The Intelligibility of Children’s Speech

Abstract

Summary descriptions are included for 19 procedures that have been, or could be, used to assess the intelligibility of pediatric subjects. Most procedures can be placed in one of the following categories, depending on the emphasis of the analysis: phonetic contrast analysis, phonological process analysis, word identification tests, phonetic indices derived from continuous speech scoring, scaling of continuous speech, and traditional word-level analysis of continuous speech. The general discussion includes an examination of the major issues to be considered in intelligibility testing and a set of criteria to be applied in test selection.