Case Study Of The Accent Method Improving Speech Impairments In Children With Spastic Cerebral Palsy

Children with cerebral palsy suffer from non-progressive brain injury that affects the muscles involved in the process of speech production.As a result,the corresponding organs cannot complete the precise movement or the movements are not coordinated which decrease the speech clarity and fluency,and finally influence the communication between children with CP and others.Therefore,the aim of present study was to investigate the effect of the Accent Method on respiratory,phonation and speech fluency of children with spastic CP and dysarthria by designing the principles and contents of the method.This study is divided into three parts.The first part is the current situations of this research subject.It describes the speech features of children with spastic CP,such as insufficient respiratory support,incoordination between respiratory and phonation,dysphonia,which have an adverse effect on the speech fluency.When designing the Accent Method,researcher analyzes the theory and contents of the Accent Method and the feasibility of this intervention in children with spastic CP and dysarthria.The principles of neuroplasticity and motor learning theory are also used to formulate training principles in order to explore the effective processes and methods while implementation.The second part is the main study.Four children with spastic CP participated in this study.The subjects crossing multiple baseline design(A-B)of the single subject research method was taken in this study.The Accent Method which designed by the researcher was carried out among the CPs.Objective acoustic measurement and language sample analysis were used respectively to measure the parameters of respiration,phonation and speech fluency in two different speech states,in order to investigate the efficiency of method.The results shows that the Accent Method can help children with spastic CP and dysarthria to improve the respiratory support,coordination between respiratory and phonation and get a clear,stable voice.It can also help to increase the speech speed and decrease inappropriate pause inside of the sentences and between two sentences in picture description and spontaneous speech.The third part gives out the conclusions and discussions on the base of the process and results of intervention.Finally,through summing the shortcomings from the study,put forward related advice and outlook.