Life Span Institute, The University of Kansas, Lawrence.
Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences & Disorders, The University of Kansas, Lawrence.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2022 Oct 17;65(10):3881-3889. doi: 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00010. Epub 2022 Sep 12.
This study examines the effects of communication sample length on the reliability and convergent validity of six vocal measures for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with minimal verbal skills. The results are expected to inform recommendations for the length of communication samples for clinical and research purposes.
Participants included 31 children with ASD (24 boys and seven girls; = 6;7 [years;months], = 17 months) with minimal verbal skills. We coded six vocal measures that focus on vocalizations and early word productions from the Communication Complexity Scale (CCS) scripted administration protocol. To evaluate reliability of different sample lengths, we calculated intraclass correlation coefficients between the full CCS sample and 1-, 3-, 7-, 10-, and 20-min samples. To examine convergent validity, we calculated correlations between the six vocal measures for each sample length.
When coded from 10-min samples from the beginning of the CCS, all of the vocal measures exhibit adequate reliability with the full CCS sample. Some vocal measures exhibit adequate reliability with samples as short as 3 min. For convergent validity, all of the correlations between the vocal measures exceed .40 and are statistically significant for the 10-min samples except for some of the correlations with the proportion of communicative vocalizations. Similar results were found for other sample lengths.
Findings support coding 10-min segments from the CCS scripted administration protocol to evaluate the vocal development skills of children with ASD with minimal verbal skills.
本研究考察了沟通样本长度对 6 项用于评估具有极少量语言能力的自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童的嗓音测量可靠性和聚合效度的影响。研究结果有望为临床和研究目的下沟通样本的长度提供建议。
参与者包括 31 名具有极少量语言能力的 ASD 儿童（24 名男孩和 7 名女孩；年龄中位数=6；7[岁；月]，范围=17 个月）。我们从《沟通复杂度量表》（CCS）脚本管理协议中编码了 6 项专注于嗓音和早期单词发音的嗓音测量。为了评估不同样本长度的可靠性，我们计算了全 CCS 样本与 1、3、7、10 和 20 分钟样本之间的组内相关系数。为了检验聚合效度，我们计算了每种样本长度下 6 项嗓音测量之间的相关性。
当从 CCS 开头的 10 分钟样本中进行编码时，所有的嗓音测量都与全 CCS 样本具有足够的可靠性。一些嗓音测量与 3 分钟的样本也具有足够的可靠性。对于聚合效度，除了与交际性发声比例的一些相关性外，所有嗓音测量之间的相关性都超过了 0.40，且在 10 分钟样本中具有统计学意义。其他样本长度也有相似的结果。
研究结果支持从 CCS 脚本管理协议中编码 10 分钟片段，以评估具有极少量语言能力的 ASD 儿童的嗓音发展技能。
