Cerebral Palsy (CP)SPEAKNCT07173049
Speech Production Enhancement Using Augmentative Communication for Kids
A study testing AAC Speech supplementation in people with Cerebral Palsy (CP) and Intelligibility, Speech, run by University of Wisconsin, Madison at 1 site in United States.
Trial summary
The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if speech supplementation can improve speech intelligibility in children ages 7 to 17 years with cerebral palsy. The main questions it aims to answer are: To what extent can speech supplementation improve intelligibility in children with CP compared with habitual speech… Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 7 to 17 years
- Conditions the study is for
- Cerebral Palsy (CP), Intelligibility, Speech, Augmentative and Alternative Communication
- What is being tested?
- AAC Speech supplementation
- Type of treatment
- Lifestyle or therapy programme
- Could I receive a placebo?
- No, everyone receives an active treatment
- How many people
- 100 participants
- Where
- 1 siteUnited States
- Study dates
- 27 Jul 2026to Jul 2029
- Phase
- Interventional
- Are there results?
- Not yet: the study is under way
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 7 to 17 years
- All sexes
- No healthy volunteers
- Child
Who may be able to join
- Medical diagnosis of cerebral palsy, or a similar, related condition that affects early motor development and presents as a chronic motor disability
- Age between 7 and 17 years
- Clinical dysarthria with speech intelligibility between 10-85 percent
- Able to produce connected speech in English, with a minimum utterance length of 3 words
- Able to use hands to point to items on a communication board
- Cognitive/language skills that enable basic picture identification on a communication board
- Pass pure tone hearing screening
Who cannot join
- Failure to meet all inclusion criteria.
- Vision impairment that precludes being able to see items on a communication board.
- Not suitable for participation due to other reasons at the discretion of the investigators.
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country. Contact the study team or a site near you to ask about taking part.
United States1 site, 1 recruiting
- Recruiting
University of Wisconsin-Madison Waisman Center
Madison, Wisconsin, 53705
About this study
Official title: Speech Supplementation Strategies for Improving Intelligibility in Children With Cerebral Palsy (CP)
The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if speech supplementation can improve speech intelligibility in children ages 7 to 17 years with cerebral palsy. The main questions it aims to answer are:
- To what extent can speech supplementation improve intelligibility in children with CP compared with habitual speech produced without speech supplementation?
- How much intelligibility change is necessary for meaningful improvement when children use speech supplementation strategies?
Read more
Participants will:
- complete speech and language assessments
- complete a speech pre-test using habitual speech
- learn a speech supplementation strategy with training from a speech-language pathologist
- complete a speech post-test using the speech supplementation strategy
- complete a speech repetition task where specific words are emphasized (emphatic stress)
- use the previously learned speech supplementation strategy + emphasis on specific words while producing a set of sentences
Read the detailed description
This study uses a pre-/post- test design to test the effects of a one-session intervention to improve speech intelligibility in 100 children with cerebral palsy and dysarthria. The intervention involves the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) strategy known as speech supplementation. Specifically, children will learn how to simultaneously speak and point to the first letter of each word on a communication board, or to speak and point to a topical picture on a communication board. The strategy serves to provide listeners with context cues for spoken words, and it also serves to impact temporo-acoustic features of speech by reducing rate of speech and making word boundaries clear.
In this study, children will first participate in a set of baseline assessment measures, which will include the production of a corpus of 60 sentences (referred to as "habitual speech"). Then, children will learn to use the speech supplementation strategy through one-on-one clinician modeling, teaching, and practice. When children have mastered the strategy on a set of practice sentences, they will complete a post-test in which they produce the same set of elicited sentences a second time using speech supplementation.
Pre-test and post-test speech samples will then be played to two groups of listeners. One group will orthographically transcribe the words produced by children in both conditions (habitual and supplemented). Listener transcriptions in each condition will be scored as correct or incorrect based on whether they matched the intended word. Average percent of words identified correctly will be obtained from 2 listener for each child and each speaking condition as measures of speech intelligibility. The difference between habitual speech (pre-test) and supplemented speech (post-test) will be examined to quantify the effects of the speech supplementation on intelligibility.
The second set of listeners will hear the same speech samples as the first set (habitual speech and supplemented speech), but they will make ratings of whether one of the conditions seems more understandable than the other, and if so, they will rate how much better using a 7-point Likert scale.
These two sets of data from listeners will enable us to measure the minimum detectable difference in speech intelligibility and then the minimal clinically important difference based on listener ratings. Together these measures will enable us to determine how much change in intelligibility is necessary in order for clinically meaningful improvement.
The hypotheses are as follows:
- speech supplementation will result in increased speech intelligibility relative to habitual speech.
- the minimal clinically important difference in intelligibility scores to consider the speech supplementation strategy "successful" will vary depending on child severity, with more severely speech impaired children requiring a larger improvement to achieve a clinically meaningful change.
- Being tested
- AAC Speech supplementation
- Keywords
- Cerebral Palsy, Speech, Intelligibility, Speech supplementation, Augmentative and alternative communication
- Medical subject headings
- Cerebral Palsy, Speech Intelligibility, Speech
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
AAC Speech supplementationBehavioural
The speech supplementation intervention involves learning to point to pictures, words, or letters on a communication board while simultaneously producing speech. Children will spend up to 30 minutes learning to use the strategy in one- on-one interaction with a speech therapist and demonstrate mastery by using the strategy successfully on a series of test stimuli.
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| speech supplementation | Experimental | Children will complete a pre-test on their speech prior to learning speech supplementation strategy use, and will be taught to use speech supplementation through one-on-one teaching. They will then complete a post test on their speech while using speech supplementation. Receives: Behavioral: AAC Speech supplementation |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Change in speech intelligibility scores from pre- to post- intervention as measured by listener transcription of speech samples
Quantify the change in speech intelligibility associated with the use of speech supplementation strategies by having listeners orthographically transcribe speech samples. Intelligibility scores are percentage calculations of the number of words identified correctly by listeners, ranging from 0 to 100 percent. Higher percentages reflect greater intelligibility, or a better understanding of what the speaker said by naive listeners.
Measured: Before and after intervention within one session in a single day 1
Secondary outcomes (1)
Perceived change in intelligibility from pre- to post-intervention as measured by listener ratings of the magnitude of difference between pre- and post- intervention speech samples.
Listener ratings of their perception of the magnitude of change in intelligibility between pre- and post-test speaking conditions. Listeners will hear pre- and post-intervention speech samples and will indicate whether they can hear a differences and if so, how large the differences was using a 5-point likert rating scale. Higher values on the scale reflect larger perceived differences.
Measured: Before and after intervention within one session in a single day 1
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted15 Sep 2025
- Study start27 Jul 2026
- Primary completionMar 2029 (estimated)
- Study completionJul 2029 (estimated)
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Publications (6)Papers the sponsor has linked to this study.
- Other trials for Cerebral Palsy (CP)Studies of the same condition, open and under way.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase N/A
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
- Allocation
- Not applicable
- Intervention model
- Single group
- Masking
- None (open label)
- Enrolment
- 100 participants (estimated)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- University of Wisconsin, Madison
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
- Responsible party
- Sponsor
- Investigators
- Katherine C Hustad, PhD, Principal investigator, University of Wisconsin, Madison
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT07173049
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- 2025-0885
- Other IDs
- 2R01DC009411-16, A481800, L&S/COMMUN SCI & DISORDERS, Protocol Version 4/20/2026
- Acronym
- SPEAK
- Status last verified
- May 2026
- First submitted
- 8 Sep 2025
- Last updated
- 3 Aug 2026
- Results posted
- No
- Data monitoring committee
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- Yes: Individual participant data collected during the trial, after deidentification.
Publications
Sakash A, Mahr TJ, Natzke PEM, Hustad KC. Effects of Rate Manipulation on Intelligibility in Children With Cerebral Palsy. Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2020 Feb 7;29(1):127-141. doi: 10.1044/2019_AJSLP-19-0047. Epub 2019 Dec 23.
PubMed 31869242Korkalainen J, McCabe P, Smidt A, Morgan C. Motor Speech Interventions for Children With Cerebral Palsy: A Systematic Review. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2023 Jan 12;66(1):110-125. doi: 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00375. Epub 2023 Jan 9.
PubMed 36623233Levy ES, Chang YM, Ancelle JA, McAuliffe MJ. Acoustic and Perceptual Consequences of Speech Cues for Children With Dysarthria. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2017 Jun 22;60(6S):1766-1779. doi: 10.1044/2017_JSLHR-S-16-0274.
PubMed 28655046Hustad KC, Lee J. Changes in speech production associated with alphabet supplementation. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2008 Dec;51(6):1438-50. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2008/07-0185). Epub 2008 Jul 29.
PubMed 18664687Hustad KC, Jones T, Dailey S. Implementing speech supplementation strategies: effects on intelligibility and speech rate of individuals with chronic severe dysarthria. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2003 Apr;46(2):462-74.
PubMed 14700386Stipancic KL, Yunusova Y, Berry JD, Green JR. Minimally Detectable Change and Minimal Clinically Important Difference of a Decline in Sentence Intelligibility and Speaking Rate for Individuals With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2018 Nov 8;61(11):2757-2771. doi: 10.1044/2018_JSLHR-S-17-0366.
PubMed 30383220
Study at a glance
From the registry record, last updated by the sponsor on 3 Aug 2026. Recruitment status is as the sponsor reported it: confirm with the study team.
- Official title
- Speech Supplementation Strategies for Improving Intelligibility in Children With Cerebral Palsy (CP)
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT07173049
- Acronym / sponsor ID
- SPEAK / 2025-0885
- Keywords
- Cerebral Palsy, Speech, Intelligibility, Speech supplementation, Augmentative and alternative communication
- Study type
- Interventional
- Recruitment status
- Recruiting
- Enrolment
- 100 participants (estimated)
- Lead sponsor
- University of Wisconsin, MadisonUniversity, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
- Study start
- 27 Jul 2026 (actual)
- Primary completion
- Mar 2029 (estimated)
- Study completion
- Jul 2029 (estimated)
- First posted
- 15 Sep 2025 (actual)
- Results
- Not posted in the source record
Clinical summary
The research question as the sponsor registered it. This describes what the study plans to test, not what it found.
The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if speech supplementation can improve speech intelligibility in children ages 7 to 17 years with cerebral palsy. The main questions it aims to answer are:
- To what extent can speech supplementation improve intelligibility in children with CP compared with habitual speech produced without speech supplementation?
- How much intelligibility change is necessary for meaningful improvement when children use speech supplementation strategies?
Participants will:
- complete speech and language assessments
- complete a speech pre-test using habitual speech
- learn a speech supplementation strategy with training from a speech-language pathologist
- complete a speech post-test using the speech supplementation strategy
- complete a speech repetition task where specific words are emphasized (emphatic stress)
- use the previously learned speech supplementation strategy + emphasis on specific words while producing a set of sentences
Detailed description
This study uses a pre-/post- test design to test the effects of a one-session intervention to improve speech intelligibility in 100 children with cerebral palsy and dysarthria. The intervention involves the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) strategy known as speech supplementation. Specifically, children will learn how to simultaneously speak and point to the first letter of each word on a communication board, or to speak and point to a topical picture on a communication board. The strategy serves to provide listeners with context cues for spoken words, and it also serves to impact temporo-acoustic features of speech by reducing rate of speech and making word boundaries clear.
In this study, children will first participate in a set of baseline assessment measures, which will include the production of a corpus of 60 sentences (referred to as "habitual speech"). Then, children will learn to use the speech supplementation strategy through one-on-one clinician modeling, teaching, and practice. When children have mastered the strategy on a set of practice sentences, they will complete a post-test in which they produce the same set of elicited sentences a second time using speech supplementation.
Pre-test and post-test speech samples will then be played to two groups of listeners. One group will orthographically transcribe the words produced by children in both conditions (habitual and supplemented). Listener transcriptions in each condition will be scored as correct or incorrect based on whether they matched the intended word. Average percent of words identified correctly will be obtained from 2 listener for each child and each speaking condition as measures of speech intelligibility. The difference between habitual speech (pre-test) and supplemented speech (post-test) will be examined to quantify the effects of the speech supplementation on intelligibility.
The second set of listeners will hear the same speech samples as the first set (habitual speech and supplemented speech), but they will make ratings of whether one of the conditions seems more understandable than the other, and if so, they will rate how much better using a 7-point Likert scale.
These two sets of data from listeners will enable us to measure the minimum detectable difference in speech intelligibility and then the minimal clinically important difference based on listener ratings. Together these measures will enable us to determine how much change in intelligibility is necessary in order for clinically meaningful improvement.
The hypotheses are as follows:
- speech supplementation will result in increased speech intelligibility relative to habitual speech.
- the minimal clinically important difference in intelligibility scores to consider the speech supplementation strategy "successful" will vary depending on child severity, with more severely speech impaired children requiring a larger improvement to achieve a clinically meaningful change.
Study design
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
- Allocation
- Not applicable
- Intervention model
- Single group
- Masking
- None (open label)
- Number of arms
- 1
| Arm | Type | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| speech supplementation | Experimental | Behavioral: AAC Speech supplementationChildren will complete a pre-test on their speech prior to learning speech supplementation strategy use, and will be taught to use speech supplementation through one-on-one teaching. They will then complete a post test on their speech while using speech supplementation. |
Who may qualify
- Ages
- 7 to 17 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Not accepted
- Age groups
- Child
Key inclusion criteria (7 listed)
- Medical diagnosis of cerebral palsy, or a similar, related condition that affects early motor development and presents as a chronic motor disability
- Age between 7 and 17 years
- Clinical dysarthria with speech intelligibility between 10-85 percent
- Able to produce connected speech in English, with a minimum utterance length of 3 words
- Able to use hands to point to items on a communication board
Key exclusion criteria (3 listed)
- Failure to meet all inclusion criteria.
- Vision impairment that precludes being able to see items on a communication board.
- Not suitable for participation due to other reasons at the discretion of the investigators.
Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening; this overview does not establish that a patient qualifies. Full inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Interventions
| Intervention | Type | Arms |
|---|---|---|
| AAC Speech supplementationThe speech supplementation intervention involves learning to point to pictures, words, or letters on a communication board while simultaneously producing speech. Children will spend up to 30 minutes learning to use the strategy in one- on-one interaction with a speech therapist and demonstrate mastery by using the strategy successfully on a series of test stimuli. | Behavioural | speech supplementation |
Primary outcome
Change in speech intelligibility scores from pre- to post- intervention as measured by listener transcription of speech samples
Time frame: Before and after intervention within one session in a single day 1
Quantify the change in speech intelligibility associated with the use of speech supplementation strategies by having listeners orthographically transcribe speech samples. Intelligibility scores are percentage calculations of the number of words identified correctly by listeners, ranging from 0 to 100 percent. Higher percentages reflect greater intelligibility, or a better understanding of what the speaker said by naive listeners.
1 secondary outcome
Perceived change in intelligibility from pre- to post-intervention as measured by listener ratings of the magnitude of difference between pre- and post- intervention speech samples.
Time frame: Before and after intervention within one session in a single day 1
Results and safety
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
Research links
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govLast updated by the sponsor 3 Aug 2026.
- Background: PubMed 31869242Sakash A, Mahr TJ, Natzke PEM, Hustad KC. Effects of Rate Manipulation on Intelligibility in Children With Cerebral Palsy. Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2020 Feb 7;29(1):127-141. doi: 10.1044/2019_AJSLP-19-0047. Epub 2019 Dec 23.
- Background: PubMed 36623233Korkalainen J, McCabe P, Smidt A, Morgan C. Motor Speech Interventions for Children With Cerebral Palsy: A Systematic Review. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2023 Jan 12;66(1):110-125. doi: 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00375. Epub 2023 Jan 9.
- Background: PubMed 28655046Levy ES, Chang YM, Ancelle JA, McAuliffe MJ. Acoustic and Perceptual Consequences of Speech Cues for Children With Dysarthria. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2017 Jun 22;60(6S):1766-1779. doi: 10.1044/2017_JSLHR-S-16-0274.
- Background: PubMed 18664687Hustad KC, Lee J. Changes in speech production associated with alphabet supplementation. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2008 Dec;51(6):1438-50. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2008/07-0185). Epub 2008 Jul 29.
- Background: PubMed 14700386Hustad KC, Jones T, Dailey S. Implementing speech supplementation strategies: effects on intelligibility and speech rate of individuals with chronic severe dysarthria. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2003 Apr;46(2):462-74.
- Background: PubMed 30383220Stipancic KL, Yunusova Y, Berry JD, Green JR. Minimally Detectable Change and Minimal Clinically Important Difference of a Decline in Sentence Intelligibility and Speaking Rate for Individuals With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2018 Nov 8;61(11):2757-2771. doi: 10.1044/2018_JSLHR-S-17-0366.
- Individual participant dataSharing planned: Yes. Individual participant data collected during the trial, after deidentification.
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Referral and contact
AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals. Contact the study team or a site listed below; they decide who can take part.
Katherine C Hustad, PhD principal investigator
University of Wisconsin, Madison
1 site in 1 country: see every site and its status.
Questions about this trial
What is this clinical trial studying?
A study testing AAC Speech supplementation in people with Cerebral Palsy (CP) and Intelligibility, Speech, run by University of Wisconsin, Madison at 1 site in United States.
The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.
Who may be eligible to take part?
The sponsor lists 7 inclusion and 3 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.
Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?
The record says: looking for participants now, as of the sponsor's last update on 3 Aug 2026. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.
Where is the study taking place?
The record lists 1 site in United States. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.
What are the possible benefits and risks?
They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.
Are results available for this study?
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?
Contact WISC Lab (608-263-5822, speak@waisman.wisc.edu), or a site near the patient. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.
What does the primary outcome measure?
Change in speech intelligibility scores from pre- to post- intervention as measured by listener transcription of speech samples (time frame: Before and after intervention within one session in a single day 1). It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.
Where can I read the original study information?
On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT07173049, which also lists 6 linked publications.
Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?
No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.
How often is this information updated?
AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 3 Aug 2026; AzTrials last refreshed its copy on 26 Oct 2026.