Prediction of Articulation Improvement with Therapy from Early Lesson Sound Production Task Scores

Abstract

Each of 25 children was taught one of five phonemes: /r/, /s/, /∫/, /1/, or /t∫/. The subjects were quite consistent in their errors prior to the initiation of therapy. Sound production tasks (SPTs) were administered at the beginning of each lesson to measure change in each subject’s articulation of his goal phoneme. This study is concerned with the relationship between improvement during the first ntefew lessons and improvement over the total lesson series. The results indicate that improvement during early lessons show promise as predictors of the outcome of articulation therapy.