Motor speech treatment protocol for developmental motor speech disorders

Abstract

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.