Phonological complexity in intervention for Spanish-speaking children with speech sound disorder.

Only four Spanish-English bilingual children were studied, so the findings cannot be generalized to monolingual Spanish-speaking children or to all bilingual children with speech sound disorder. The baselines were not staggered across participants, which limits experimental control and means the study cannot firmly separate the intervention effect from other sources of change. Children differed greatly in response: one child had a large effect-size estimate, while the two children trained on /l/ had small estimates. Both singleton targets were /l/, which the authors describe as less complex in Spanish than in English and possibly not an ideal complex singleton target. The children had some English exposure, so the study did not compare Spanish and English as separate language systems. Intelligibility was partly judged by parents, and one parent did not notice immediate change.

The study was part of an NIH-funded clinical trial. The authors reported no declarations of interest.

Do not conclude that complex-target speech intervention is proven effective for Spanish-speaking children with speech sound disorder. The study included four children, did not use staggered baselines, and showed very different generalization effects, including small effects for the children trained on /l/.