Speech sound perception assessment in paediatric population: considerations on existing tasks

Abstract

Children with Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) have difficulties in the acquisition of speech sounds, and poor speech intelligibility. These difficulties have negative academic and socio-economic repercussions, often persisting until adulthood. There is a need for reliable assessment protocols, since the prevalence of speech sound disorders speech-language pathologists’ caseloads is high (Dodd, 2014). The focus of this article is an inventory of French clinical tools for speech perception assessment in pediatric population and a comparison of these tools in terms of psychometrics and inherent characteristics of an efficient perception task. The goal is to provide speech-language pathologists with a framework for the selection of assessment protocols in an Evidence-Based Practice approach. In this study, we inventoried ten main perception tasks used for French-speaking children. We examined two aspects of these tests by using analysis grids. First, we analyzed the psychometric side with a grid adapted from Leclercq & Veys (2014) and Lafay & Cattini (2018). Second, we evaluated the characteristics of a perception task with a criterion grid adapted from Locke (1980a). The results showed that, even if the tests are adapted to children of different ages and quick to administer, very few include a justification for the selected targets or establish a link between perception and production abilities. In addition, these tests do not satisfy psychometric standards, especially sensibility and specificity. In fact, only a few tests include a pathologic population in their standardization process. This study promotes Evidence-Based Practice approach and offers to guide clinicians in the selection of diagnostic tests.