Factor analysis of signs of childhood apraxia of speech

Abstract

PURPOSE: To investigate the latent factors underlying signs of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) in a group of 57 children with CAS. METHOD: The speech of 57 children with CAS (aged 3;5-17;0) was coded for signs of CAS. All participants showed at least five signs of CAS and were judged to have CAS by speech pathologists experienced in pediatric speech disorders. Participants were selected to represent a range of severity of CAS: 30 children were verbal and 27 were minimally verbal with comorbid autism. Participants' scores for each sign (the number of times that sign appeared during a child's speech sample) were converted to z-scores, then entered as variables into an exploratory factor anal..