Adaptation of Parents and Children Together Intervention Program Into Turkish and Investigation of Its Effectiveness.

PURPOSE: This study adapted the Parents and Children Together (PACT) intervention program into Turkish and evaluated its effectiveness in children with moderate-to-severe speech sound disorders (SSD).

METHOD: Fourteen children, aged 60-72 months, participated in the study, with seven in the experimental group and seven in the control group. The experimental group received the PACT intervention program weekly for 10 weeks, whereas the control group received no intervention. Following the intervention, a 10-week follow-up period was conducted to collect additional data. Phonetic and phonological progress was assessed using the pronunciation subtest, percentage of consonants correct (PCC), error types, the Auditory Discrimination subtest (IAT), and the Test of Early Literacy-Phonological Awareness (TEL-PA); the Intelligibility in Context Scale: Turkish (ICS:Turkish) and the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six-34: Turkish Version (FOCUS 34-TR) scale were used to evaluate the impact of the disorder on daily communication abilities.

RESULTS

No significant difference was found between the Articulation subtest (SET; p = .18), typical error (p = .051), atypical error (p = .35), IAT (p = .18), and TEL-PA (p = .73) pretest and posttest scores in the control group with the exception of PCC (p = .02) and total error (p = .04). However, significant differences were observed in the experimental group's SET (p = .01), PCC (p = .00), typical error (p = .00), atypical error (p = .01), IAT (p = .01), TEL-PA (p = .00), and ICS:Turkish (p = .00) pretest, posttest, and follow-up scores across all subtests, except for the FOCUS 34-TR (p = .07).

CONCLUSIONS

Our research shows that the PACT intervention program effectively enhances phonetic and phonological development as well as phonological awareness in children with SSD. Parent involvement plays a crucial role in increasing the intensity of phonological intervention and promoting the application of skills in everyday communication contexts.