The Test of Childhood Stuttering (TOCS) provides clinicians and researchers with a sound method for assessing speech fluency skills and stuttering-related behaviors in children 4 through 12 years of age. Its main purposes are to (1) identify children who stutter, (2) determine the severity of a child’s stuttering, and (3) document changes in a child’s fluency functioning over time. It can also be used as a tool in research on childhood stuttering. The TOCS is comprised of three major components:
The Standardized Speech Fluency Measure
Four speech fluency tasks are used to identify children who stutter and rate the severity of their stuttering.
- Rapid Picture Naming – Children are to name a series of 40 pictures as quickly as possible. This determines how fluently children produce single words in a time-stressed context.
- Modeled Sentences – Children are shown two pictures, side-by-side, differing in one important detail. The examiner says a sentence about one of the pictures. Children are to produce sentences that contain the same syntactic structure of the sentence the examiner has modeled. This evaluates children’s ability to speak fluently in a context in which sentences that vary in syntactic complexity must be formulated and then spoken.
- Structured Conversation – Children are asked to answer open-ended questions about a sequence of eight pictures. This evaluates children’s ability to speak fluently in a dialogue context.
- Narration – Children are to generate a story that is based on the picture cards used in “Structured Conversation.” This assesses children’s ability to speak fluently in a monologue context.
The Observational Rating Scales
The Speech Fluency Rating Scale and the Disfluency-Related Consequences Rating Scale enable the examiner to gather information about stuttering and related behaviors from parents, teachers, and other individuals who have known the child for an extended period of time.
The Supplemental Clinical Assessment
Eight supplementary fluency-related assessments enable examiners to probe disfluency-related data in greater detail:
- clinical interviews,
- comprehensive analysis of disfluency frequency and types,
- speech rate analysis,
- disfluency duration analysis,
- repetition length analysis,
- associated behavior analysis,
- stuttering frequency analysis, and
- speech naturalness analysis.
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