Objective: According to American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA, 2015), up to 8% of children exhibit a communication disorder. In the field of speech language pathology, there is no gold standard used to treat communication disorders specific to a speech sound disorder (Kamhi, 2006). Continued research efforts are needed to analyze which treatments will most effectively remediate speech sound disorders (SSDs). According to ASHA’s National Outcomes Measurement System (NOMS), 17 hours is the average time reported to target and successfully improve a single sound error. Dosage and frequency are an essential component in the outcome measures of schoolbased therapy and treatment plans. Van Riper (1978) established the traditional therapy approach to articulation that focused on the child being able to demonstrate an increased frequency of the correct production of the sound in error in increasingly sophisticated contexts. The traditional approach is the most commonly used in the school setting, with 47% of SLPs treating preschool children between ages three and six in public school settings using the traditional articulation therapy approach to target SSDs (Brumbaugh & Smit, 2013). Methods: This investigation evaluated the effects of dosage when using a traditional approach to improve outcomes for children with SSDs aged 6:0 to 8:0 years. This investigation examined the effect of short, frequent (three, 10-minute sessions per week) therapy sessions using a traditional articulation therapy approach compared to longer (one 30-minute session per week) therapy sessions, on SSDs. A comparative AB singlesubject design was used to compare the two interventions used over six weeks. Results: Three participants were included in the investigation. All participants received a total of 12 sessions. Visual analysis of the data was conducted to determine the effect of the intervention on the production of two target sounds. Data analysis revealed increases in accuracy at each level for all participants during less frequent, longer sessions and more frequent, shorter sessions. Data revealed that during the shorter, more frequent sessions participants demonstrated greater gains in percent accuracy at the end of session nine compared to gains made over the three sessions during longer, less frequent sessions. Overall, there were varied results between the participants’ rate of change. Participant 1 and participant 2 had a more substantial rate of change during the shorter, more frequent sessions, while participant #3 remained constant between longer and shorter sessions. Conclusion: Previous research and investigations that relate primarily to dosage and frequency are limited. Continued research efforts are needed to analyze which treatments will remediate SSDs most effectively. Overall results of this investigation did support the claim by the primary investigator. It was found that results of short more frequent sessions revealed larger gains for participant 1, 2, and 3. All participants made more substantial and greater gains between the initial measurement of task accuracy and the final accuracy measured during short, more frequent sessions. The rate of change was significantly increased during production tasks during the shorter session condition for participant 1 and participant 2. Participant 3 had no change between shorter and longer condition sessions. Data revealed a greater impact of tasks accuracy was met during the short, more frequent delivery method.
Keywords: speech sound disorders, traditional articulation therapy, dosage, frequency
