Effects of Speech-to-Text Assistive Technology on the Writing of Adolescents with Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a motor disability characterized by impairments in movement, muscle tone, or posture (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]). Motor impairments associated with CP may contribute to weaknesses in written expression. A single-subject alternating treatment design compared the effects of two unique experimental conditions (ie handwriting condition [HW] and speech-to-text assistive technology [AT] condition) on the written expression of three participants with CP. The results indicated that after utilizing the speech-to-text AT, all the participants demonstrated a significant increase in the areas of total words written (TWW), words spelled correctly (WSC), and correct writing sequences (CWS) compared to the handwriting control condition. For the two participants with the most impaired handwriting, large effects were achieved favoring the speech-to-text AT condition across all dependent variables. Discussion includes implications of the findings for the school-based treatment of CP, limitations of the study, and directions for future inquiry.