Intelligibility in Context Scale: Sensitivity and specificity in the Jamaican context.
Michelle Leon, Karla N Washington, Kristina A Fritz and 3 others
PMID 32462946WHAT IT FOUND
Parent ratings on the Intelligibility in Context Scale helped screen English-Jamaican Creole bilingual preschoolers for suspected speech sound disorders.
Scores below 4.12 flagged concern, but some typically developing children were also flagged, so use it to guide further assessment.
Key findings
01An optimal cut-off mean score was 4.12 for both the English and Jamaican Creole versions.
02Children with suspected speech sound disorders had lower parent-reported intelligibility scores than typically developing children in both English and Jamaican Creole.
03The seven parent questions produced consistent scores in both English and Jamaican Creole.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The children were grouped as typical or suspected disorder using parent and teacher or speech-language pathologist concern, not a fully validated bilingual diagnostic standard. Complete data were available for 262 of 303 children because of corrupt or missing files. The Jamaican Creole version was available only after 2014, so only 215 children have data for it. Some assessors used an English dialect that did not match the participants, which could have affected speech judgments. The sample was mostly Jamaican preschoolers from five early learning centres, plus 10 children in New York City, so it does not represent all Jamaican preschoolers. Only simultaneous bilinguals were included, and children with neurological, developmental, or audiological concerns were excluded, so results may not apply to other bilingual profiles or co-occurring conditions. Objective speech accuracy scores were very high with ceiling effects, which may limit how well they show differences between groups.
Declared interests
The authors reported no relevant conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat a mean score of 4.12 as proof that a child has a speech sound disorder. The tool was a screening measure, and its specificity was 0.70 or 0.71, so it should guide further assessment rather than make a diagnosis.