Motor speech treatment protocol for developmental motor speech disorders.

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.