Efficacy of Electropalatography for Treating Misarticulation of /r/.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the present study was to document the efficacy of electropalatography (EPG) for the treatment of rhotic errors in school-age children. Despite a growing body of literature using EPG for the treatment of speech sound errors, there is little systematic evidence about the relative efficacy of EPG for rhotic errors. METHOD: Participants were 5 English-speaking children aged 6;10 to 9;10, who produced /r/ at the word level with < 30% accuracy but otherwise showed typical speech, language, and hearing abilities. Therapy was delivered in twice-weekly 30-min sessions for 8 weeks. RESULTS: Four out of 5 participants were successful in achieving perceptually and acoustically accurate /r/ productions during within-treatment trials. Two participants demonstrated generalization of /r/ productions to nontreated targets, per blinded listener ratings. CONCLUSIONS: The present findings support the hypothesis that EPG can improve production accuracy in some children with rhotic errors. However, the utility of EPG is likely to remain variable across individuals. For rhotics, EPG training emphasizes one possible tongue configuration consistent with accurate rhotic production (lateral tongue contact). Although some speakers respond well to this cue, the narrow focus may limit lingual exploration of other acceptable tongue shapes known to facilitate rhotic productions.

Horns, whistles, bite blocks, and straws: a review of tools/objects used in articulation therapy by Van Riper and other traditional therapists.

The use of tools and other objects in articulation therapy has been bundled into new groups of activities called "nonspeech oral motor exercises" (NSOME) and 'nonspeech oral motor treatments' (NSOMT) by some authors. The purveyors of these new terms suggest that there is no proof that such objects aid speech learning, and they have cautioned students and professionals about their use. Speech-language pathologists are trying to reconcile these cautions with basic Van Riper type therapy routines. The purpose of this literature review was to summarize the ways in which tools/objects were used by Van Riper and other speech professionals between 1939 and 1968. Fourteen textbooks were selected for review. Van Riper and other developers of traditional articulation therapy regularly used a wide variety of tools/objects in articulation therapy. Tools/objects were used when other auditory, linguistic, and cognitive means failed to stimulate correct phoneme productions. To call these activities "non-speech" methods seems to misrepresent the historic purpose objects have served in articulation therapy. More empirical research is required in this area.