Effect of boost articulation therapy (BArT) on intelligibility in adults with dysarthria.
Viviana Mendoza Ramos, Charlotte Paulyn, Leen Van den Steen and 3 others
PMID 33484095WHAT IT FOUND
A one-week intensive articulation therapy improved intelligibility on standardized phoneme and sentence tasks, and automatic sequences.
However, intelligibility did not significantly improve during spontaneous speech or reading. The study lacked a control group, so these gains might reflect practice effects rather than true treatment benefit.
Key findings
01Intelligibility significantly improved after therapy on standardized phoneme and sentence assessments, with a mean increase of 6%.
02No significant improvements were found in spontaneous speech or reading a standard passage, despite small descriptive gains.
03There was no significant difference in outcomes between the two therapy approaches tested (articulatory drill versus minimal pairs).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only 17 participants, making it a pilot with low statistical power. There was no control group, so it is impossible to know if the improvements were due to the therapy itself, natural variation, or the effect of being tested twice. The assessment was done immediately after the one-week therapy, so it is unknown if these short-term gains were maintained over time. The study was conducted with Dutch-speaking participants, which may limit the generalisability of the specific therapy materials to other languages.
Declared interests
The authors declared no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that a one-week intensive therapy will make a patient easier to understand in daily conversation. The study showed improvements only on structured tests and automatic tasks, but no significant change in spontaneous speech or reading.