Electromagnetic articulography treatment for an adult with Broca's aphasiaand apraxia of speech

Electromagnetic articulography (EMA) was explored as a means of remediating [s]/[integral] articulation deficits in the speech of an adult with Broca' s aphasia and apraxia of speech. Over a 1-month period, the subject was pro vided with 2 different treatments in a counterbalanced procedure: (1) visua lly guided biofeedback concerning tongue-tip position and (2) a foil treatm ent in which a computer program delivered voicing-contrast stimuli for simp le repetition. Kinematic and perceptual data suggest improvement resulting from visually guided biofeedback, both for nonspeech oral and, to a lesser extent, speech motor tasks. In contrast, the phonetic contrast treated in t he foil condition showed only marginal improvement during the therapy sessi on, with performance dropping back to baseline 10 weeks post-treatment. Alt hough preliminary, the findings suggest that visual biofeedback concerning tongue-tip position can be used to treat nonspeech oral and (to a lesser ex tent) speech motor behavior in adults with Broca's aphasia and apraxia of s peech.