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Abstract
Objective: This study examines the effect of the Motor Speech Treatment Protocol (MSTP), a multi-sensory hybrid treatment approach on five children (mean: 3;3 years; S.D. 0;1) with severe to profound speech sound disorders with motor speech difficulties.
Methods: A multiple probe design, replicated over five participants, was used to evaluate the effects of treatment on improving listeners’ auditory and visual judgements of speech accuracy.
Results: All participants demonstrated significant change between baseline and maintenance conditions, with the exception of KM, who may have had underlying psychosocial, regulation and/or attention difficulties. The training- (practiced in treatment) and test-words (not practiced in treatment) both demonstrated positive change in all participants, indicating generalization of target features to untrained words.
Conclusion: These results provide preliminary evidence that the MSTP, which integrates multi-sensory information and utilizes hierarchical goal selection, may positively impact speech sound production by improving speech motor control in this population.
Acknowledgments
The study was carried out by the Ministry of Youth Services (ON, Canada) via The Speech and Stuttering Institute and a treatment research grant from the Childhood Apraxia of Speech Association of North America (CASANA) awarded to first author (AN). Thank you to the families who participated in the study.
Declaration of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.