Severity

Measuring Speech Severity

1. Introduction

• Severity measures how accurately a speaker produces speech sounds compared to intended sounds.

2. Percent Consonants Correct (PCC)

• Procedure:

  • Record a 5-10 minute speech sample.

  • Count total consonants versus correct consonants to derive a percentage.

• Exceptions:

  • Acceptable coarticulation patterns (e.g., /wɑtɚ/, /wɑdɚ/, /wɑɾɚ/ for "water").

  • The post-vocalic “r” in "farm" counts as a consonant.

3. Application Activity for PCC

• Analyze CLIENT A's and Claire's samples:

  • Count consonants.

  • Calculate accuracy percentage.

• Review results after activity.

4. Percent Whole-Words Correct (PWC)

• Concept: Measure correctness by counting accurate words as proposed by Ingram (2002).

5. Application Activity for PWC

• Analyze samples:

  • Count total words and accurately used words.

  • Calculate accuracy percentage.

• Review results after activity.

6. Percent Whole-Word Variability (PWV)

• Concept: Measures production variability of words (Ingram & Ingram, 2001).

• Procedure:

  • List repetitions and varying productions for words.

  • Calculate the number of different productions per total productions.

  • Average to find PWV, indicating consistency in speech.

7. Application Activity for PWV

• Calculate PWV for Claire's and CLIENT A's samples.

• Review results after activity.

8. Phonemic Mean Length Utterance (PMLU)

• Concept: Measures mean length units of phonemes in utterances for speech analysis.