Stimulability Approach

Stimulability Approach

• Population:
• Age: 2-4 years old
• Recommended for:
• young children with small phonetic inventories
• Nonstimulable for production of many or all of the absent sounds
• Children with normal oral-motor, hearing, and language skills 
• Children who have difficulty with morphosyntax and syntax skills
• GFTA-2 (or 3) scores in the 1st-10th percentile 
• Children with moderate to severe/profound phonological disorders
• moderate-severe phonological impairments 
• Dosage:
• Individual or group therapy
• Once or twice a week for 45-50 minutes 
• Short Term approach lasting 12 session/12 weeks

• Seven Components:
1. Directly target nonstimulable sounds 
2. Make targets the joint focus of attention
3. Associate speech sounds with hand/body motions
4. Association speech sounds with alliterative characters
5. Encourage vocal practice
6. Ensure early success
7. Ensure successful communicative attempts 

• Typical Session Outline:
1. Elicitation of 1/3 of the stimulability probe
2. Review character cards with their sounds and associated motions
3. Engage child in play-based activities (30 minutes)
4. Elicit the palindrome generalization probe 

• Materials Needed:
• Games/Activites that give child opportunity to request or name the sound
• Examples:
• fishing
• cards games
• post office
• board games
• spinner games
• guessing games 

• Other Comments:

• Goal is increase stimulability NOT acquisition
• Sound is considered stimulable if produced with 10% accuracy or produced correctly twice
• ALL consonants addressed regardless of stimulability 
• Therapy based on a stimulability probe completed during the assessment 
• Not much research supporting stimulability approach as a stand alone interventoin approach
• may need to co-occur with other approaches