Efficacy comparison between two articulatory intervention approaches for dysarthric cerebral palsy (CP) children

Abstract

This is an exploratory study comparing two approaches to articulatory intervention for children with cerebral palsy (CP). Two articulatory intervention plans were designed: a phonetic (motor-based) approach and a phonological (linguistic-based) approach. The former emphasized articulatory movements; the latter emphasized phonological minimal pair concepts. Two children with cerebral palsy participated in this study. Four affricates and fricatives were chosen as intervention targets. Each child was assigned randomly to one of the two intervention programs. The total intervention period lasted four months, with a target phoneme to be achieved in a month. The effect of the intervention was revealed to be between the baseline and the post-test level. At the end of the intervention the efficacy of the two plans (the phonetic approach and the phonological approach) was compared. The results show that both subjects improved after eight intervention sessions. In general, the subject in the phonetic program showed more progress than the subject in the phonological program. However, as a cross-contextual generalization, the subject in the phonological program showed more advancement than the subject in the phonetic approach. In a subsequent evaluation two months later, both children showed a small decline in articulation, but the subject in the phonetic program regressed more than the subject in the phonological program. This paper discusses the strengths and limitations of the two articulatory intervention approaches for children with cerebral palsy.