Ultrasound biofeedback treatment for persisting childhood apraxia of speech

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a treatment program that includes ultrasound biofeedback for children with persisting speech sound errors associated with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS).

Six children ages 9-15 years participated in a multiple baseline experiment for 18 treatment sessions during which treatment focused on producing sequences involving lingual sounds. Children were cued to modify their tongue movements using visual feedback from real-time ultrasound images. Probe data were collected before, during, and after treatment to assess word-level accuracy for treated and untreated sound sequences. As participants reached preestablished performance criteria, new sequences were introduced into treatment.

All participants met the performance criterion (80% accuracy for 2 consecutive sessions) on at least 2 treated sound sequences. Across the 6 participants, performance criterion was met for 23 of 31 treated sequences in an average of 5 sessions. Some participants showed no improvement in untreated sequences, whereas others showed generalization to untreated sequences that were phonetically similar to the treated sequences. Most gains were maintained 2 months after the end of treatment. The percentage of phonemes correct increased significantly from pretreatment to the 2-month follow-up.

A treatment program including ultrasound biofeedback is a viable option for improving speech sound accuracy in children with persisting speech sound errors associated with CAS.