Sensitivity and specificity of the Percentage of Consonants Correct-Revised in the identification of speech sound disorder

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine the sensitivity and specificity, and to establish cutoff points for the severity index Percentage of Consonants Correct - Revised (PCC-R) in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children with and without speech sound disorders. Methods: 72 children between 5:00 and 7:11 years old - 36 children without speech and language complaints and 36 children with speech sound disorders. The PCC-R was applied to the figure naming and word imitation tasks that are part of the ABFW Child Language Test. Results were statistically analyzed. The ROC curve was performed and sensitivity and specificity values of the index were verified. Results: The group of children without speech sound disorders presented greater PCC-R values in both tasks, regardless of the gender of the participants. The cutoff value observed for the picture naming task was 93.4%, with a sensitivity value of 0.89 and specificity of 0.94 (age independent). For the word imitation task, results were age-dependent: for age group ≤6:5 years old, the cutoff value was 91.0% (sensitivity of 0.77 and specificity of 0.94) and for age group > 6:5 years-old, the cutoff value was 93.9% (sensitivity of 0.93 and specificity of 0.94). Conclusion: Given the high sensitivity and specificity of PCC-R, we can conclude that the index was effective in discriminating and identifying children with and without speech sound disorders.