Motor-based treatment with and without ultrasound feedback for residual speech-sound errors.
Jonathan L Preston, Megan C Leece, Edwin Maas
PMID 27296780WHAT IT FOUND
Motor-based therapy with or without ultrasound feedback produced similar average gains in /ɹ/ accuracy for 12 children.
While group results showed no advantage for either method, individual responses varied: some children benefited from the visual feedback, while others did not.
Key findings
01On average, there was no consistent advantage of treatment with ultrasound visual feedback over treatment without it for generalization probes.
02Individual responses varied significantly, with four participants showing a >15% advantage for ultrasound feedback and three showing a >15% advantage for treatment without ultrasound.
03Sentence-level accuracy improved significantly from pre-treatment (16%) to post-treatment (45%) after the combined intervention phases.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used a single-case design with only 12 participants, limiting generalizability. The 7-session duration for each condition may have been too short to reveal consistent differences between the treatments. In the within-participant design, exposure to ultrasound in the first phase might have influenced performance in the second phase, particularly for participants who started with ultrasound. Stimulability and other child-specific factors were not controlled for and may have interacted with treatment response.
Declared interests
The paper does not report funding sources or conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that ultrasound feedback is ineffective based on the null group average. The study found significant individual variability, with some children showing clear advantages with ultrasound and others without, indicating that the response is likely dependent on child-specific factors rather than the treatment method alone.