Auditory-perceptual motor speech features in preschoolers: Norms and utility in differentiating childhood apraxia of speech and dysarthria

The long-term goal of this work is to develop and validate a clinically feasible, norm-referenced assessment protocol to identify children with speech features that are atypical for their age and facilitate early and accurate differential diagnosis of CAS and dysarthria. The proposed project represents the first step towards this goal, using a rigorous approach to quantifying auditory-perceptual features of motor speech disorders in children and systematically considering the overlapping and unique features of CAS and dysarthria in the context of typical development. Aim 1 will use a cross-sectional design to establish growth curves for development of auditory-perceptual speech features associated with motor speech disorders in 3-6-year-old children with typical development. Aim 2 will use a random forest approach to identify speech features that best classify children with motor speech disorders into clinically validated groups (i.e., CAS and dysarthria), adjusting for age. Aim 3 will use exploratory factor analyses to identify data-driven clusters of motor speech features (latent classes) that will be compared to feature profiles of the clinically validated diagnostic groups.