Visual-acoustic Intervention With Service Delivery In-person and Via Telepractice Trial
NCT Number: NCT06517225
Acronym: VISIT
Status: RECRUITING
Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
Phases: PHASE2
Conditions: Speech Sound Disorder
Interventions: BEHAVIORAL: Visual-acoustic biofeedback
Sponsor: New York University
Collaborators: Syracuse University|Montclair State University|National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Sex: FEMALE
Age: CHILD
Enrollment: 76
Study Design: Allocation: RANDOMIZED|Intervention Model: PARALLEL|Masking: SINGLE (OUTCOMES_ASSESSOR)|Primary Purpose: TREATMENT
Start Date: 2024-07-01
Completion Date: 2028-07-31
Locations: Montclair State University, Bloomfield, New Jersey, 07003, United States|New York University, New York, New York, 10012, United States|Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, 13244, United States

Summary:
Children with speech sound disorder show diminished intelligibility in spoken communication and may thus be perceived as less capable than peers, with negative consequences for both socioemotional and socioeconomic outcomes. New technologies have the potential to transform interventions for speech sound disorder, but there is a lack of rigorous evidence to substantiate this promise. This research will meet a public health need by systematically evaluating the efficacy of visual-acoustic biofeedback intervention delivered in-person versus via telepractice.

The objective of this study is to test the hypothesis that treatment incorporating visual-acoustic biofeedback can be delivered via telepractice without a significant loss of efficacy. Participants will be randomly assigned to receive identical treatment either via online telepractice or in the laboratory setting. The same software for visual-acoustic biofeedback, staRt, will be used in both conditions. Participants' progress in treatment will be evaluated based on blinded listeners' perceptual ratings of probes produced before and after treatment. Pre and post treatment evaluations will be carried out in person for all participants.

Primary Outcome Measures: Percentage of "Correct" Ratings by Blinded Untrained Listeners for /r/ Sounds Produced in Word Probes, To assess generalization of treatment gains to untreated words, participants will be assessed with standard probes (30 words \[considered the primary target\], 20 syllables, and 10 sentences containing /r/ in various phonetic contexts). Stimuli in each probe will be presented individually in randomized order with blocking by stimulus type (word, syllable, sentence). Individual words will be isolated from the audio record of each word probe and presented in randomized order for binary rating (correct/incorrect) by 9 untrained listeners who are blind to treatment condition and time point, but will see the written representation of each target word. The proportion of "correct" ratings for each token will be used as the primary measure of perceptually rated accuracy., Before the initiation of treatment and again after the end of all treatment (10 weeks later)
Secondary Outcome Measures: 1. Survey evaluating impacts of speech disorder on participants' social, emotional, and academic well-being., This survey asks participants to report the impact of speech disorder on their child's social, emotional, and academic well-being. Parents are asked to circle a number from 1 to 5. For all questions, a higher score indicates a greater degree of negative impact of speech disorder on social, emotional, or academic well-being. An impact score will be calculated as described in a previous published study (Hitchcock, Harel, \& McAllister Byun, 2015)., Before the initiation of treatment and again after the end of all treatment (10 weeks later)