A Diagnostic Marker to Discriminate Childhood Apraxia of Speech From Speech Delay: II. Validity Studies of the Pause Marker.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this 2nd article in this supplement is to report validity support findings for the Pause Marker (PM), a proposed single-sign diagnostic marker of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS).

METHOD: PM scores and additional perceptual and acoustic measures were obtained from 296 participants in cohorts with idiopathic and neurogenetic CAS, adult-onset apraxia of speech and primary progressive apraxia of speech, and idiopathic speech delay.

RESULTS

Adjusted for questionable specificity disagreements with a pediatric Mayo Clinic diagnostic standard, the estimated sensitivity and specificity, respectively, of the PM were 86.8% and 100% for the CAS cohort, yielding positive and negative likelihood ratios of 56.45 (95% confidence interval [CI]: [1.15, 2763.31]) and 0.13 (95% CI [0.06, 0.30]). Specificity of the PM for 4 cohorts totaling 205 participants with speech delay was 98.5%.

CONCLUSION

These findings are interpreted as providing support for the PM as a near-conclusive diagnostic marker of CAS.