Effects of integral stimulation therapy on speech - Portland State ...

conversational contexts. Further, the environments <strong>of</strong> this practice varied so that his
speech was <strong>of</strong>ten practiced while performing gross motor activities, reading tasks, and
games inside and outside the speech <strong>therapy</strong> room.
CP demonstrated increased sentence lengths (MLU) suggesting that motor
sequencing practice enabled him to say more with less speech errors. Of particular
interest is the observation that as CP’s utterance lengths increased, his rate <strong>of</strong> speech
remained slow and an unusual prosody became more apparent. Children who speak in 1-
or 2-word utterances are less likely to demonstrate prosodic differences as they have
fewer syllables to sequence. As CP’s utterance lengths increased, his speech was noted as
being “halting” or “robotic” in quality. It is difficult to determine whether this prosody
difference is due to motor planning deficits intrinsic to CAS, or whether the
suprasegmental quality <strong>of</strong> speech is negatively impacted as a result <strong>of</strong> the effort required
to produce accurate motor speech movements. Clearly, there is much need in the areas <strong>of</strong>
research regarding treatment approaches for CAS that improve both supersegmental and
suprasegmental elements <strong>of</strong> speech.
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