Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing: QuantifyiSpeech Motor Changes and Individual Factors That Contribute to Treatment Gains in ChildhooApraxia of Speech

Purpose: Speech motor skill is refined over the course of practice, whicommonly reflected by increased accuracy and consistency. This reseaexamined the relationship between auditory-perceptual ratings of word accurand measures of speech motor timing and variability at pre-and posttreatmin children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Furthermore, the degrewhich individual patterns of baseline probe word accuracy, receptive languaand cognition predicted response to treatment was explored. Method: Probe data were collected from seven children with CAS (aged 5;0 [years;months]) who received 6 weeks of Dynamic Temporal and TaCueing (DTTC) treatment. Using a multidimensional approach to measurspeech performance, auditory-perceptual (whole-word accuracy), acoust(whole-word duration), and kinematic (jaw movement variability) analyses wconducted on probe words produced pre-and posttreatment. Standardiztests of receptive language and cognition were administered pretreatment. Results: There was a negative relationship between auditory-perceptual msures of word accuracy and movement variability. Higher word accuracy associated with lower jaw movement variability following intervention. There a strong relationship between word accuracy and word duration at basewhich became less robust posttreatment. Furthermore, baseline word accurwas the only child-specific factor to predict response to DTTC treatment. Conclusions: Following a period of motor-based intervention, children wCAS appeared to refine speech motor control in conjunction with improvemin word accuracy. Those who demonstrated the poorest performance at trment onset displayed the greatest degree of gains. Taken together, thresults reflect a system-wide change following motor-based intervention.