Abstract
Background: The treatment of functional speech sound disorders (SSDs) in children is often lengthy, ill-defined, and without satisfactory evidence of success; effectiveness studies on SSDs are rare. This randomized controlled trial evaluates the effectiveness of the integrated SSD treatment program PhonoSens, which focuses on integrating phonological and phonetic processing according to the Integrated Psycholinguistic Model of Speech Processing (IPMSP). Methods: Thirty-two German-speaking children aged from 3.5 to 5.5 years (median 4.6) with functional SSD were randomly assigned to a treatment or a wait-list control group with 16 children each. All children in the treatment group and, after an average waiting period of 6 months, 12 children in the control group underwent PhonoSens treatment. Results: The treatment group showed more percent correct consonants (PCC) and a greater reduction in phonological processes after 15 therapy sessions than the wait-list control group, both with large effect sizes (Cohen’s d = 0.89 and 1.04). All 28 children treated achieved normal phonological abilities: 21 before entering school and 7 during first grade. The average number of treatment sessions was 28; the average treatment duration was 11.5 months. Conclusion: IPMSP-aligned therapy is effective in the treatment of SSD and is well adaptable for languages other than German.
Highlights
The results of the study presented here suggest that integrated treatment methods, such as the PhonoSens method applied here, are effective in treating SSD in children
This is the first such finding within the community of German professionals engaged in the treatment of developmental speech and language disorders
The inclusion of different pathways within PhonoSens and its thoroughly described approach allows for childtailored adaptation of the course of treatment
Summary
(World Health Organization) [1] characterizes them as featuring difficulties in the acquisition, production, and perception of speech that lead to errors of pronunciation, related either to the number or types of speech errors made or the overall quality of speech production. They have long-term negative consequences for a child’s social-emotional, educational, and professional development and are often associated with dyslexia and spelling disorders later in life [2,3,4]. The Dutch Youth Health Service, for example, reported a ratio of 49% articulation problems to 9% developmental language disorders in a population of
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