Park Play: A picture description task for assessing childhood motor speech disorders

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a picture description task for eliciting connected speech from children with motor speech disorders. The Park Play scene is a child-friendly picture description task aimed at augmenting current assessment protocols for childhood motor speech disorders. The design process included a literature review to: (1) establish optimal design features for child assessment, (2) identify a set of evidence-based speech targets specifically tailored to tax the motor speech system, and (3) enhance current assessment tools. To establish proof of concept, five children (ages 4;3–11;1) with dysarthria or childhood apraxia of speech were audio-recorded while describing the Park Play scene. Feedback from the feasibility test informed iterative design modifications. Descriptive, segmental, and prosodic analyses revealed the task was effective in eliciting desired targets in a connected speech sample, thereby yielding additional information beyond the syllables, words, and sentences generally elicited through imitation during the traditional motor speech examination. Further discussion includes approaches to adapt the task for a variety of clinical needs.

Keywords::

• Assessment
• children
• motor speech disorders

Note

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the creative and enthusiastic contributions of Kathleen Malone, Jennifer Justus, Paige Burke, Christi Berglund, Renee Stapleton, Soneth Yem, and Diana Franco in the development of the first iteration of the scene. We also appreciate the assistance of the clinicians at Braintree Rehabilitation Pediatric Outpatient Clinic for their assistance with recruitment and data collection and the participant families for their time, effort, and feedback. Finally, we acknowledge Carrie Hartman's exceptional talent in taking our ideas and constraints and patiently working with us to render the Park Play scene.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Notes

1. Carrie Hartman – http://www.carriehartman.com/Portfolio/HOME_.html