None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Speech sound disorders are one of the most common types of communication disorder in young children. Children with speech sound disorders often have consistent error patterns such as substituting one sound (e.g. ‘k’) for a different sound (e.g. ‘t’). One common error pattern is deleting the weak or unstressed syllable in a word (e.g. saying ‘mato’ instead of ‘tomato’). Children who persist with these types of errors in their speech have an increased risk of literacy difficulties during the school years, so it is important that these speech errors are addressed. Currently, there are no evidence-based interventions for speech sound errors where children delete syllables in words. In this small scale research study, we want to find out if a commonly used speech pathology therapy known as, ‘minimal pairs therapy’, can help children to say long words more easily. Currently, minimal pairs therapy involves asking children to listen to and say words that only differ by one sound (i.e., hear and say pairs of words with minimal differences between them, such as ‘tea’ and ‘key’). This therapy approach has been used for short words and to correct specific consonants in error, since 1981. For example, if a child never uses ‘k’ in words and substitutes all ‘k’’ sounds with ‘t’ sounds, a speech pathologist might show a child a picture of a ‘key’ and a cup of ‘tea’. The speech pathologist would ask the child to practice naming the pictures using child friendly games and activities, and help them by modelling the words or giving specific prompts describing how to say the target sound in the word. While there is evidence suggesting minimal pairs therapy technique works for short words, it is yet to be tested with long words. We have proposed four research questions: In children with phonological impairment (a common type of speech sound disorder), does minimal pairs therapy targeting weak syllable deletion result in a reduction in weak syllable deletion in: 1. trained words with word-initial weak syllables? 2. untrained words with word-initial weak syllables? 3. untrained words with word-internal weak syllables? 4. a five-minute story retell task?
Interventions
Children with speech sound disorders often have phonological processes, or patterns of sound errors, in their speech. One common pattern is deleting the weak or unstressed syllables in words. The aim of this study is to investigate a potential intervention for weak syllable deletion.
This study will investigate the use of minimal pair therapy, a well-established speech pathology intervention for treating phonological processes. This will involve asking children to practice saying pairs of words
Children with speech sound disorders often have phonological processes, or patterns of sound errors, in their speech. One common pattern is deleting the weak or unstressed syllables in words. The aim of this study is to investigate a potential intervention for weak syllable deletion. This study will investigate the use of minimal pair therapy, a well-established speech pathology intervention for treating phonological processes. This will involve asking children to practice saying pairs of words that only differ by the presence or absence of a weak syllable, e.g. ‘nana’ and ‘banana’. The study will consist of initial eligibility assessment, a 3-6 week baseline phase with data collection once per week, a six week intervention phase (2x 45 minute sessions per week), a post-intervention assessment and a follow up assessment one month later. Intervention sessions will occur twice per week for 45 minutes either in a school or home setting. If this study is impacted by social distancing guidelines, these sessions may take place via telehealth. Intervention session one will consist of familiarising the participant with the first five target minimal pairs and auditory discrimination tasks using target minimal pairs, where the child is asked to listen and find the picture the speech pathologist names. Intervention sessions two to six will consist of 30 trials of auditory discrimination followed by 60-80 trials of production activities, both using target minimal pairs. One trial consists of the child identifying or naming both pictures in the minimal pair. If the child does not produce the target word accurately, they will be given feedback that reinforces the idea that miscommunication has occurred and asked to revise their answer. If the child is unable to say the target words, facilitative cues and support will be offered. Intervention Session 7 will introduce the second five minimal pairs, using the same familiarisation methodology, and intervention sessions eight to twelve will involve practice of all ten target minimal pairs. This procedure is based on the well-known and widely used minimal pairs approach. At least two sessions per participant will be reviewed by a different member of the research team to assess the intervention for fidelity.
Sponsors
The University of Sydney
Study design
Allocation
Non-randomised trial
Intervention model
Other
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Blinded (masking used) (Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
4 Years to 6 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
Eligibility will be determined using routine speech pathology assessment tools that involve either listening to an adult say words and pointing to the picture or looking at pictures and naming them. Children will be between 4 years and 5 year 11 months and have English as their first language. Additionally, children will need to have receptive vocabulary within 1.5 SD of the mean as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, 5th edition (PPVT-5; Dunn, 2019). In the PPVT-5, the adult says a word and asks the child to look at a large book and choose the corresponding picture from four options. Participants must have a the most common type of speech sound disorder—phonological impairment (identified by the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology; DEAP, Dodd et al., 2002). In the DEAP, the adult shows the child pictures and asks the child to name them. If the child doesn’t know the answer, they will first be given two options (e.g. “Is it a cat or a dog?”) and if still incorrect asked to copy the adult. Participants must also meet the following speech criteria: • At least four occurrences of word initial weak syllable deletion as measured on the Preschool Polysyllable Test (POP; Baker, 2013), a test that involves asking the child to name pictures of objects or actions with long (polysyllabic) names, e.g. ‘medicine’ or ‘avocado’. • Able to say words with a strong-weak-strong stress pattern • A phonemic inventory that includes nasals, plosives, fricatives and glides • No established pattern of initial consonant deletion, glottal or /h/ replacement
Exclusion criteria
Children will be excluded from participation if they: • produce five or more words inconsistently on the DEAP screener, as this is indicative of a different type of speech sound disorder warranting a different type of therapy approach. • present with clinical features or diagnosis of Childhood Apraxia of Speech or dysarthria, hearing loss, cleft lip and/or palate, global developmental delay or autism spectrum disorder. • have already had speech intervention directly targeting multisyllabic words or weak syllable deletion.
Outcome results
None listed