D is a very well-behaved 6-year-old who has several articulation problems. He has been receiving services at the WVU speech clinic since February 2006. He also goes to speech therapy in the schools. In the past, clinicians have worked on articulations of consonant clusters such as /gl, pl, kl, bl, and fl/.
D can make the voiceless “th” sound, but he substitutes /f/ in most cases. I decided to take a minimal pairs approach. I had flashcards of several examples, such as thread vs. Fred and free vs. three. I explained to D that if he says “free” when he means “three,” that people may be confused about what he is saying. Three and free have different meanings, and he has to use the “th” sound so that people will be able to understand him. We just learned about using the minimal pairs technique in one of our classes, and that is where I first got the idea to use it. I found a case study of two children having the same problem as D. In the study, the children corrected the substitution in targeted words, but did not generalize to words not used in therapy (Saben and Ingham, 1991).
D seemed to understand the concept that he needs to use “th” to be an accurate speaker of the language. When he is doing therapy activities, he concentrates on his speech and is over 90% accurate. However, when he is taking a small break, he reverts back to using the substitution. Hopefully he will begin to generalize soon!
References:
Saben, Cari B. and Ingham, Janis Costello (1991). The effects of minimal pairs treatment on the speech-sound production of two children with phonologic disorders. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 34, 1023-1040.
1 comment:
Hey Laura!
I liked reading your post about using minimal pairs because I thought I was alone in the minimal pair world! However, in my therapy, it's not that my client has difficulty with specific sounds, he has difficulty suppressing one closely-related sound for another because he has aphasia with a Broca's area impairement.
I can see how you could become somewhat frustrated since D does so well in clinic, but hasn't quite carried over his skills to "true life" situations. In an article I found called, "Clinical Application of Two Phonologically Based Treatment Procedures" by Tyler, A.A., Edwards, M.L., & Saxman, J.H., they tested generalization of the minimal pairs approach both you and I are using and the Cycles approach by Barbara Hodson. With the minimal pairs approach, the client would be probed for generalization after producing words by imitation, naming, and then minimal pairs. The results showed that in 11 or fewer training sessions, fewer processes were used by the client (e.g. less use of gliding of fricatives). Each probe session continued to improve and for one of the subjects with the minimal pair approach, after 24 trained sessions, he jumped from 0% accuracy in untrained items after the first probe to 94% accuracy in untrained items after the second follow-up probe.
Thus, this gives me hope for you and your client! He may not be generalizing now, but maybe it'll just take some more time! Just keep up with what you're doing and let time and D work their minimal pair magic! :-D
Reference:
Tyler, A.A., Edwards, M.L., & Saxman, J.H. (1987). Clinical application of two phonologically based treatment procedures. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 52, 393-409.
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