundred fifteen naive listeners made orthographic transcriptions and ordinal ratings of intelligibility. Parent ordinal ratings of intelligibility were obtained from a previous study (Hustad et al., 2010). Results: Intelligibility varied with speech/language profile group and utterance length, with different patterns observed by profile group. Ratings of intelligibility by parents and naive listeners did not differ, and both were highly correlated with transcription intelligibility scores. Conclusion: Intelligibility was reduced for all groups of children with CP relative to TD children, suggesting the importance of speech-language intervention and the need for research investigating variables associated with changes in intelligibility in children.