Comparison of speech rate and intelligibility between children with cerebral palsy and typically developing children in Taiwan

Abstract

Due to the defect of speech motor control, cerebral palsied children (CP) with dysarthria often show slower, weaker, and imprecise articulation with poor coordination, which have profound impact on speech intelligibility (Hodge & Gotzke, 2014; Hustad, Gorton, & Lee, 2010). It was reported that CP children had lower speech rate and intelligibility than typically developing (TD) children. However, little research discussed the application of this finding in languages other than English. The present study investigated the correlations between speech rate and intelligibility in 4 Mandarin-speaking CP children aged 4-8 and 4 TD children aged 5. Speech data were collected from the repetition tasks of sentences ranging from 3 to 8 words. Speech rate were calculated through WPM (words per minute) and IWPM (intelligible words per minute), and speech intelligibility of each child was judged by three listeners. The results showed that: 1) TD had significantly higher mean intelligibility and slightly higher IWPM than the CP group; 2) Mean WPM of CP was higher than TD; 3) Higher WPM in CP did not correspond to higher intelligibility. Contrary to the previous findings, in the present study, CP showed higher WPM but lower intelligibility. This discrepancy requires further examinations in future studies.