Acoustic Measures of Word-Level Prosody in Childhood Apraxia of Speech: An Initial Validation Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The "gold standard" of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) diagnosis is expert clinical judgment based on perception of core features: inconsistent errors, impaired transitions, and impaired prosody. However, this standard has several limitations, which may be addressed with acoustic measures.

Purpose

This retrospective study aims to provide initial validity evidence for nine acoustic measures of prosody and examine lexical stress production in CAS.

Method

The study involves 33 children with CAS (4-8 years) imitating six bisyllabic words (three strong-weak, three weak-strong). For each word, nine acoustic measures of prosody were obtained: three pairwise variability index measures, two lexical stress ratio measures and their three component ratios, and word s

SUBMITTER: Littlejohn M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12337114 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature