IDENTIFICATION OF CHILDREN WITH AND WITHOUT CLEFT-PALATE FROM TAPE-RECORDED SAMPLES OF EARLY VOCALIZATIONS AND SPEECH

Thirty judges (5 speech pathologists, 10 mothers of children with clef t palate, and 15 mothers of noncleft children) listened to 90 tape-rec orded samples of early vocalizations/speech obtained from noncleft bab ies and babies with cleft palate. Each sample was classified by the ju dges as normal or abnormal. As a group, the speech pathologists classi fied only 60% of the cleft samples as abnormal and 59% of the normal s amples as normal. The cleft and noncleft mother groups, on the other h and, classified 37% and 25% of the cleft samples as abnormal and 59% a nd 73% of the normal samples as normal. Poor interjudge agreement was evident within and across the three groups of judges. The poor reliabi lity demonstrated by the speech pathologists in identifying babies wit h unrepaired clefts appeared related more to a difference in interpret ation of the perceptual data than an inability to hear salient informa tion.