Tongue Part Movement Trajectories for /r/ Using Ultrasound.
Sarah Dugan, Sarah R Li, Jack Masterson and 6 others
PMID 32524032WHAT IT FOUND
Ultrasound software tracked blade, dorsum, and root movements during /ɑr/ in two children with /r/ errors and two typically speaking children.
The two with errors showed less independent movement and more variability than the two typical children. No treatment was tested.
Key findings
01TonguePART records trajectories for each tongue part.
02The two children with /r/ misarticulations showed less independent movement between the root and other tongue parts than the two typically speaking children.
03The two children with /r/ misarticulations showed more variability in tongue-part movement across productions than the two typically speaking children.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only two children with /r/ errors and two typically speaking children were recorded, so differences cannot be treated as general findings. No treatment was delivered or compared, so the paper does not show that therapy changes speech outcomes. The children with /r/ errors were slightly younger than the typically speaking children, which may have influenced movement variability. The authors say it is too early to treat tongue-part differentiation as a marker of accurate /r/. One child with /r/ errors could produce an accurate /r/ in isolation but not in the tested /ɑr/ sequence, so his trajectories do not show a good bunched /r/ pattern. The proposed gamified biofeedback system was not tested in this article.
Declared interests
All listed authors reported no relevant financial or nonfinancial interests to disclose.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that this system improves /r/ therapy. The article only demonstrates ultrasound tracking in two children with /r/ errors and two typically speaking children and says the gamified biofeedback system is under development. It did not test treatment outcomes.