in need of normative information re: intelligibility

[Barbara Pearson]

Dear Kim,

I will be interested to hear what you find.  You raise a
question that has received relatively little discussion.

Betty Hart (of Hart and Risley) may also have some data that
speaks to your request for norms for intelligibility. If you look at
H &R  _The Social World of Children Learning to Talk_ (1999, p. 281),
there is a graph comparing word utterances and non-word utterances
which may point you in the direction of an answer.  They have
graphs like those on page 291 (appendix C) for each of
the children in the study, but I don't think they are published.

There is some lack of clarity of what is a "non-word" and what is
unintelligible.  Hart gives examples of "sound effects" and
"nonsense refrains" but the text and the caption show that
such uttterances are lumped together with "babble"
and "gibberish."   The graph on page 281 shows 19 months
as the average for when 1/2 of a child's utterances are
"comprehensible."  That of course leaves 1/2 that's not
intelligible; and also a large number of the children with later ages
to achieve that milestone.  By two it looks like the average for the
H&R sample is 3:1, intelligible to unintelligible.

I consulted Hart about this when Ana Navarro, a student at Miami was
doing her dissertation project and found that without context, only 24%
of the utterances (words and short phrases) of 26-month-olds
--bilinguals AND monolinguals--were intelligible to naive listeners.
(The outline of the project is in the ISB4 Proceedings, Navarro, 
Pearson,
Cobo-Lewis & Oller.)  Note that these were all words that were 
intelligible
in context, so it raises the question of "intelligible to whom."

I hope this is some help.  Perhaps you could let us know more about
how the question came up for you.

Till soon,
Barbara Pearson

On Sep 16, 2005, at 11:01 AM, Kim Ventimiglia wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>  
> I am in need of normative information concerning the percentage of 
> utterances that are intelligible in 2, 2.5, and 3 year-old 
> typically-developing children.  I have seen a citation for Gard, 
> Gilman, and Gorman but do not have the year or any other publication 
> information.  does anyone have this information?
>  
> Wth thanks,
>  
>  
> Kim M. DesBarres, MS, CCC-SLP
> Clinical Supervisor
> Donald R. Reed Speech & Hearing Center
> Phleps Memorial Hospital
>  
>  
>  
>

*****************************************
Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph. D.
Project Manager, Research Assistant
Dept. of Communication Disorders
University of Massachusetts
Amherst MA 01003

413.545.5023
fax: 545.0803

bpearson at comdis.umass.edu
http://www.umass.edu/aae/
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