Two studies illustrate the utility of listener ratings of speech naturalness for measuring and modifying speech naturalness during stuttering therapy. The program involved five adolescent stutterers receiving an intensive treatment incorporating a prolonged speech procedure. Results showed that speech naturalness ratings could be modified toward a…

A self-monitoring activity in the clinical setting led to generalization of correct speech sound to spontaneous speech outside the treatment setting for 13 misarticulating elementary students. (CL)

The paper presents a detailed examination of an unusual pattern reflected in the speech of a 3-year-old language-impaired child. Training was instituted to increase the number of appropriate categories in the child's phonologic system. (Author/CL)

Effects of systematic use of mands (non-yes/no questions and instructions to verbalize), models (imitative prompts), and specific consequent events on the productive verbal behavior of three unresponsive, socially isolated, language-delayed preschoolers were investigated. Treatments resulted in increases in total verbalizations and nonobligatory…

Twelve primary grade children who inconsistently misarticulated "r" participated in training programs for specific allophones of "r." Training steps included production of syllables, nouns, noun phrases, and simple sentences. Generalizing to untrained allophones occurred for all children. (Author)

A word level behavioral routine for the remediation of distinctive feature errors was developed and taught to seven children (5 to 6 years old) with moderate to severe nonorganic phonological disabilities. A one-group pretest-posttest design established that the number and severity of the sound substitutions decreased with training. (Author)

Speech theraplay, a method of remediation for children with articulation disorders, is described. The approach is based on parent-child interactions that are postulated to activate articulation acquistion. The results of a six-week study indicated improvement in the articulation abilities of six children (3 to 4 years old) with this method.…

Efficacy of individualized training using a distinctive feature model of therapy was evaluated with 75 hearing-impaired postsecondary students. Significant improvements in vowel, word and sentence production, and word and sentence perception were observed. (Author/DB)

A treatment program is described which successfully improved the speech of a 57-year-old apraxic patient. The program was composed of physiologic (nonspeech) and phonetic (articulatory) tasks that began with oroneuromotor control activities and progressed to consonant-vowel syllable, word, and sentence drills, with all activities paced by a…