The Effect of Articulatory Gestures on Early Literacy Skills in 4-year Olds

NCT ID: NCT06504264

Last Updated: 2025-09-25

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 9 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2024-09-01
• Study Completion Date: 2025-06-30

Brief Summary

This study will use an experimental design to explore if articulatory gestures (with letters and phonemic awareness training) enhance early literacy skills more than general mouth awareness training (with letters and phonemic awareness training) or letter/phonemic awareness training alone.

Detailed Description

Multisensory reading strategies, which recruit one or more of the five senses, are routinely used in general education classrooms as well as with children who are struggling readers. Despite their wide use in schools, little research exists to substantiate the utilizing these strategies to enhance literacy. One type of multisensory reading strategy, articulatory gestures, is of particular interest to speech-language pathologists (SLPs) as they are uniquely positioned to provide speech sound placement cues. Limitations of the few prior studies that exist have prevented the isolation of the articulatory gestures themselves as the main contributor to the gains seen in literacy. This study aims to control for factors such as motivation, engagement, and time on task to explore the specific contribution of articulation strategies during phonemic awareness training on phoneme segmentation, reading of phonemically spelled words, and nonword reading in typically developing four-year old children. Using an experimental design, participants will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) phonemic awareness training with articulatory gestures, 2) phonemic awareness training with general mouth pictures, and 3) phonemic awareness training with no mouth/articulation pictures at all. Interventions will focus on phoneme-letter correspondence and phonemic segmentation using strategies specific to each group and differences between groups will be considered for pre and posttest measures.

Conditions

Early Literacy; Articulatory Gestures; Phonemic Awareness

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: TREATMENT
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

LPA: Letters-phonemes-articulatory gestures

This group will receive training for phonemic segmentation that includes using printed letters, sounds (phonemes) while simultaneously learning the articulation placements of the letters/sounds.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

phonemic segmentation

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

during phonemic segmentation activities, articulatory gestures will be used while teaching letters and their sounds.

LPM: Letters-phonemes-general mouth awareness

This group will receive training for phonemic segmentation that includes using printed letters, sounds (phonemes) while simultaneously learning about the mouth in general.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

phonemic segmentation

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

during phonemic segmentation activities, articulatory gestures will be used while teaching letters and their sounds.

LP: Letters-phonemes

This group will receive training for phonemic segmentation that includes using printed letters and sounds (phonemes) only.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

phonemic segmentation

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

during phonemic segmentation activities, articulatory gestures will be used while teaching letters and their sounds.

Interventions

phonemic segmentation

during phonemic segmentation activities, articulatory gestures will be used while teaching letters and their sounds.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Knows 15 letter names
• Passes hearing screening
• Passes Fluharty-2 Language Screening
• Can segment no more than three consonant-vowel (CV), VC, or CVC words into phonemes
• Not able to read more than one word or nonword used in the posttest.

Exclusion Criteria

• Does not know 15 letter names
• Fails hearing screening
• Fails Fluharty-2 Language Screening
• Can segment more than three consonant-vowel (CV), VC, or CVC words into phonemes
• Reads more than one word or nonword used in the posttest.

• Minimum Eligible Age: 48 Months
• Maximum Eligible Age: 59 Months
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Montclair State University

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

Robyn Becker

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Montclair State University

Locations

Montclair State University

Montclair, New Jersey, United States

Countries

United States

Other Identifiers

IRB-FY23-24-3843

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id