Picture Cued and Speech Production Cued Approaches for Speech Sound Learning

This study examined the use of speech production cued cards, MorphoPhonic faces (MPF), and plain picture (PP) cards when seeking to remediate speech sound errors, specifically sounds / ɹ / and / s / in the word initial position. Fourteen children were provided articulation therapy at their public school using both stimulus types across four weeks. Each week, the total number of correct productions of target phoneme / s / and /ɹ/ were recorded and averaged. These results were used to graphically showcase trends in their performance with both stimulus types. The results demonstrated that MPF cards were advantageous for remediation of / ɹ / production at a significant level, while /s/ approached but did not attain significance. Three pre- and post-treatment assessments were administered to determine if treatment aided in children’s decoding skills, sight word knowledge, and spectral acoustic patterns. Acoustic trajectories demonstrated increased intensity during production of /s/ and decreased F2 values during / ɹ / production, however, these changes were not statistically significant. This study sought to explore if the use of MPF cards were advantageous compared to traditional plain picture articulation cards. The findings were mixed, and further studies need to be conducted to support the findings of this study