The Effects of Rapid Auditory Discrimination on Articulation Improvement Rebekah Foster, B.S. Ed. Melissa Carter, M.S., CCC-SLP Valdosta State University

Disclosure Statement No authors had any financial or non-financial conflicts of interest associated with the content of this presentation.

Background Articulation refers to the totality of movements involved in the production of speech sounds (Bauman-Waengler, 2016) When a speech sound is not mastered by a specific age, it’s diagnosed as an articulation disorder

Background Auditory discrimination is the ability to distinguish between closely related speech sounds Automaticity plays an important role in auditory perception A process is considered automatic if it nearly always becomes active in response to a particular input (Kapatsinski, 2010)

Research Question & Hypothesis Can rapid auditory discrimination be used as a treatment to improve articulation abilities? It is hypothesized that the automaticity of rapid auditory discrimination will improve the accuracy of articulation

Methods Participant was a 6 year old male with an articulation disorder SuperLab 5 was used to administer rapid auditory discrimination /g/ and /ʤ/ in initial position of words

Methods Six sessions: Two baseline sessions before experiment Two sessions including rapid auditory discrimination treatment Two baseline sessions after experiment

Results During the first two sessions, the participant did not produce any of the target words correctly Articulation accuracy improved with rapid auditory discrimination treatment Results remained the same for the two sessions after experiment

Results

Discussion The hypothesis which stated that rapid auditory discrimination can improve the accuracy of articulation was accepted Rapid auditory discrimination treatment improved articulation accuracy

Limitations The study lacked diversity because it involved only one participant

Recommendations Involve a larger scale of participants with articulation disorders Variety of ages and severity

References Bauman-Waengler, J. A. (2016). Articulation and Phonology in Speech Sound Disorders: A Clinical Focus. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson 5-8. Kapatsinski, V. (2010). Frequency of Use Leads to Automaticity of Production: Evidence from Repair in Conversation. Language and Speech, 53(1), 71-105. doi: 10.1177/0023830909351220 Weiner, P. S. (1967). Auditory Discrimination and Articulation. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 32, 19-28. doi: 10.1044/jshd.3201.19