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Motor speech treatment protocol for developmental motor speech disorders
Aravind Namasivayam1, Margit Pukonen2, Jennifer Hard1
1a Department of Speech-Language Pathology , University of Toronto , Toronto , Ontario , Canada .
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.
