Graduate Student Clinicians' Perceptions of Child Speech Sound Errors.
Seyoung Jung, Linye Jing, Maria Grigos
PMID 38433852WHAT IT FOUND
Graduate students agreed with experts on 80.71% of accurate speech but only 54.27% of inaccurate speech.
Use the 3-point scale for progress tracking, not diagnosis. Students need specific criteria and practice to judge errors reliably.
Key findings
01Graduate students reached substantial agreement with expert SLPs on average (Kappa .62), but agreement varied widely across individuals (.51 to .73).
02Students were much better at identifying accurate productions (80.71% agreement) than inaccurate ones (54.27% agreement) or close approximations (55.74% agreement).
03The study stimuli were limited to simple word shapes and bilabial phonemes, so findings may not apply to the full range of speech sound errors seen in clinic.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The listeners had no clinical experience with direct client contact, so their performance may not reflect that of practicing clinicians. The study used only simple word shapes and bilabial phonemes, which do not represent the full range of speech errors clinicians encounter. Participants completed the task remotely, and the researchers did not control the listening environment or headphone quality. Hearing status was self-reported and not screened by the experimenters. The ratings were auditory-only; in clinical practice, visual cues are often available and can influence judgments.
Declared interests
The authors declared no competing financial or nonfinancial interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that graduate students are ready to use this scale for diagnosis or complex error analysis. Their agreement with experts was poor for inaccurate and close-approximation productions, indicating they need significant perceptual training and specific criteria to distinguish subtle error types reliably.