Connected speech of two-year-olds: Test-retest reliability for assessment of phonetic inventory and word shape analysis

Abstract

Purpose: Clinicians and researchers depend in part on informal measures, those that are not standardized or norm referenced, to reliably represent young children's speech sound productions. However, few investigations have explored the reliable use of such measures with young children. Consequently, little is known about the consistency of extrapolated findings from informal measures. The present study aimed to address this issue by testing the short-term (one week) reliability of informal measures used for independent analyses of speech sound productions, analyses that describe productions without comparison to an adult standard, with two-year-old children. Methods: Participants were eleven two-year-old monolingual American English-speaking toddlers without communication delays. The two informal independent measures studied were phonetic inventory and word shape analysis. The researchers compared the analysis outcomes of two 20-minute parent-child, play-based connected speech samples collected one week apart under near-identical circumstances. Results: Findings indicated measures of phonetic inventory for consonants across word positions (initial, medial, and final) and in clusters were stable over a short-term (one-week) time frame. Although the word shape analysis studied did not reach the level of consideration for short-term reliability, this could be an artifact of procedural differences in conducting this type of analysis. Conclusions: The present study findings offered partial support for the continued use of informal independent measures for clinicians and researchers working with young children. Support was noted for the reliable use of phonetic inventory; however, administration of word shape analyses may result in unreliable representations of young children's speech sound repertoires.