Age-related Correlates of Treatment for Late-acquired Sounds

Late-acquired sounds, such as /r/ are difficult to learn and many children experience
persistent errors on these sounds. However, these sounds are often treated later in a child's
life because they are not expected to be fully acquired until quite late--age 7-8 for some
sounds. This practice places treatment in a time of the child's development in which they
struggle to learn new sounds.The purpose of the present study is to determine whether
treating these sounds earlier in the child's life may result in better outcomes, and to
examine treatment efficacy and efficiency for two methods of treatment.

Inclusionary Criteria:

- Normal Hearing

- Typical Receptive Language

- Speech Sound Disorder

- No motor speech impairment

- Typical non-verbal intelligence

- Produces at least one late-acquired sound with <7% accuracy

- Monolingual English-speaking

- Typical in terms of motoric and neurological development

Exclusionary Criteria:

- Neurological disorder

- Hearing loss

- Nonverbal IQ < 16th percentile