From ‘tota’ to ‘sofa’: An intervention study of six children with phonological disorder

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate a commonly applied intervention model for treating phonological processes in Swedish pre-school children. Six children between 4;1 and 5;7 years old with similar developmental phonological disorder (PD) received an individually adjusted intervention including, to a varying extent, articulatory, phonological and meta-phonological approaches. The goal of intervention was to establish fricatives. A single-subject multiple-baseline design with /f/ and /s/ as target phonemes (dependent variables) and velar plosives and /r/ as control phonemes (control variables) was used. Generalization probe data showed improved production of the treated phonemes in five of the children while one girl established /f/ but not /s/. The control phonemes remained unchanged for all children. The children needed between 6 and 18 therapy sessions to reach the intervention goal. An individually adjusted intervention proved to be an effective method for improving speech production in most of the children with PD. The study highlights the importance of considering heterogeneity in children with PD.