Correspondence between consonant inventories obtained using modified naturalistic listening in real time (NLRT) and parent report

Abstract

Objective: The current study examined the correspondence between consonant inventories obtained using the modified NLRT approach and parent report.

Design: Prospective comparative study.

Setting: Multisite institutional.

Participants: Participants included 70 children with repaired CP + L (mean age = 16 months) who were participating in the multicenter study.

Procedures: Parents of participants were asked to record approximately two hours of their child's vocalizations/words at home using a Language ENvironmental Analysis (LENA^TM) recorder. Four ten-minute audio-recorded samples of vocalizations were extracted from the original recording for each participant and analyzed for size of consonant inventory. Parent reported consonant inventory was compared to coder identified consonant inventory. Coders identified an in-inventory consonant using two different criteria: 2+ tokens of each consonant were required in the first analysis and 10+ tokens of each consonant were required in the second analysis.

Results: Coder identified consonant inventory was larger (mean = 7.90) than that reported by parents (mean = 6.06) when a minimum of two tokens per consonant was required for inclusion of a consonant in inventory, while the inventory transcribed by coders was smaller (mean = 4.46) than that reported by parents when inclusion criteria required a minimum of ten tokens per consonant.

Conclusions: Although the mean number of consonants in inventory between coders and parents was slightly closer using the 10+ versus 2+ criterion for consonant inclusion, the difference was not significant enough to recommend one protocol over the other.

Keywords: Cleft palate; Consonant inventory; Toddlers; Transcription.