ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Language Communication
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1470869
Clinical feasibility of a play-based assessment of motor speech disorders in young children in Austria
Provisionally accepted
- 1Research Institute for Developmental Medicine, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria
- 2The University of Vermont, Burlington, United States
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Background: There is a lack of valid measures for the differential diagnosis of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) worldwide, especially ones that are suitable for young children. With newly developed assessments, one key question is their feasibility in a community clinical setting.The aim of this study is to examine the feasibility of a play-based tool to assess CAS, using the 'Language-Neutral Assessment of Motor Speech' (LAMS) as an example, trialling it for the first time in a German-speaking region.Methods: This exploratory study is conducted as a series of single case descriptions (N=7) with monolingual German-speaking children. The feasibility aspects of practicality, acceptance, and adaptation are examined. The collected data are processed solely descriptively with additional qualitative observations.The practicality of a complete administration of the LAMS in a clinical setting is limited because it is time-consuming; however, acceptance by children and caregivers is high for most parts of the test. Adaptations to economize the time investment (primarily by omitting video analysis) seem possible without a significant reduction of quality.Conclusions and clinical implications: Implementation of a flexible, playful assessment, such as the LAMS, in local clinical settings looks promising. In German-speaking countries, a German adaptation of the LAMS could fill a gap in the assessment of motor speech disorders in young, hardto-test children. More data regarding reliability and validity are needed. no no no no High school graduation 2nd caregiver no no no no no no no
Keywords: childhood apraxia of speech, feasibility, motor speech, diagnosis, LAMS, assessment
Received: 26 Jul 2024; Accepted: 20 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Erlacher, Velleman and Holzinger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Gertraud Erlacher, Research Institute for Developmental Medicine, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria
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