Three computer-based speech therapy interventions will be developed in collaboration with the Software Development Group to update and add new training modules to a program (SAILS®), shown to double children’s rate of progress in speech therapy in four prior studies, with Network and other support. The second intervention is a Quebec French version of SAILS. The third, targeting phonological awareness skills, was piloted using standard table top activities with previous Network funding, and a software based version of this intervention, called Monsters and Rhymes, is under development. Previous Network-funded research suggested that some children with speech sound disorders show more benefit from the interventions described above than other children. New work will assess phonological processing and motor skills in a sample of children with a speech sound disorder in an effort to develop a quantitative metric for identifying those children who are most likely to benefit from the interventions.
I was born with a hearing disability that no one has detected. If I don't get help early on, my speech and language development will be severely affected.
Early identification and treatment of biological impairments is critical to my cognitive and social development. My ability to learn speech and language depends on it.