Planning and self-assessment in articulatory training

Area of Science:

• Speech-Language Pathology
• Childhood Speech Sound Disorders
• Cognitive-Motor Learning

Background:

• Misarticulation of speech sounds like /r/ and /s/ is common in children.
• Traditional speech therapy focuses on repetitive practice for sound acquisition.
• The role of cognitive strategies in motor learning for speech is an area of ongoing research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the efficacy of incorporating mental planning and self-assessment into speech therapy for children with /r/ or /s/ misarticulations.
• To compare the generalization abilities of children receiving traditional practice versus those using cognitive-motor strategies.

Main Methods:

• Children with identified /r/ or /s/ misarticulations were randomly assigned to two groups.
• Both groups received similar speech lessons.
• Group 1 engaged in response acquisition training that included mental planning of articulatory movements and self-assessment of sound production, while Group 2 used standard practice without these cognitive components.

Main Results:

• Children in Group 1, who utilized mental planning and assessment, demonstrated significantly better performance on generalization measures compared to Group 2.
• The inclusion of cognitive-motor strategies positively impacted the transfer of learned speech sounds to new contexts.

Conclusions:

• Mental planning and self-assessment are effective components to integrate into speech therapy for improving sound generalization in children.
• Cognitive strategies enhance the learning and application of correct speech sound productions, offering a potential advancement in pediatric speech intervention.