NCT05929859

Intensive Speech Motor Chaining Treatment for Residual Speech Sound Disorders

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: Phase 1 / Phase 2
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 84 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Syracuse University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 9 Years – 17 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The goal of this randomized-controlled trial is to compare distributed treatment schedules and intensive treatment schedules in 84 school-age children with residual speech sound disorders. The main question it aims to answer is: * How does intensive and distributed treatment affect speech sound learning in residual speech sound disorder? Some participants will be treated with a traditional Distributed schedule of 2 sessions per weeks for 8 weeks (16 hours total), whereas others will be treated with an Intensive schedule and will complete 16 hours of treatment in 4 weeks.

Detailed description

Residual speech sound disorders are defined as speech sound disorders that persist past \~8-9 years and may lead to social, academic, and vocational limitations. Thus, there is a need to investigate how treatment schedules affect speech sound learning. The overall objective of this study is to optimize a suite of theoretically motivated, high-fidelity, motor-based treatments delivered at the appropriate intensity, despite practical barriers, for the most commonly impacted RSSD sounds: /ɹ, s/. Our central working hypothesis, supported by our preliminary work, is that Speech Motor Chaining is more efficacious when delivered intensively (i.e., closely spaced for a fixed number of sessions). The theoretical rationale is that increasing intensity early in treatment will mitigate erred practice between sessions, improving outcomes relative to more customary practice distributions. To test this hypothesis, children will be randomly assigned to receive a standard Distributed treatment schedule or an Intensive treatment schedule.

Conditions

• Speech Sound Disorder

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Speech Motor Chaining	Sessions begin with Pre-practice to elicit target sounds, with verbal cueing and shaping strategies. During Structured Practice, items are practice in blocks of 6 consecutive trials (with systematic increases in difficulty), and our web-based software will manipulate the principles of motor learning, including the stimulus prompt, the participant's production, analysis of the clinician's rating, feedback prompts for the clinician, and the variability present in the practice trial. Randomized Practice will also be guided by the software and includes all linguistic levels that were produced correctly during Structured Practice, with items presented in random order.

Timeline

• Start date: 2023-10-26
• Primary completion: 2028-02-29
• Completion: 2028-02-29
• First posted: 2023-07-03
• Last updated: 2026-01-13

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States