The effects of oral-motor treatment in remediating speech sound disorders for children who exhibit a lack of sufficient oral-motor control

This paper reports the results of an efficacy study of two different therapy approaches in remediating speech sound disorders for children who exhibited a lack of oral-motor control. Four male children were randomly assigned to one of two groups; a traditional articulation therapy group or an oral-motor therapy group. The subjects in the articulation therapy group received 10 minutes of language therapy whereas the subjects in the oral-motor therapy group received 10 minutes of oral-motor therapy. Both groups also received 20 minutes of identical articulation therapy. A modified multiple baseline across subjects design was used to evaluate progress. Baseline probes of words with /s/ and /z/ were administered to all subjects after every therapy session. However, only /s/ was targeted in therapy; /z/ was included in the baseline probe as a measure of generalization. The Assessment of Oral-Motor Functions during Non-Speech Tasks was used to assess non-speech oral movement abilities of the articulators. Results indicated that both groups made similar improvements for the targeted /s/ sound and the non-targeted /z/ sound. In addition, both groups performed similarly with regards to the percentage of non-speech tasks performed adequately on the Assessment of Oral Motor Functions during Non-Speech Tasks. The findings of this study suggest that oral-motor therapy used in conjunction with articulation therapy is not more effective than articulation therapy alone in the treatment of speech sounds disorders for children who exhibit delayed oral motor control.