Bilingual and Monolingual Speech-Language Pathologists' Intelligibility Ratings of Children's Nonnative Speech

Purpose: This study examined bilingual and monolingual speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') speech intelligibility ratings of nonnative English-speaking children's conversational speech to determine whether differences exist between these two perceiver groups. Bilingual perceiver differences have been shown in previous research and could impact SLPs' intelligibility ratings, which are an important part of an assessment for speech sound disorders. Method: Thirty bilingual and 30 monolingual SLPs rated audio recordings of conversational speech samples from 15 school-aged, typically developing Spanish–English and Mam–English bilingual children. Speech samples were presented in a randomized order in an online experiment. The data were analyzed using a linear mixed-effects model to determine the effects of SLPs' lingualism on intelligibility ratings. Results: Bilingual and monolingual SLPs' intelligibility ratings were not significantly different from each other. The intelligibility ratings of the Mam–English speaker group were significantly different from those of the Spanish–English speaker group in both listener groups. Conclusions: Bilingual and monolingual SLPs rated the intelligibility of spontaneous speech samples from bilingual child speakers similarly. The familiarity of specific nonnative accents plays a role in SLPs' intelligibility ratings. Clinically, when assessing a bilingual child whose first language is unfamiliar, SLPs must incorporate information from resources such as interpreters. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.30976468