Auditory-perceptual acuity in rhotic misarticulation: baseline characteristics and treatment response.
Laine Cialdella, Heather Kabakoff, Jonathan Preston and 6 others
PMID 32242467WHAT IT FOUND
Children with persistent /r/ errors perceived synthetic /r/ sounds less accurately than typically developing peers.
However, baseline perception did not predict how well they produced /r/ or how much they improved with biofeedback treatment, except that girls with sharper perception responded better.
Key findings
01Typically developing children had significantly better auditory-perceptual acuity for /r/ than children with residual speech errors, with a large effect size.
02Among children with residual speech errors, baseline auditory-perceptual acuity was not associated with the severity of their /r/ misarticulation.
03Baseline acuity did not predict treatment response overall, but gender interacted with acuity: females with high acuity were more likely to respond to biofeedback, while males showed no such association.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study pooled data from multiple sites with heterogeneous treatment protocols (different biofeedback types, durations, and frequencies), making it difficult to isolate the effect of specific interventions. The sample contained a relatively small number of female participants, limiting the generalizability of the gender interaction findings. Production accuracy and treatment response were measured only in a stimulability probe (a highly supported context), not in spontaneous speech, so the findings may not reflect generalization to daily communication. Five children with RSE and two TD children were excluded due to non-convergent perceptual scores, which may have removed individuals with the most severe perceptual deficits or attentional issues.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that auditory-perceptual acuity is a reliable predictor of treatment success for all children with /r/ errors. The predictive relationship was only significant for females, and the overall model for treatment response was complicated by the heterogeneous nature of the biofeedback treatments used across sites.