Analysis and Interpretation

1. Analysis and Interpretation

2. Determining • Whether or not there is a phonological problem • Nature of the problem, if one • If treatment is merited • Plan for treatment

3. Traditional - Stimulability Select sounds that are stimulable. Rationale: sounds that are stimulable are easier to learn. Phonological – Stimulability Select sounds that are not stimulable. Rationale: (1) Stimulable sounds will emerge without direct intervention; (2) Non-stimulable sounds represent less phonological knowledge than stimulable sounds. Selecting sounds that represent less phonological knowledge results in greater change across the sound system Assess. Constructs From Different Perspectives. (Williams, 2002)

4. Traditional – Consistency Select sound(s) that are inconsistent. Rationale: Variability may be important indicator of flexibility, change, and potential growth. Phonological – Consistency Select sound(s) that are consistent in their error productions. Rationale: Consistent errors reflect category representations, which will result in appropriate category shift to correspond to the target representation as a result of treatment. Assess. Constructs From Different Perspectives. (Williams, 2002)

5. Severity • Degree of a client’s articulation and phonological disorder

6. Intelligibility • Understandibility of spontaneous speech • Perceptual judgment by listener • Factors influencing intelligibility • Number errors • Types of errors • Consistency of errors • Frequency of occurrence errors • Phonological processes used

7. Listeners’ familiarity with speech pattern Prosodic factors Rate Inflection Stress Pauses Voice quality Loudness Fluency Linguistic experience of listener Social environment of communication act Message content Communication cues Transmission media Intelligibility – Other factors

8. Intelligibility – Quantifying • No standard procedure • Approaches – Gordon-Brannan (1994) • Open-set word identification • Closed-set word identification

9. Rating scale procedures - Clinical Judgment Scales • You can rate severity and intelligibility • Based on judgment of one or more clinicians familiar with the client • Interval scale (Table 10.1 and 2) • Direct magnitude scale

10. Intelligibility – selection • The poorer the ratings the more likely for intervention • Most valid may be to calculate the actual percentage of words understood in a speech sample

11. Severity • Percentage of Consonants Correct (PCC) Shriberg and Kwiatkowski (1982) • Index to quantify severity of involvement

12. PCC • See your book for the actual rules and formula

13. Severity – PCC Process • Examiner makes judgments of individual sounds in continuous speech tape recorded (50-100 utterances) • Only intended target consonants (selected examples below) • No consonant added before vowels • No schwars • No repetitions of syllables • No consonants in words completely or partially unintelligible • No third repetition of words

14. Severity – PCC Process Scoring • Scored as incorrect • Deletions of target consonant • Substitutions • Partial voicing of initial target consonants • Distortions • Additions • Initial /h/ deletion and final n/ng substitutions in stressed syllables

15. Severity – PCC Process • Watch out for • Dialectal variations • Fast or casual speech • Allophones scored as correct • Calculation

16. Issues with intelligibility ratings • There is low correlation with between intelligibility and number of consonants pronounced correctly.

17. Stimulability • Diagnostic therapy might give a better indication • General guide for identification of clients who may correct their phonological errors without intervention • False positives and false negatives • Research

18. Error Patterns • Place-Manner-Voicing • Work on characteristic to address several items or just work on particular items, be careful because it is not necessarily generalized • Distinctive feature – absence or presence of particular distinctive features • Based on acoustic, perceptual and articulatory characteristics • Articulatory characteristics are most useful • Criticism that may not be useful because it is a binary system and does not address all the possible productions

19. Error Patterns • Phonological process analysis • Looks at influence of sound position within word and syllable shapes • Multiple pattern occurrence • Unusual pattern occurrence (idiosyncratic processes) • Sound preferences

20. Developmental Appropriateness • Debate about cognitive abilities

21. Comparing Performance to Ages Norms • Consider error in relation to age • Norms are statistical averages • Should not be used for predictive purposes • Normative data used as a guide to counsel parents • Normative data conceal successes and errors in attempts to produce given phoneme, and that these are frequent patterns of development • High individual variability

22. Selecting behaviors to Target • Stimulability • start at the most complex linguistic unit the client can imitate • selection of the most or least stimulable???? • Work on exemplars at the same time • Frequency of occurrence • The most frequent the problem the more severe the intelligibility • Frequency of usage in the language

23. Selecting behaviors to Target • Developmental Appropriateness • Contextual analysis • Look at what surrounds the sound to identify where the sound is produced appropriately • Where are the sounds produced?? • These sounds take less time to correct

24. Selecting behaviors to Target • Phonological process analysis • Focus on developing appropriate patterns instead of eliminating pattern and those that are stimulable • Phonological knowledge analysis • Tests child’s cognitive awareness of a particular sound at a linguistic level. Most knowledgeable and least knowledgeable gauged as consistency of usage. • Target the least knowledge. • Dialectal considerations • Social-vocational expectations

25. Treatment

26. Attacking Treatment Goals • Vertically structured treatment program • One or two goals are trained to some performance criterion before proceeding to another target (traditional) • Mass practice on a restricted on a restricted number of training items will facilitate generalization to other non-trained items. • Horizontally structured treatment program (training broad) • Several targets at the same time • Client is learning commonalities or relationships among target sound productions and treatment will be more efficient.

27. Attacking Treatment Goals • Cyclically structured treatment program • Focus of targets in cyclical schedules (2-4 days per week or 2-4 weeks per cycle) • Regardless of progress the next cycle focuses on a second set of processes. • Treatment proceeds regardless of progress. • It reflects how children actually learn sounds

28. Scheduling • Intermittent scheduling – twice a week over an extended period • Block scheduling – daily sessions for a shorter temporal span separated by time between the blocks. May be Better unless those with organic impairments. • Under eight no more than half an hour.

29. Group versus Individual • No difference • Classroom based

30. Intervention style • Drill * • Drill play * • Structured play • Play * more effective