Abstract
Purpose: This study examined 2nd-grade teachers' perceptions of the academic, social, and behavioral competence of students with speech sound disorders (SSDs). Method: Forty-eight 2nd-grade teachers listened to 2 groups of sentences differing by intelligibility and pitch but spoken by a single 2nd grader. For each sentence group, teachers rated the speaker's academic, social, and behavioral competence using an adapted version of the Teacher Rating Scale of the Self-Perception Profile for Children (S. Harter, 1985) and completed 3 open-ended questions. The matched-guise design controlled for confounding speaker and stimuli variables that were inherent in prior studies. Results: Statistically significant differences in teachers' expectations of children's academic, social, and behavioral performances were found between moderately intelligible and normal intelligibility speech. Teachers associated moderately intelligible low-pitched speech with more behavior problems than moderately intelligible high-pitched speech or either pitch with normal intelligibility. One third of the teachers reported that they could not accurately predict a child's school performance based on the child's speech skills, one third of the teachers causally related school difficulty to SSD, and one third of the teachers made no comment. Conclusion: Intelligibility and speaker pitch appear to be speech variables that influence teachers' perceptions of children's school performance.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 327-341 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | Language, speech, and hearing services in schools |
Volume | 38 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2007 |
Keywords
- Intelligibility
- Literacy
- School-age children
- Speech disorder
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language
- Speech and Hearing