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. 2019 Aug 9;28(3):1139-1151.
doi: 10.1044/2019_AJSLP-18-0233. Epub 2019 Jun 28.

Longitudinal Change in Speech Rate and Intelligibility Between 5 and 7 Years in Children With Cerebral Palsy

Meredith D Braza  1   2 , Ashley Sakash  2 , Phoebe Natzke  2 , Katherine C Hustad  1   2
Affiliations

Longitudinal Change in Speech Rate and Intelligibility Between 5 and 7 Years in Children With Cerebral Palsy

Meredith D Braza et al. Am J Speech Lang Pathol. .

Abstract

Purpose We examined growth between 5 and 7 years in speech intelligibility, speech rate, and intelligible words per minute (IWPM) in 3 groups of children: those who were typically developing (TD), those with cerebral palsy (CP) and clinical speech motor impairment (SMI), and those with CP and no SMI (NSMI). Method Twenty-six children with CP, 16 with SMI, and 10 with NSMI were each seen at 5, 6, and 7 years of age. A cross-sectional group of 30 age-matched TD children, 10 in each age group, were included as controls. All children produced a corpus of utterances of 2-7 words. Results All groups of children showed increases in intelligibility and IWPM between 5 and 7 years. Only children with SMI showed increases in speech rate over time. Patterns of change were similar for children in the TD and NSMI groups but different for children in the SMI group. Conclusions The window of time between 5 and 7 years is an important period of growth for the production of connected speech where nearly all children, regardless of group, made significant changes in speech intelligibility and IWPM. Interventions focusing specifically on enhancing intelligibility in this age range may help facilitate even further growth in children with SMI, who still had marked intelligibility reductions at 7 years of age.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Longitudinal change in intelligibility (as measured by percentage of words identified correctly), speech rate, and intelligible words per minute for children with cerebral palsy (CP) at 5, 6, and 7 years of age. Note that thick lines represent means by profile group, and thin lines represent individual child data. The no speech motor impairment (NSMI) group comprises children with CP and no (clinical) speech motor impairment; the speech motor impairment (SMI) group comprises children with CP and (clinical) speech motor impairment.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Cross-sectional differences by age for intelligibility (as measured by percentage of words identified correctly), speech rate, and intelligible words per minute for typically developing children at 5, 6, and 7 years of age. Note that thick lines represent averages (with error bars representing standard deviations), and dots represent individual child data.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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