Proceedings Fonetik 2009 - Institutionen för lingvistik

Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm Universityof his results of the subtests were on the levelof guessing (50%). The result might be a goodtype of screening for what the child needs totrain in the speech clinic.The results for the children with specificlanguage impairment showed very large differences.All children had difficulties with severalcontrasts. Especially consonantal features andduration seemed to be difficult for them to perceive.Studies of normal-hearing children withnormal speech developmentTwo studies have been done to receive referencedata for HöraTal-Test from children withnormal hearing and normal speech development.One study reported results from childrenaged between 4;0 and 5;11 years. (Gadeborg &Lundgren, 2008) and the other study (Möllerström& Åkerfeldt, 2008) tested children between6;0 and 7;11 years.In the first study (Gadeborg & Lundgren,2008) 16 four-year-old children and 19 fiveyear-oldchildren participated. One of the conclusionsof this study was that the four-year-oldchildren were not able to pass the test. Only 3of the four-year-old children manage to do thewhole test. The rest of the children didn’t wantto finish the test, were too unconcentrated ordidn’t understand the concept of same/different.13 of the five-year-old children did thewhole test, which are 16 subtests as the firsttwo subtests were used in this study to introducethe test to the children.10090807060504030201003 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18Figure 5. Mean result on 16 subtests (the first twosubtests were used as introduction) for 13 normalhearingfive-year-old children with normal speechdevelopment.The children had high mean scores on the subtests(94,25 % correct answers) which indicatesthat a five-year-old child with normal hearingand normal speech development should receivehigh scores on HöraTal-Test.In the other study (Möllerström & Åkerfeldt,2008) 36 children aged between 6:0 and7:11 years were assessed with all subtests ofHöraTal-Test to provide normative data. Ingeneral, the participants obtained high scoreson all subtests. Seven-year-old participants performedbetter (98,89%) than six-year-olds onaverage (94,28%)100%95%90%85%80%75%70%65%60%55%50%1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18Figure 6. Mean result on all 18 subtests for 18 sixyear-oldnormal-hearing children with normalspeech development (grey bars) and 18 seven-yearoldnormal-hearing children with normal speechdevelopment (black bars).ConclusionsThe preliminary results reported here indicatethat this type of a computerized speech testgives valuable information about which speechsound contrasts a hearing or speech disordedchild has difficulties with. The child’s resultson the different subtests, consisting of bothacoustic and articulatory differences betweencontrasting sounds, form a useful basis as anindividual diagnosis of the child’s difficulties.This can be of great relevance for the work ofthe speech therapists.The intention is that this test should be normalizedto various groups of children so theresult of one child could be compared to groupdata. The test is useful supplementary informationto the pure tone audiogram. Hopefully itwill meet the long-felt need for such a test forearly diagnostic purposes in recommending anddesigning pedagogical habilitation programsfor small children with difficulties in perceivingand producing speech.99