A disney song made for ‘r’ therapy

We all remember the awesome Disney show ‘Encanto’ right? Some of us are maybe still trying to get some of the songs out of our heads. But apparently, if we’re working on vocalic ‘r’ in speech therapy, there’s on song in particular that can stay.

"Surface Pressure" can be an awesome resource when targeting the challenging /ɹ/ sounds. Lockenvitz and Brooks (2023) had the idea to incorporate popular songs into therapy sessions to address low-frequency phonemes. They analyzed the song's phonetic content, noting that there are a lot of ‘r’s in there-more than in natural conversation. They found that schwars made up 5.32% of the sounds, which is a lot higher than in natural conversation. The total rhotics made up 9% of sounds in “Surface Pressure” vs. 6% in natural conversation. Lockenvitz and Brooks also argued that the song's authenticity and accessibility make it engaging therapy material for children with speech disorders. Additionally, they highlight the opportunity for meaningful discussions and language exploration within the song's lyrics.

So, next time you’re working on getting that ‘r’ to generalize, it might be time to bust out some ‘Surface Pressure’.

Source: Lockenvitz, S., & Brooks, A. (2023). Under the surface: Rhoticity and relevance in the song “Surface Pressure” from Disney’s Encanto. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_persp-23-00087 [available to ASHA SIG members]