Randomized Clinical Trial of Phonological Interventions

Summary

Recent research reveals genetic and symptomatic overlap among children with speech sound disorders (i.e., those who (misarticulate more sounds than would be expected for their age) and children with dyslexia (i.e., those who struggle to learn to read). Children who have speech sound disorders as preschoolers are at risk for the later emergence of dyslexia, a risk that often reveals itself in the form of poor phonological awareness skills during the preschool period. Traditional speech therapy methods focus on articulation accuracy and do not focus on the child's more abstract knowledge of the sound system of the language. The ultimate objective of this research program is to prevent reading disability in children who present with speech sounds disorders. The relative effectiveness of different interventions to help these children achieve age-appropriate phonological processing skills prior to school entry will be investigated. It is expected that a combination of treatment approaches that focus on speech perception skills and vocabulary knowledge will have a superior impact on phonological awareness in comparison with a treatment approach that focuses solely on articulation accuracy.

Conditions

• Speech Articulation Disorder
• Developmental Articulation Disorder
• Phonological Impairment
• Dyslexia

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Speech Production Intervention

Individual speech therapy directed at teaching the child to articulation specific speech sounds or word shapes accurately using traditional procedures such as phonetic placement and imitated and spontaneous speech production practice with feedback from the clinician about accuracy of articulatory gestures and knowledge of results.

BEHAVIORAL

Speech Perception Intervention

Individualized intervention in which the Speech Assessment and Interactive Learning System is used to teach the child to identify recordings of words as either correct or incorrect pronunciations of the target word. In the event that the child is completely unable to pronounce the target speech sounds or word shapes focused stimulation activities are used to provide the child with further auditory exposure to the target forms. If the child stimulable for the target forms, the child is given opportunities the produce the target speech sounds or word shapes in the context of minimal pair games in which the child receives feedback about the communicative effectiveness of his or her attempts to produce the target words.

BEHAVIORAL

Articulation Parent Group

Parents are taught to carry out home practice activities that focus on the child's ability to correctly articulate target speech sounds and word shapes.

BEHAVIORAL

Dialogic Reading Parent Group

Parents are taught to read to their children using interactive techniques that help their children acquire new vocabulary, verbal reasoning abilities, and preliteracy skills.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• McGill University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Susan Rvachew, Ph.D. · McGill University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

FACTORIAL

Eligibility

Min Age

48 Months

Max Age

71 Months

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2008-11-30

Primary Completion

2010-07-31

Completion

2010-07-31

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations