Treating Inconsistant Phonology
March 8, 2010
Hi Scott, I enjoyed your presentation at AASLP! I’ve got some questions about the teaching of consistency to the inconsistent deviant category you discussed. I work with 0-3, would you recommend teaching sound/word discrimination and same/different in targeting consistency to little ones? Did you say that incorrect productions are acceptable as long as there\’s consistency? Any additional tips/info. would be appreciated! Thanks!
Hello Ann,
I am happy that you enjoyed the presentation. I put this question out to our group during our weekly meeting in order to get everyone’s feedback. Here is what we came up with.
1.
The initial goal when dealing with the Inconsistent Deviant (IDPD) group is consistency. So yes you could accept consistent-incorrect productions. For instance, if a child was completely inconsistent but then began reducing final syllabless (phonological) or saying words without initial consonants (Consistent Deviant), in essence you have caused them to begin to produce patterns which is a huge success. What I have seen so far is that this is a really short event in the process of saying the word correctly. Within a single session a child can begin saying an inconsistent word (elephant = epunt, pentalep, empatunt) consistently (epunt, epunt, epunt), and then correctly at the syllable level (e-le-fan-t).
2a.
Connecting this to the second part of your question is the idea of what to use in therapy. The word choices from this study I think would apply to a 0-3 year-old child:
Dodd and colleagues (2004) detail an intervention program where the child, parents and teacher selected a list of 50 words that were functionally “powerful” for the child. Words commonly included were people’s names (family, teacher), pet names, places (e.g. school, toilet, shops), function words (e.g., please, sorry, thank you), foods (water, drink, chips, Cheerios), and child’s favorite things (teddy, games, Dora). *Increasing intelligibility for these words motivated the use of consistent productions.
2b. “would you recommend teaching sound/word discrimination and same/different in targeting consistency to little ones”
Here are my thoughts but let me know if you have success with anything because I am just wrapping my mind around this.
The above cited study said this: “MAY also benefit from phonological contrast therapy once consistency is established.” The assumption with a phonological kid is that all the sounds in isolation are present. With your age group you have to clearly identify IF the child is truely IDPD because there is a lot of accepted inconsistency at age 0-3. After identifying the 50 target words, you can make 3 attempts per word and record the child’s production. You should see inconsistency across most word types.
Tx: A careful inventory of the child’s current consonant and vowel inventory may provide a clue as to beginning words (or approximations) that may be possible. Word choices should take into account words and functions that a child would want to communicate.
*[words are] chosen because of frequency [and how often they are] used in functional common situations—not according to word shape or segments.
This therapy approach resulted in greater change in children with inconsistent speech disorder compared to more traditional approaches (Crosbie et al., 2005)
In summary:
- Aim for consistency of a set group of words
- Choose small syllable sizes
- Choose words that contain the sounds they have in their age appropriate repertoire
- Choose words that are HIGHLY functional
- Target the whole word and begin phonological contrast therapy once consistency is established
This supports a bilingual approach because targeting the phonological plan in either language will carry over to both languages. Because you not remediating the phoneme but you are remediating the inconsistency so this is what transfers between the languages.
I would love to hear your results, successful or not. The child that I showed at the end of presentation made those gains because I completely abandoned phonological strategies and did this whole-word thing. I’m kind of becoming an after the fact believer and am still working on MY consistency with the therapy!
Best Regards,
Scott
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