Maximal oppositions & treatment of empty set

Lessons from video

Visual prompts, additional tactile prompts

engaged, attending well

giving sound a meaning=ch for train

child needs to be warned sth difficult coming up, need to let them know they cannot stick to what they are used to

using cued articulation techniques

child had been introduced to those words before. Stress this to the child

Dont recommend nonsense words but sometimes it works

How did he present?

More complex

Motor speech problem

Moving b/w articulation postures

Attempting to get sound, shaping or silent posturing

shadowing-clinician saying alongside with child, sometimes kids can be drawn in

Feedback: I like the way you puckered your lips

Foundation of complexity approaches (Baker, Williams, 2010) 3 factors for facilitating change

No. of feature diff

Nature of feature diff (+/- something)

Known, unknown targets (most-in inventory, least phonological knowledge-not in inventory, X stimulable)

The more complex each of the factors, the more significant change and generalisation will be. Greater diff--> more generalisation

Tea, key (partially stimulable for /k/)

Maximal oppositions therapy, what happens in Tx

Variation of contrastive approach of minimal pair Tx

Homonymy X matter if you can get generalisation worked out

Still contrast 2 sounds, selection of sound that will be contrasted is different

Supporters argue that increased feature diff b/w sound increases opportunity for generalisation by allowing child to fill in gaps in phon knowledge

3 criteria

Comparison sound must be independent of child's error. Choose something very different from error to contrast

sound produced correctly by child: must be in inventory

Maximally distinct from target sound: a) number of unique distinctive features that differentiate sounds b) nature of feature is it a liquid vs. stop or consonantal, or sonorant

Limitations

Often target sounds which are not typically part of child's phonemic inventory

X be used with structural processes

Examples: me-she, my-shy (child making connections); child maintaining phonemic contrasts b/w pairs of words, but not same contrasts as in adult speech

Comparison sound is not related to child's error, maximal oppositions DON'T TARGET homonymy--> homonymy left for child to discover, eliminate on their own

But some clinicians feel: it doesn't fit what we know about physiological disorder, bcos we know that this is a cognitive ling disorder which creates homonymy. If we are not going to target homonymy, what's the use of it?

Studies

Dodd et al (2008) max oppositions

Cf effectiveness of min vs. max contrast Tx in 19 children

12 x 30 min sessions with auditory discrimination, production of word pairs in iso, phrase, sentence level

No diff in progress in generalisation, follow-up assessment in both Tx groups

Lessons from video 2 (max oppositions)

Turn your motor on

Provide example and reintroduce it

We've got a new sound for you/you have done this before. Scaffolding. Break down into chunks-give them confidence in what they already know. Comment "don't worry if you don't know it, this is tricky"

Accept close enough target sounds, approximations

Consider: did the child get closer to target? sometimes they go through diff processes to get there

Tx of empty set

Almost same as max oppositions, not homonyms

For child who produces /t/ for /sh/, contrastive pairs need to be made to contrast /sh/ with another sound /r/ in error that is maximally distinct.

Eg. ship-rip, shake-rake, shoe-roo

If child produces /w/ for /r/ then minimal pairs will be tip-wip, take-wake, to-woo

Gierut (1991) Tx of empty set

Cf effectiveness of treatment of empty set, min pair therapy, 3 children

Tx of empty set had greater phon change, more untrained sounds added to child's inventory

Lessons from video 3 (treatment of empty set)

Visual and verbal cues

Motoric knowledge

If child overarticulates but it is not a /r/, still have to accept it. If you keep correcting, might deflate their confidence

Need to overarticulate. Lips together /w/, lips back /r/- emphasise on the lips spreading

As long as child doesn't say what they used to say, just accept it