Therapist habituation and purported client progress in articulation therapy

Abstract

Ten graduate student clinicians, in their final year of training, evaluated the tape recorded pretherapy performances of 10/s/-defective children on the 68/s/ items of the McDonald Deep Test of Articulation (1964). Five of the 10 clinicians were randomly selected and assigned one of these /s/-defective children as part of their regular case load. The children were seen for 1 hr per week for a 5-week period. The clinicians were not informed as to the nature of the study or that the composition of their case load was in any way connected with the tapes that they had previously evaluated. The five remaining clinicians and children did not participate in therapy during this 5-week period. Immediately following this 5-week period, an additional tape recording was made of all 10 children's responses to the /s/ items of the McDonald Deep Test (1964). Both pre- and posttreatment tapes were then evaluated by all 10 clinicians in independent listening sessions. Significant between-tape differences, indicative of both habituation and sensitization to client errors within the in-therapy clinicians only, are discussed in terms of their clinical applications.