The purpose of this study is to examine speech intelligibility of children with primary speech and sound disorders aged 3 to 6 years in everyday life. The research problem is based on the degree to which parents or guardians, immediate family members (sister, brother, grandparents), extended family members (aunt, uncle, cousin), child's friends, other acquaintances, child's teachers and strangers understand the speech of children with speech sound disorders.
We examined whether the level of familiarity influences speech intelligibility of children with speech sound disorders. At the same time, we investigated whether the statistically significant difference between speech intelligibility of children with speech and sound disorders and children without speech and sound disorders in relation to the above mentioned communication partners exists.
We used the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS), a tool for assessing children's speech intelligibility, to measure the research problem.
The results suggest that children with speech and sound disorders are less intelligible than children without speech and sound disorders. The level of speech intelligibility decreases with the decrease of the level of familiarity, therefore, children are most intelligible to their parents and least intelligible to strangers. Speech intelligibility increases with chronological age. Speech intelligibility in children with a speech disorder is higher than in children with a sound disorder. Girls' speech intelligibility is higher than boys' speech intelligibility, but it is not statistically significant.
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