Contributions to the problems of generalization in the phonological intervention: a clinical approach

Abstract

PURPOSE: to describe the procedure which could be useful for teachers and speech therapists engaged within a school context, in the treatment of the phonological mistakes exhibited by children during their primary-school education. It is an attempt to present an intra-subject study and to observe the generalization suffered by the untrained phonemes and processes during the training of a phoneme. METHODS: two children with phonological impairment participated in this research. A Test of Phonology Acosta et al. (1998) was used for the analysis of the simplifications and, later on, an intervention program by minimal pairs was applied. RESULTS: the results seem to indicate that the treatment should start with the process affecting more phonemes and that the most difficult; for example, the phoneme where the process is compulsory applied, should be chosen as the one to be trained. CONCLUSION: the results showed that treatment must begin with the process that affects a major number of phonemes which have more difficulty in their production.