Comparisons of the Percentage of Correct Consonants, Speech Intelligibility, and Speech Acceptability among Children with Cleft Palate, Children with Functional Articulation Disorder, and Normally Developing Children

Han, Jin Soon; Sim, Hyun Sub

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2008;13(3): 454-476.

Jin Soon Han^` , and Hyun Sub Sim^`

한진순(Jin Soon Han)| 심현섭(Hyun Sub Sim)

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
The purpose of current study was to examine how the Percentage of Correct Consonants (PCC) derived from the speech of the children with cleft palate (CP) have effects on the speech intelligibility and on the speech acceptability. For this, the present study compared the PCC, the speech intelligibility, and the speech acceptability of the CP children with those of the children with functional articulation disorder and the normally developing children.
Methods
Three to six year olds age-matched 9 children with cleft palate, 9 children with functional articulation disorder, and 9 normal developing children participated in this study as speakers. All subjects were asked to repeat seven 8-syllable sentences. The judgment of the correct articulation of the target sound was made and then the PCC was calculated for each sentence. After listening each sentence, 40 naive listeners were asked to rate both speech intelligibility and speech acceptability of each sentence on the 10 cm line of Visual Analog Scale.
Results
The PCC, speech intelligibility, and speech acceptability of the sentences in cleft palate children were significantly lower than the normal children in general.
Discussion & Conclusion
Even though the speech intelligibility and speech acceptability are influenced by the PCC, they are not the same measures.