Our findings suggest that protracted development of weak-strong stress production reflects physiological constraints on producing short articulatory durations and rising intensity contours. Findings validate treatment that is centered on strong-weak stress production for children ≥ 3 years with dysprosody. Although intervention for the production of weak-strong words may be initiated before age 7 years, reference to normative acoustic data is preferable to relying on perceptual judgments of accuracy.

This intervention seemed to achieve long-lasting reductions in children's WFDs. The differential responses to phonological and semantic intervention imply the need to tailor intervention for differing children by matching it to their linguistic profile.

No abstract