Development and Validation of a Connected Speech Analysis Protocol and Presentation of Speech Indices Averages in Persian-Speaking Adults

Abstract

Introduction:Connected speech assessment in linguistic, cognitive, and clinical evaluations provides valuable information about grammar, semantics, and pragmatics, as well as a more realistic picture of a person's abilities in everyday social situations. Considering the necessity of a guide for its analysis, this study aimed to develop a connected speech analysis protocol and determine its validity.Materials and Methods:In the first phase, the protocol was developed using the Delphi method with 6 experts (2 Ph.D. in Linguistics, 2 Ph.D., and 2 Masters in Speech Therapy). In the second phase, the validity of the protocol was investigated by the content validity ratio (CVR), and the main and supplementary indices were determined. For differential validity, the connected speech of 108 healthy Persian-speaking individuals aged 18 to 75 were compared according to the developed indices.Results:The protocol was developed with 12 main and 8 supplementary indices and their validity was investigated. The results of the ANOVA test showed that 7 indices the average length of utterance, the number of nouns, the ratio of function words to the total vocabulary, the ratio of content words to the total vocabulary, the number of content words, the number of function words and type-token ratio- had a significant difference in 3 age groups.Conclusion: The connected speech analysis protocol can be an effective and valid tool for analyzing the connected speech of Persian-speaking adults. Also, the relationship between language indices and age indicates differences in language performance and should be considered in connected speech evaluation.