Computer-Assisted Syllable Complexity Analysis of Continuous Speech as a Measure of Child Speech Disorders

A common indicator of speech production disorders in children is a reduced ability to articulate complex syllables. Clinical studies of syllabic complexity of child speech have traditionally relied on phonetic transcription by trained listeners to characterize deviations in phonotatic structure. The labor-intensive nature of transcribing, segmenting, labeling, and hand-counting syllables has limited clinical analysis of large samples of continuous speech. In this paper, we discuss the use of a computer-assisted method, Automatic Syllabic Cluster Analysis, for broad transcription, segmentation, and counting syllabic units as a means for fast analysis of differences in speech precision when comparing children with and without speech-related disorders. Findings show that the number of syllabic clusters per utterance is a significant indicator of speech disorder.