App helps bridge the gap in rural service provision for children with speech challenges

Research led by a Charles Sturt University academic has examined the effectiveness of the innovative ‘SayBananas!’ app that may assist children with speech sound disorders (SSD) and their parents living in less populated areas where allied health support can be hard to come by. 

The Mario style SayBananas! game is an interactive video-gaming system for remote tablet-based speech therapy that solves the challenge of delivering intensive evidence-based treatment protocols to children with speech sound disorder.

Researcher leader Professor of Speech and Language Acquisition Sharynne McLeod said the ‘SayBananas!’ app may provide a viable solution for overcoming the seemingly intractable problem of equitable, timely, and cost-effective access to speech-language pathology support for families living in areas of low population density.

“Many young children have speech sound disorders where their speech may be unintelligible and negatively impact development of communication, friendships, and academic outcomes,” she said.

“If speech and language difficulties persist beyond preschool or without specialist services, these children face increased risk of long-term social, educational, and vocational limitations.”

Professor McLeod said the current effectiveness study was designed to assess the usage of the SayBananas! app for children and their parents, and to identify whether this is a practical and useful resource to complement traditional speech therapy in rural Australia.

For many children, sufficient speech-language pathology (SLP) services are hard to come by, particularly in the public health system, often as a result of long waiting lists. For those in rural or regional areas, the challenge is even greater. 

“Children may receive limited speech pathology services, particularly in rural areas,” she explained. 

“The critical window for early intensive therapy is often missed due to long waiting lists, geographical barriers, and insufficient funding for speech pathology services.”

To conduct the effectiveness study Professor McLeod worked with 45 rural Australian children with speech sound disorders. Intervention comprised four weeks of SayBananas! practice with 10 to 15 target words using motor learning principles.

Parents of the children in the study delivered individualised speech therapy with SayBananas! with their children remotely supervised by speech pathologists through the Say66 secure web-based portal.

The overarching aim of this mixed methods research study was to examine the effect of the SayBananas! app on the speech of children with speech sound disorders, as well as to document the usage and feedback (usability, accessibility and rating of the content, format, features and functions).

“This effectiveness study demonstrated that SayBananas! is effective for engaging rural Australian children with speech sound disorders by providing opportunities to practice individualised speech targets and improving their speech accuracy,” Professor McLeod said.

Parent and child feedback about the usability, accessibility and rating of SayBananas! for children in rural Australia was positive.

“It provides a viable solution for overcoming equitable, timely, and cost-effective access to speech pathology services for families living in areas of low population density,” the Professor added.

This study is a precursor study for a large-scale randomised controlled trial of SayBananas! for children with speech sound disorders and the authors are seeking funding for this research.

Co-researchers included Ms Grace Kelly, a research assistant at Charles Sturt University; Dr Beena Ahmed (University of NSW) and Professor Kirrie Ballard (University of Sydney), who are cofounders of Say66. This research was supported by an AMP Tomorrow Maker award to Professor Kirrie Ballard.