Predicting children's oral reading proficiency from selected acoustic and perceptual measures

In contrast to the amount of information available on acoustic characteristics of adults' effective speech, little data are available on children's vocal effectiveness. A study, therefore, has been initiated to examine the relationship between some acoustic characteristics and listener judgments of children's vocal effectiveness. This article is a sequel to the first one, which reported some acoustic characteristics of oral reading by 36 10- to 12-year-old children. It describes results of perceptual analyses of oral reading proficiency on a five-point scale, of reading error analysis, and results of multiple regression analysis for testing predictability of the oral reading proficiency from the perceptual and acoustical measures. Some sex differences in oral reading proficiency are also discussed.