Currently, there is no gold standard for the treatment of speech sound disorders (SSDs) in the school setting (Kamhi, 2006). Further research is needed on what treatments will remediate SSDs efficiently and effectively given educational settings’ limitations. Paramount among those limitations is the protection of time spent in academic instruction (Baker, 2012). Large caseloads and the use of low intensity, distributive practice service delivery can result in a student requiring many more hours in speech therapy services above the 17 hours that is reported by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s National Outcomes Measurement System (NOMS) as being necessary to remediate a single sound error. Research in the areas of intensity, therapy approach, and scheduling are limited and lack agreement on the most efficient and effective approach to remediating SSDs in the public education setting. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the effect of using individual, short duration, speech therapy sessions for the remediation of the speech of children ages 5-12 with speech sound disorders. The participants’ Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals and service delivery frequency and duration were used to determine the phoneme to target during therapy and were adapted to increase the frequency and shorten the duration of the individual therapy sessions and maintain the service delivery duration dictated by the participants’ IEPs. The outcome revealed improvement in the production of the targeted phoneme at the word level. The results supported the use of short duration, intensive speech therapy sessions in two out of three participants to efficiently address the treatment of speech sound disorders in the educational setting. Maintaining the intensity of both number of repetitions and the number of treatment sessions per week were important components in remediation of a speech sound error at the word level.
Keywords: intensity, augmented feedback, principles of motor learning
