Research Article
Heathe L Rams dellHudock, Kayl
Abstract
ABSTRACT Purpose: We aimed to identify a child age when inter-rater phonetic transcription reliability reaches an acceptable level for documentation of speech sounds in development. Method: Specifically, 20 randomly selected vocalizations were phonetically transcribed from three cohorts of children between 7 to 24 months of age (a total of 1,920 utterances).Transcriptions were analyzed using an automated weighted reliability measure. A repeated-measures ANOVA was used to evaluate differences in phonetic transcription reliability across child age from 7 through 24 months. Results: An acceptable reliability value of 0.8 was obtained when comparing transcriptions of vocalizations from children by 21 months of age. Conclusion: Phonetic transcription becomes a reliable method to document speech sound productions when children are 21 months of age, and therefore, clinicians and researchers should consider other methods (such as caregiver report) for analyzing vocalizations prior to 21 months of age.