Helping Children Say Long Words: the effect of a minimal pair approach on the ability of children with speech sound disorders to say long words accurately

Not Applicable

• Conditions: Speech Sound Disorder; Phonological Impairment; Physical Medicine / Rehabilitation - Speech therapy

• Registration Number: ACTRN12622000571774
• Lead Sponsor: The University of Sydney

Brief Summary

Not available

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Results First Posted: 1900-01-01
• Study Start: 2022-04-14
• Last Update Posted: 19 April 2022

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: ot yet recruiting
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 4

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.

Study & Design

• Study Type: Interventional
• Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Percentage occurrence of word initial weak syllable deletion in trained words. This will be measured by asking children to name the 10 pictures of target words with word initial weak syllables practiced during therapy sessions.[This will be measured at weekly timepoints during both baseline (3-6 weeks) and intervention (6 weeks) phases.]