ReST treatment once per week (Thomas et al., 2023)

Purpose: The aim of this study was to pilot the efficacy of rapid syllable transition (ReST) treatment when provided once per week for a 50-min treatment session for 12 weeks with five children with childhood apraxia of speech. Of central importance was the children’s retention and generalization of gains from treatment as indicators of speech motor learning.

Method: A multiple-baseline across-participant design was employed to investigate (a) treatment effect on the 20 treated pseudowords, (b) generalization to 40 untreated real words and 10 untreated polysyllabic word sentences, and (c) maintenance of any treatment and generalization goals to up to 4 months posttreatment. To investigate any difference between in-session performance and retention, a comparison was made between data collected during treatment and probe sessions.

Results: Treatment data collected during therapy showed all children improving across their 12 treatment sessions. Three of the five children showed a treatment effect on treated pseudowords in the probe sessions, but only one child showed generalization to untreated real words, and no children showed generalization to sentences.

Conclusions: ReST treatment delivered at a dose frequency of once per week was efficacious for only one of the five children. In-session treatment data were not a reliable indicator of children’s learning. One session per week of ReST therapy is therefore not recommended.

Supplemental Material S1. Treated and untreated items.

Thomas, D., Murray, E., Williamson, E., & McCabe, P. (2023). Weekly treatment for childhood apraxia of speech with rapid syllable transition treatment: A single-case experimental design study. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00665 

Publisher Note: This article is part of the Special Issue: Selected Papers From the 2022 Apraxia Kids Research Symposium.