TOCS+: A Software Solution for Efficient Intelligibility
Measurement in Young Children with Motor Speech Disorders

M Hodge, J Daniels

Multimedia programming software (Authorware 6 & Fireworks MX, Macromedia, 2001) was used to develop computer-based assessment and analysis modules (TOCS+ Intelligibility software) for measuring the speech intelligibility of young children with motor speech disorders. This software is based on the analog form of the Test of Children’s Speech or TOCS. The software has features for 1) administering the TOCS+ word and sentence test formats, digitally recording the child’s productions of the target utterances directly to disk and saving these as .wav files, 2) presenting the child’s test utterances for listener judgment using word identification tasks and saving the listener’s responses, and 3) analyzing listener responses and reporting intelligibility scores. Initial experience with the TOCS+ software suggests that it provides comparable scores with the analog version of the TOCS but requires much less examiner time to 1) prepare and administer the child’s recording task and the listener judging task and 2) score the listener's responses to obtain intelligibility scores.