Phonologically based assessment and intervention in Spastic Cerebral Palsy: A case analysis

Abstract

The articulation errors of one adult subject demonstrating a spastic variety of congenital cerebral palsy were evaluated via a phonological process analysis. This analysis indicated that a stopping process (replacement of fricatives with homorganic stops) was the most detrimental to the subject's, intelligibility. Subsequent to this analysis a phonemic contrasting programme was initiated toward the goal of minimizing the influence of the stopping process. Results of  spontaneous speech sample analyses indicated that this approach was successful in increasing the percentage of correctly produced fricative patterns. Success in this case suggests the applicability of  a linguistically based intervention approach in structural/functional disturbances of speech articulation.