Vulintus (United States)

The question of why some individuals make progress in speech therapy while others do not remains largely unanswered. Treatment delivery method could be a factor; individuals whose speech sounds have not improved through traditional therapy may be more responsive to alternative forms of treatment, such as visual biofeedback. The present study utilized visual biofeedback in the form of Opti-Speech, which uses real-time, three-dimensional streaming data from the Wave EMA system to create an avatar of a participant’s tongue. Participants included two adult females with residual /r/ errors. One participant demonstrated marked improvement during and after treatment, while the other exhibited little perceptual change. It is possible that a more flexible motor system (i.e., one that shows more variability as a new skill is being learned) is more conducive to the acquisition of new speech sound movements than a more rigid system. Kinematic data were analyzed from each session, including duration, maximum displacement, distance traveled, and peak and average speeds. The coefficient of variation was calculated for each measure to assess variability. The length of the ballistic phase versus the corrective phase of movement was also calculated as treatment progressed. These measures were compared to perceptual outcomes.