Directory of European Resources > Eurocleft Clinical Network > Consensus Recommendations > Record Taking Methodology - Speech

A fundamental problem for speech and language pathology has been the lack of an acceptable framework for measuring speech. Various groups have proposed procedures for measuring, recording and reporting speech data cross-linguistically, but to date there is no one recognised method.
Proposals have come from Henningsson and Hutters (14), and also from Dalston, Marsh, Vig, Witzel and Bumstead (15). In Britain, Sell, Harding and Grunwell, developed GOS.SP.ASS (16). This is now a nationally agreed speech assessment tool for cleft palate and/or velopharyngeal incompetence in English. From GOS.SP.ASS was devised CAPS (Cleft Audit Protocol for Speech) by Razzell, Harding and Harland (17), a more succinct protocol specifically designed for audit purposes.

Ages

3-4 years
5-6 years
10 years
15-16 years (cleft palate only)
18+ years (UCLP and BCLP)

Equipment

A good quality audio recording using a high quality microphone.

Variables

Intelligibility: a rating should be made upon spontaneous speech. The CAPS scale can be used to judge how “understandable” a persons speech would be to familiar and unfamiliar listeners (there are however flaws with this method).
Nasality: the presence/absence and degree of hypernasality, hyponasality, audible nasal emission and nasal turbulence can be judged and rated on a five point scale (see CAPS). An agreed instrumental method for assessing nasality has yet to be recommended.
Assessing Articulation: set sentences and single words containing consonant sounds in different word positions (beginning, middle and end) should be repeated eg. “Bob is a baby boy” or equivalent in the native language, and recorded for CAPS. Targeted sounds are*: p, b, f, n, t, d, s,  ,  ,  , k, g. Errors made can be broadly categorised or grouped according to CAPS:

• front of mouth oral sound errors
• back of mouth oral sound errors
• non-oral sounds
• passive errors
• immaturities

* depending on the speech sound system in each language but should contain plosives, fricatives and a nasal consonant (p, b, t, d, k, g, f, s, n).