Visual-acoustic Intervention With Service Delivery In-person and Via Telepractice Trial
ConditionSpeech Sound Disorder
Trial statusRecruiting
Trial phasePhase 2
Trial typeInterventional
Biological sexFemale
Age9-17
SponsorNew York University
About this trial
Children with speech sound disorder show diminished intelligibility in spoken communication and may thus be perceived as less capable than peers, with negative consequences for both socioemotional and socioeconomic outcomes. New technologies have the potential to transform interventions for speech sound disorder, but there is a lack of rigorous evidence to substantiate this promise. This research will meet a public health need by systematically evaluating the efficacy of visual-acoustic biofeedback intervention delivered in-person versus via telepractice.
The objective of this study is to test the hypothesis that treatment incorporating visual-acoustic biofeedback can be delivered via telepractice without a significant loss of efficacy. Participants will be randomly assigned to receive identical treatment either via online telepractice or in the laboratory setting. The same software for visual-acoustic biofeedback, staRt, will be used in both conditions. Participants' progress in treatment will be evaluated based on blinded listeners' perceptual ratings of probes produced before and after treatment. Pre and post treatment evaluations will be carried out in person for all participants.
Eligibility criteria
This trial does not accept healthy volunteersQualifiers
Must be between 9;0 and 17;11 (years;months) old at the time of enrollment.
Must speak English as the dominant or equally dominant language
Must have begun learning English by age 3, per parent report.
Must hear a rhotic dialect of English from at least one speaker in the home if the home language is English.
Disqualifiers
Must not exhibit voice or fluency disorder of a severity judged likely to interfere with the ability to participate in study activities.
Must not currently have orthodontia that crosses the palate and cannot be removed.
Must not have history of permanent hearing loss.
Must not have an existing diagnosis of developmental disability such as cerebral palsy or Down Syndrome.
Trial design
Design model
Parallel
Treatments tested in this trial
Visual-acoustic biofeedback
BehavioralBehavioral: Visual-acoustic biofeedback In visual-acoustic biofeedback treatment, the elements of traditional treatment (auditory models and verbal descriptions of articulator placement) are enhanced with a dynamic display of the speech signal in the form of the real-time LPC (Linear Predictive Coding) spectrum. The web-based software staRt will be used for intervention delivery.
Treatment groups
76 Participants
are divided into 2 treatment groupsGroup A: Telepractice deliveryExperimental treatment 1 intervention
Group B: In-person deliveryActive comparator 1 intervention
Trial outcomes
Primary outcomes
1
Percentage of "Correct" Ratings by Blinded Untrained Listeners for /r/ Sounds Produced in Word Probes
To assess generalization of treatment gains to untreated words, participants will be assessed with standard probes (30 words \[considered the primary target\], 20 syllables, and 10 sentences containing /r/ in various phonetic contexts). Stimuli in each probe will be presented individually in randomized order with blocking by stimulus type (word, syllable, sentence). Individual words will be isolated from the audio record of each word probe and presented in randomized order for binary rating (correct/incorrect) by 9 untrained listeners who are blind to treatment condition and time point, but will see the written representation of each target word. The proportion of "correct" ratings for each token will be used as the primary measure of perceptually rated accuracy.
Time frame
Before the initiation of treatment and again after the end of all treatment (10 weeks later)Secondary outcomes
1
1. Survey evaluating impacts of speech disorder on participants' social, emotional, and academic well-being.
This survey asks participants to report the impact of speech disorder on their child's social, emotional, and academic well-being. Parents are asked to circle a number from 1 to 5. For all questions, a higher score indicates a greater degree of negative impact of speech disorder on social, emotional, or academic well-being. An impact score will be calculated as described in a previous published study (Hitchcock, Harel, \& McAllister Byun, 2015).
Time frame
Before the initiation of treatment and again after the end of all treatment (10 weeks later)Sponsors and contacts
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New York University
Lead sponsor
Syracuse University
Collaborator
Montclair State University
Collaborator
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Collaborator
Source ClinicalTrials.gov