Concurrent validity between two sequencing tasks (Preston et al., 2021)

Abstract

Purpose: To assess the concurrent validity of two tasks used to inform diagnosis of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), this study evaluated the agreement between the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT) and the Maximum Repetition Rate of Trisyllables (MRR-Tri).Method: A retrospective analysis was conducted with 80 children 7–16 years of age who were referred for treatment studies. All children had a speech sound disorder, and all completed both the SRT and the MRR-Tri. On each task, children were classified as meeting or not meeting the tool’s threshold for CAS based on the sound sequencing errors demonstrated.Results: The two tasks were in agreement for 47 participants (59% of the sample); both tasks classified 13 children as meeting the threshold for CAS and 34 children as not meeting the threshold for CAS. However, the two tasks disagreed on CAS classification for 33 children (41% of the sample). Overall, the MRR-Tri identified more children as having sound sequencing errors indicative of CAS (n = 39) than did the SRT (n = 20).Conclusions: These two tasks of sound sequencing differ in the children they identify with CAS, possibly due to aspects of the underlying task requirements (e.g., time pressure). The SRT and the MRR-Tri should not be used in isolation to identify CAS but may be useful as part of a balanced CAS assessment battery that includes additional tasks that inform the nature of the impairment and that aid treatment planning.Supplemental Material S1. Scatterplots of participant performance in the four groups defined post-hoc by their performance on the Maximum Repetition Rate of Trisyllables (MRR-Tri) and the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT). Only those variables in which there is a significant Kruskall-Wallis test are plotted.Supplemental Material S2. Descriptive and inferential statistics of the four possible subgroups.Preston, J. L., Fenway, N. R., Leece, M. C., & Caballero, N. F. (2021). Concurrent validity between two sound sequencing tasks used to identify childhood apraxia of speech in school-age children. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_AJSLP-20-00108Publisher Note: This article is part of the Special Issue: Select Papers From the 2020 Conference on Motor Speech.