Randomized Clinical Trial of Phonological Interventions

Plain-language summary

Recent research reveals genetic and symptomatic overlap among children with speech sound disorders (i.e., those who (misarticulate more sounds than would be expected for their age) and children with dyslexia (i.e., those who struggle to learn to read). Children who have speech sound disorders as preschoolers are at risk for the later emergence of dyslexia, a risk that often reveals itself in the form of poor phonological awareness skills during the preschool period. Traditional speech therapy methods focus on articulation accuracy and do not focus on the child's more abstract knowledge of the sound system of the language. The ultimate objective of this research program is to prevent reading disability in children who present with speech sounds disorders. The relative effectiveness of different interventions to help these children achieve age-appropriate phonological processing skills prior to school entry will be investigated. It is expected that a combination of treatment approaches that focus on speech perception skills and vocabulary knowledge will have a superior impact on phonological awareness in comparison with a treatment approach that focuses solely on articulation accuracy.

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