Major focus area

Speech Therapy -> Articulation

Short description

Sensory motor approach is a procedure used by the SLP that targets the syllable, not the isolated phoneme, and treats it as the basic unit of speech production holding the principles of coarticulation as important (McDonald, 1964; Pena-Brooks & Hedge, 2007).

Long description

Sensory motor approach is a procedure used by the SLP that targets the syllable, not the isolated phoneme, and treats it as the basic unit of speech production holding the principles of coarticulation as important. Sensory-Motor approach holds that phonetic environment is very important in treatment and that training should begin at the syllable level.

The McDonald's Deep Test of Articulation can help you find phonetic contexts where misarticulated sounds can be produced correctly. Example: /s/ distortion can produce /s/ correctly in watch-sun.

Method:
1) Heighten the patient's response to connected motor productions by beginning with non-error sounds in a variety of bi- and tri-syllabic contexts (in nonsense syllables) with differing stress patterns.
2) Train correct production of misarticulated sounds; find a context in which the sound is produced correctly (watch-sun) and have the patient produce it in various syllable stress/phrase/sentence patterns
3) Vary the phonetic contexts and have the patient practice correct production of the targets in different contexts. (watch-sit, watch-saw)
4) Generalize by facilitating transfer to other phonetic context and then to natural communication activities

(McDonald, 1964; Pena-Brooks & Hedge, 2007)