Recruiting

AI-Assisted Treatment

Sponsor:

Syracuse University

Code:

NCT05988515

Conditions

Speech Sound Disorder

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 9 - 17

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Interventions

Speech-Language Pathologist-led Speech Motor Chaining

Artificial Intelligence-led Speech Motor Chaining (CHAINING-AI)

Study Details

Brief summary:

The goal of this randomized-controlled trial is to determine how artificial intelligence-assisted home practice may enhance speech learning of the "r" sound in school-age children with residual speech sound disorders. All child participants will receive 1 speech lesson per week, via telepractice, for 5 weeks with a human speech-language clinician. Some participants will receive 3 speech sessions per week with an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-clinician during the same 5 weeks as the human clinician sessions (CONCURRENT treatment order group), whereas others will receive 3 speech sessions per week with an AI-clinician after the human clinician sessions end (SEQUENTIAL treatment order group.

Conditions

Speech Sound Disorder

Study ID

NCT05988515

Start date

Sep 5, 2024

Status verified date

Jan, 2026

Completion date

Dec 31, 2027

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Dec 31, 2027

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 9 - 17

Healthy Volunteers: Accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Must speak a rhotic dialect of American English as a dominant language.
  • Must have begun learning English by at least the age of 3 years.
  • Must be between 9;0 to 17;11 years of age.
  • Must have reported difficulty with /ɹ/ production.
  • Must have reported hearing within normal limits.
  • Must receive a Scaled Score of 5 or above on both the Listening Comprehension and Story Retelling subtests from the Test of Integrated Language \& Literacy Skills (TILLS).
  • Must receive a percentile score of 8 or below on the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation-3 (GFTA-3) Sounds in Words subtest.
  • Must have 1 scorable response with 5+ consecutive correct /pataka/ with > 3.4 syllables per second in the MRR-Tri task of the Maximum Performance Tasks OR must demonstrate no childhood apraxia of speech (CAS-only) features in BOTH articulatory and rate/prosody domains of the ProCAD.
  • Must score <40% accurate based on word-level items from our /ɹ/ probe list.
  • Must score >=15% accuracy on /ɹ/ on 45 syllables following Dynamic Assessment.
  • Must express interest in changing their /ɹ/ production.
  • Must have oral structure and function that are appropriate for /ɹ/ production.
  • Must have access to broadband internet with videoconferencing capabilities

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Must have no known history of autism spectrum disorder, Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, permanent hearing loss, epilepsy/antiepileptic medication, or brain injury/neurosurgery/stroke.
  • Must not have diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Tourette's, or Obsessive-compulsive disorder.
  • Must have no orthodontic appliances that block the roof of the mouth (e.g., palate expanders).
  • Must not have current cleft palate, fluency disorder, or voice disorder.
  • Must not demonstrate childhood apraxia of speech (CAS-only) features in BOTH articulatory and rate/prosody domains of the ProCAD.

Study Design

Enrollment

26 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Treatment

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

experimental: CONCURRENT treatment order

  • 5 speech lessons with a human speech-language clinician: 1 time per week for 5 weeks.
  • 15 speech lessons with an AI clinician (supervised by the caregiver), 3 times per week DURING the same 5 weeks as the human clinician sessions.

experimental: SEQUENTIAL treatment order

  • 5 speech lessons with a human speech-language clinician: 1 time per week for 5 weeks.
  • 15 speech lessons with an AI clinician (supervised by the caregiver), 3 times per week for the 5 weeks AFTER the human clinician sessions end.

Interventions

Speech-Language Pathologist-led Speech Motor Chaining

Sessions begin with Pre-practice to elicit the /r/ sound. During Structured Practice, the same utterance is practiced several times in a row (with systematic increases in difficulty based on performance). Our web-based software manipulates the principles of motor learning, including feedback prompts for the clinician, the complexity of the utterance, and the variability in the practice trial; the software will analyze the clinician's rating to increase the difficulty of practice when the child is more accurate. Randomized Practice will also be guided by the software and includes all linguistic levels that were produced correctly during Structured Practice, with items presented in random order. A trained speech-language pathologist is involved in all practice trials to provide feedback throughout the session.

Artificial Intelligence-led Speech Motor Chaining (CHAINING-AI)

Sessions include Structured Practice and Randomized Practice using our web-based software with an Artificial Intelligence clinician to address the /r/ sound. Within a practice session, participants speak into a microphone, and the audio file is sent to a server to be analyzed by a classifier, which returns a binary accurate/inaccurate rating of productions in a fashion similar to SLP judgment. Our web-based software manipulates the principles of motor learning, including feedback prompts, the complexity of the utterance, and the variability in the practice trial. The software will analyze the child's accuracy as determined by the classifier to increase the difficulty of practice when the child is more accurate.

Primary outcome measure

  • Change in percent correct for the /ɹ/ sound in untreated words, rated by blinded listeners. [ Time Frame: Before the initiation of treatment and again 5 weeks later. ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Jonathan Preston, PhD

315-443-1351jopresto@syr.edu

Nina Benway, PhD

nrbenway@syr.edu

Locations

Syracuse University

Recruiting

Syracuse, New York, United States, 13244

Contacts

Jonathan Preston, PhD

315-443-3143jopresto@syr.edu

Nicole Caballero, MS

315-443-1185nfcaball@syr.edu

More Information

Sponsor

Syracuse University

Last update posted

Jan 8, 2026

Last verified

Jan, 2026

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by Syracuse University on 2026-01-08.