Motor speech disorder in childhood
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Motor speech disorder in childhood: association between word and speaker characteristics on intelligibility
IRAS ID
249670
Contact name
Lindsay Pennington
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Newcastle University
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 2 months, 2 days
Research summary
Children who have motor disorders, such as cerebral palsy, often have speech difficulties. Their speech sounds breathy, hoarse, weak and lacking in modulation. They also may be able to produce only a restricted range of consonant and vowel sounds. Together, these features make children difficult to understand.
We have conducted a series of pilot and feasibility studies to test the potential effects of a speech therapy for this group of children. As part of the research, children were audio recorded repeating single words, describing pictures and answering questions. The recordings were played to listeners, who wrote down the words they heard children say. From this we worked out how understandable (intelligible) children were before and after the therapy. This project will analyse the data collected from our previous studies to examine the characteristics in children's speech that make them easier to understand and the characteristics that predict how children respond to therapy.
Previous research into non-disordered speech has found that words are easier to understand when heard in isolation or in sentences if: they are shorter; appear more frequently in everyday speech; are simple in structure (eg cat) rather than complex (eg.g strained); are function words, such as 'of' and 'to'. We will test if similar patterns are found in the speech of children with cerebral palsy. We will also test if the particular patterns of speech specific to children with cerebral palsy, such as reduced pitch range and loudness, are associated with intelligibility.
Specifically, we will examine the effects of
1) the words spoken, including word length, articulatory complexity, frequency, type
2) speaker characteristics, e.g ability to stress words by changing pitch and loudness, type of cerebral palsy
on intelligibility.REC name
North West - Preston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/NW/0752
Date of REC Opinion
6 Nov 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion