Behavioral treatment of children with phonological disorder: the efficacy of vocal imitation and sufficient-response-exemplar training.

Two preschoolers with phonological disorder could not say several sounds. The team taught them to copy the sounds through vocal imitation.

They gave many examples of each target sound. This is called sufficient-response-exemplar training. They used a multiple-baseline design to show the training caused the change.

Both children quickly learned the trained sounds. The new sounds showed up in their everyday speech and stayed for weeks.

Parents and teachers heard the change without any extra coaching. The kids used the sounds in words they had never practiced.

The result lines up with Richards (1974), who first used imitation to fix articulation in hearing-impaired girls. Svein et al. added the idea of many exemplars.

Du et al. (2017) got the same boost in echoic accuracy, but they used an iPad app instead of live voice. The tool changed; the mechanism—sharp auditory discrimination—stayed the same.

Madden et al. (2003) looks like a contradiction. That team taught phonological awareness to children with Down syndrome. The kids learned the tasks, but their speech clarity did not improve. The difference is diagnosis: Down syndrome brings oral-motor issues that block transfer, while idiopathic phonological disorder does not.

If a child has pure phonological disorder, give them lots of correct models to imitate. Stack dozens of exemplars until the sound is easy. The gain will travel to real conversation and stick around, saving you from extra generalization drills.