An exploratory study of the influence of load and practice on segmental and articulatory variability in children with speech sound disorders.

Only nine children participated, with two children in the CAS group and two in the TD group, so the findings cannot be generalized. The children with CAS and SSD were already receiving speech therapy, and treatment goals were uncontrolled and often unreported. Because the children with CAS and SSD were already receiving speech therapy, the study cannot separate the effects of the experimental tasks from their usual therapy. The target consonants were early developing sounds already in the children's inventories, so the tasks may not have been difficult enough to produce more segmental errors. Only five sessions and eight productions per phrase were used, which may not have been enough practice to show motor learning, especially for children with CAS. TD 1 was placed in the typical development group but had a DEAP Articulation standard score of 80 and an oral motor score more than one and a half standard deviations below the mean. The study compared tasks within the same children and did not assign children to different treatment groups.

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Do not read the results as evidence that retrieval practice is better than imitation practice for children with CAS. Only two children with CAS were studied, and the results were mixed across tasks.