A Comparison of Treatment lexicality (Real word, Nonword) in the SSR Intervention for Children with SSD

Objectives: This study focuses on finding out which of the two treatments (real word, non-word) is more effective in improving the percentage of consonants correct–revised (PCC-R) of the Children with Speech sound disorders (SSD). Methods: In this study, alternating treatments design (ATD) was used to compare the effect of two treatments. The subjects were 4 children with SSD (5;0-6;0). Subjects took tests about treated and untreated words in baseline, intervention, maintenance phases. In the intervention phase, each subject was trained twice a week for 20 sessions, and if a subject achieved 80% or higher target phoneme PCC-R ending for three consecutive sessions, the intervention program was completed. Additionally, a follow-up survey was carried out four weeks after the intervention program was completed by evaluating the treated and untreated words for three consecutive sessions to assess the maintenance effect. Results: All subjects were found to have a higher improvement in the target phoneme PCC-R in nonword treatment. In the generalization of untreated words, all subjects indicated an intervention improvement rate difference (IRD) in which the nonword treatment was better than the real word treatment. Comparing the effect of treatments in the maintenance phase, three subjects were found to have same effect size (1.00). and participant 2 indicated that the nonword treatment was more effective in maintaining the intervention effect. Conclusion: When the effectiveness of real word and nonword treatment was compared, in intervention effect, generalization and maintenance, the nonword treatment indicated greater effect than the real word treatment.