A Phase 1/2 interventional study of Speech Motor Chaining in Speech Sound Disorder, sponsored by Syracuse University. Recruiting at 1 site in United States. Open to participants aged 9 Years to 17 Years. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-01-13.
Sponsored by Syracuse University · Phase 1/2, Interventional, and Treatment
The goal of this randomized-controlled trial is to compare distributed treatment schedules and intensive treatment schedules in 84 school-age children with residual speech sound disorders. The main question it aims to answer is:
Some participants will be treated with a traditional Distributed schedule of 2 sessions per weeks for 8 weeks (16 hours total), whereas others will be treated with an Intensive schedule and will complete 16 hours of treatment in 4 weeks.
Residual speech sound disorders are defined as speech sound disorders that persist past \~8-9 years and may lead to social, academic, and vocational limitations. Thus, there is a need to investigate how treatment schedules affect speech sound learning. The overall objective of this study is to optimize a suite of theoretically motivated, high-fidelity, motor-based treatments delivered at the appropriate intensity, despite practical barriers, for the most commonly impacted RSSD sounds: /ɹ, s/. Our central working hypothesis, supported by our preliminary work, is that Speech Motor Chaining is more efficacious when delivered intensively (i.e., closely spaced for a fixed number of sessions). The theoretical rationale is that increasing intensity early in treatment will mitigate erred practice between sessions, improving outcomes relative to more customary practice distributions. To test this hypothesis, children will be randomly assigned to receive a standard Distributed treatment schedule or an Intensive treatment schedule.
46 studies on the registry are indexed under Speech Sound Disorder; 16 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 84 is above the median of 40 across 39 interventional studies indexed under Speech Sound Disorder.
Browse Speech Sound Disorder studies →Syracuse University is the lead sponsor of 33 studies on the registry; 7 are open to participants now.
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Exclusion Criteria:
Speech Motor Chaining will be delivered in an intensive fashion. Week 1: 8 sessions (2 sessions per day on 4 different days) Week 2: 3 sessions (1 per day on 3 different days) Week 3: 3 sessions (1 per day on 3 different days) Week 4: 2 sessions (1 per day on 2 different days)
Behavioral: Speech Motor Chaining
Speech Motor Chaining will be delivered twice weekly for 8 weeks
Behavioral: Speech Motor Chaining
Sessions begin with Pre-practice to elicit target sounds, with verbal cueing and shaping strategies. During Structured Practice, items are practice in blocks of 6 consecutive trials (with systematic increases in difficulty), and our web-based software will manipulate the principles of motor learning, including the stimulus prompt, the participant's production, analysis of the clinician's rating, feedback prompts for the clinician, and the variability present in the practice trial. Randomized Practice will also be guided by the software and includes all linguistic levels that were produced correctly during Structured Practice, with items presented in random order.
Change in percent correct for treated sound, rated by blinded listeners.
To assess generalization of treatment gains to untreated words, participants will read a 200-word probe list eliciting the treated sound (/ɹ/ or /s/). Stimuli in each probe will be presented individually in randomized order. No auditory models will be provided; for children with reading difficulty, semantic cues will be provided to elicit the intended word. Individual words will be isolated from the audio record of each word probe and presented in randomized order for binary rating (correct/incorrect) by listeners who are blind to treatment condition and time point (but will see the written representation of each target word). We will use the change in percent correct as our primary measure of perceptually rated accuracy.
Time frame: Before the initiation of treatment and again 10 weeks later.
Proportion of responders and non-responders in each group.
A chi-square test will be used to analyze the proportion of responders and non-responders (i.e., those above/below 15% change on the probes) in each group.
Time frame: 10 weeks after the start of treatment.
Survey evaluating impacts of speech disorder on participants' social, emotional, and academic well-being.
This survey asks parents and participants to report the impact of speech disorder on their child's/their social, emotional, and academic well-being. Parents and participants are asked to select a number from 1 to 5 (1 = Strongly disagree, 3 = Neutral, 5 = Strongly agree). For all questions, a higher score indicates a greater degree of negative impact of speech disorder on social, emotional, or academic well-being.
Time frame: Before the initiation of treatment and again 10 weeks later.
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Syracuse University