The effects of repeated speech training using speech cues on the percentage of correct consonants and speech intelligibility in children with cerebral palsy: A single-subject design research

Abstract

This single-subject study examined the effects of repetitive speech training at the word and sentence levels using speech cues on the percentage of correct consonants (PCC) and speech intelligibility of children with cerebral palsy (CP). Three children aged between 5–8 years with a history of CP participated in the study. Thirty-minute intervention sessions were provided four times a week for four weeks. The intervention included repeated training of words and sentences containing target phonemes using two instructions of speech cues, “big mouse” and “strong voice”. First, the children improved their average PCC and speech intelligibility, but an effect size analysis indicated that the effect was different for each child, and the effect size for speech intelligibility was higher than for PCC. Second, the intervention effect was generalized to untrained words and sentences. Third, the maintenance effects of PCC and speech intelligibility were very high. These findings suggests that repeated speech training using speech cues is an intervention technique that can help improve PCC and speech intelligibility in children with CP.