Differential Treatment of Phonological Disability in Children With Impaired Hearing Who Were Trained Orally

Abstract

The efficacy of differential treatment of phonological disability was studied in children with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing impairments who presented with both phonetic and phonemic error types. Two treatments were administered to four subjects aged 5:0 to 10:5 with prelinguistic hearing impairment who had been trained orally. Phonetic treatment was modeled in accord with an articulation approach using syllable imitation. Phonemic treatment was modeled in accord with a phonological approach using meaningful minimal contrasts. Phonetic targets were consonant singletons; phonemic targets were phonological processes. Within each treatment, one target was trained; the other served as a control. Results indicated a tendency toward improved target production in training and generalization with phonemic treatment. Individual subject differences in training and in generalization were evident for the phonetic treatment. No between-treatment differences in training were found. However, between-treatment differences in generalization were significant. Clinical issues and implications of the findings are discussed.