A preliminary investigation into the acoustic variability of examiners' productions in language assessments

Speech-language pathologists often use live-voice assessments to identify communication disorders in children. This study investigated the median F0, F0 range, and speaking rate of 12 examiners administering a commonly used sentence repetition assessment to 151 children aged from three to nine years. Results demonstrated that the acoustic characteristics differed between examiners and suggested that variation in these characteristics is associated with the child's age. Further research is needed to understand how variability in examiners' speech characteristics could potentially impact children's performance in language tasks.