Comparing Traditional and Biofeedback Telepractice Treatment for Residual Speech Errors

The COVID-19 crisis has forced speech-language pathologists to migrate from in-person delivery of speech treatment services to remote delivery via telepractice. This study will compare the efficacy of visual-acoustic biofeedback treatment versus non-biofeedback treatment in this setting. Specifically, participants will receive both visual-acoustic biofeedback treatment and non-biofeedback treatment via telepractice (Zoom call with screen-sharing) in a single-case randomization design. The hypothesis of interest is that sessions featuring visual-acoustic biofeedback will be associated with larger short-term gains than sessions featuring non-biofeedback treatment. To test this hypothesis, the study team will recruit up to 8 participants who will receive an initial treatment orientation followed by an equal dose of both types of treatment (10 sessions of visual-acoustic biofeedback and 10 sessions of non-biofeedback treatment). Participants will complete approximately two sessions per week via telepractice; each week will feature one session of each type, randomly ordered. They will also complete 4 pre-treatment baseline sessions and 3 post-treatment maintenance sessions to evaluate the overall magnitude of change over the course of treatment.

Inclusion criteria

• Must be between 9;0 and 15;11 years of age at the time of enrollment.
• Must speak English as the dominant language (i.e., must have begun learning English by age 2, per parent report).
• Must speak a rhotic dialect of English.
• Must pass a brief examination of oral structure and function.
• Must exhibit less than thirty percent accuracy, based on trained listener ratings, on a probe list eliciting /r/ in various phonetic contexts at the word level.

Exclusion criteria

• Must not receive a T score more than 1.3 standard deviations (SD) below the mean on the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence-2 (WASI-2) Matrix Reasoning.
• Must not receive a scaled score below 6 on the CELF-5 Recalling Sentences or Formulated Sentences subtests.
• Must not have history of sensorineural hearing loss or failed infant hearing screening.
• Must not have an existing diagnosis of developmental disability, major neurobehavioral syndrome such as cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, or major neural disorder (e.g., epilepsy, agenesis of the corpus callosum) or insult (e.g., traumatic brain injury, stroke, or tumor resection).
• Must not show clinically significant signs of apraxia of speech or dysarthria.
• Must not have major orthodontia that could interfere with tongue-palate contact.