Effectiveness of systematic articulation training program accessing computers (SATPAC) approach to remediate dentalized and interdental /s, z/: a preliminary study

Abstract

Traditional methods for treating speech distortion errors in older school-age children have tended to yield mixed success. The current study was a preliminary evaluation of an alternative approach called the Systematic Articulation Training Program Accessing Computers (SATPAC), which was tested for the remediation of /s/ and /z/. Procedures involved a sequence of phonetic placement and/or oral-motor placement cues as needed to establish the targets, followed by concentrated drill structured around a facilitating context nonsense word and then advanced to more natural contexts. Participants were 18 children aged 6 years, 9 months to 11 years, 10 months. Treatment involved once per week, individual, 10-min. sessions with an experienced speech-language pathologist. Group A (n = 9) received 15 weeks of treatment, while treatment was delayed for Group B (n = 9). Then the groups were reversed. During period one, Group A (treated) significantly improved their accuracy of /s, z/ in spontaneous speech, while Group B (untreated) showed no significant change. During period two, Group B improved significantly when treatment was applied. The majority of the participants retained proficiency two years later.