Facilitating multisyllabic productions with a hybrid treatment approach in three preschool-age children

Lohrens, Jena M.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/16788 Copy

Description

Title

Facilitating multisyllabic productions with a hybrid treatment approach in three preschool-age children

Author(s)

Lohrens, Jena M.

Issue Date

2010-08-20T17:57:52Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

DeThorne, Laura S.

Department of Study

Speech & Hearing Science

Discipline

Speech & Hearing Science

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.A.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• linguistic and motor learning strategies
• multisyllabic productions
• preschool children
• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
• Apraxia of Speech
• childhood apraxia of speech (CAS)
• Speech therapy
• speech-output device
• Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)

Abstract

A single-subject multiple baseline design across target sets examined the effectiveness of a hybrid treatment approach, incorporating both linguistic and motor learning strategies, to facilitate multisyllabic productions in three preschool-age children who were at the single-word stage of development. Key to this design was the selection of thirty multisyllabic targets: 15 treatment and 15 control that were matched based on semantic category and phonetic complexity. Overall, results indicated positive gains in two of the three children that could be attributed directly to the applied treatment. Specifically, two of the children produced gains in the treated target sets relative to those that had not yet been treated. In addition, gains in the treated targets as a whole exceeded gains in the control targets that were never explicitly treated. Although the third child did not demonstrate a treatment effect through the probes and assessments, she did produce many of the target forms during the actual treatment phases, reaching mastery on two of the three target sets. Overall the hybrid approach appeared most promising for children with motor planning breakdowns, with or without a concomitant ASD diagnosis, explicitly if basic symbolic understanding and communicative intent have emerged. Particularly promising strategies included: access to a speech-output device, use of functional carrier phrases within meaningful communicative routines, and modeling of targets with varied intonation patterns. This present document is intended to help provide specific examples of how such strategies could be implemented within the context of a hybrid intervention, and to highlight the importance of thinking about the specific cognitive processes that may be underlying speech-language difficulties.

Graduation Semester

2010-08

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/16788

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2010 by Jena M. Lohrens. All rights reserved.

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