Drs. Tara McAllister and Jennifer Hill and colleagues published an article in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research with additional findings from a large-scale study of 108 children with residual speech sound disorder (difficulty with the "r" sound). The research team compared traditional speech therapy methods against technology-enhanced methods termed biofeedback; they found that biofeedback was more effective in helping children say the "r" sound in words they had not practiced during treatment. While both types of biofeedback tested (ultrasound and visual-acoustic) were effective, the study revealed that children receiving ultrasound biofeedback—which provides a real-time visual display of the tongue's movement—were the most successful at transferring their new skills to untreated words after 20 sessions.
