Video Self-Modeling for Bilingual Children with Identified or Suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech

The cultural and linguistic diversity of our nation continues to grow and the skills needed by speech-language pathologists to address the needs of their existing caseload continue to be vast. According to the ASHA (2016) Schools Survey, only 8% of speech-language pathologists (n=1689) reported feeling very qualified to address cultural and linguistic influences on service delivery outcomes. While the population of bilingual children with speech and language disorders continues to increase (ASHA, 2016), speech sound disorder interventions for English language learners, continue to be scarce across the literature. Although the prevalence of childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) specifically is unknown, speech sound disorders in general, are noted to be common developmental conditions affecting 2%-25% of children 5 to 7 years of age (Sices et al., 2007; ASHA, 2007). Moreover, it has been documented that CAS, a speech sound disorder, has increased substantially during the past decade due to birth to three legislative changes driving diagnosis based on possible erroneous behaviors, and increased information on the disorder (ASHA, 2007). The purpose of this study was to evaluate how a sensory cueing intervention model using a video self-modeling technique effected the speech production of developing bilingual children with identified or suspected childhood apraxia of speech. The effects of a sensory cueing intervention using a video self-model on the speech production tasks of developing bilingual (English/Spanish) children with suspected apraxia of speech was explored. A single case A-B-A-B withdrawal research design with repeated introduction and withdrawal of an intervention was used to evaluate causality of intervention across speech behaviors. This study utilized a video self-model with three, 3-5 year old developing bilingual children with identified or suspected apraxia of speech, across 26 sessions over a period of 8 weeks with a one week post intervention follow-up/maintenance phase. Within-condition analysis and between condition analysis were conducted to determine effect and change in condition on dependent variable (speech). The findings of this study showed that the video self-modeling sensory cueing intervention which contained a cross-linguistic approach to target selections and conducted in the Spanish language had an improving trend effect on the speech outcomes of preschool aged developing bilingual children identified with or suspected of CAS. Implications for practice, research and limitations are discussed.