Effectiveness of manual gesture treatment on residual /r/ articulation errors

The functional speech sound disorder, American English /r/ articulation errors, presents a unique and confounding clinical challenge as "therapy resistant" residual errors persist into adolescence and adulthood in many cases. Finding paucity of empirical research for /r/ treatment, evidence-based practice (EBP) exploration in motor-related disorders informed clinical practice and research directions. This study investigated the efficacy of "manual mimicry" (a kinesthetic, gestural, and visual cue) in treating intractable /r/ errors in a young adult using a single subject ABAB design. Perceptual accuracy judgments of three types of listeners (experts, graduate clinician, and naïve listeners) indicated a positive treatment effect of manual mimicry cueing on vocalic /r/ sound productions. Electropalatograpy (EPG) outcome measures showed limited ability to accurately reflect perceptual changes quantitatively. These findings from an exploratory study provide initial evidence that perceptual saliency of /r/ productions may be potentially remediated using a kinesthetic, gestural, and visual cue during treatment.

Name thesis:degree_name

MS

Level thesis:degree_level

Immediate Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Speech-Language Pathology (SLP)

Year dc:date.available

2012

Author dc:creator

• Lynch, Jessica

Contributors dc:contributor

• Heather L. Rusiewicz
• Diane L. Williams
• Caterina F. Staltari

• Articulation
• Gesture
• R
• Speech
• Therapy
• Treatment

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/846

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dsc.duq.edu:etd-1862