Stimulability as a Factor in the Phonological Generalization of Misarticulating Preschool Children

The relationship among six functionally misarticulating preschool children's phoneme-specific stimulability skills, the choice of treatment targets (i.e., stimulable or nonstimulable sounds), and generalization of correct sound production was explored in this prospective study. Each subject [age range of 4:11 (years:months) to 5:61 was taught to produce [r] and one other sound that was absent from his or her phonetic inventory using a contrasting-minimal-pairs production approach. A multiple baseline across behaviors single-subject research design provided experimental control. For 86% of the 28 monitored sounds, generalization was consistent with pretreatment stimulability skills; production of stimulable sounds tended to improve regardless of treatment target. These results suggest that nonstimulable sounds are likely to require direct treatment; thus, generalization probe responses may be maximized by treating nonstimulable sounds rather than stimulable sounds.

KEY WORDS: stimulability, generalization, articulation/phonological disorders, intervention, imitation

Submitted on February 16, 1990
Accepted on January 11, 1991

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?