Using a Multimodal Approach to Facilitate Articulation, Phonemic Awareness, and Literacy in Young Children

Abstract

The primary focus of this research study was to examine the benefit of a using a multimodal approach to speech sound correction with preschool children. The approach uses the auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic modalities and includes a unique, interactive visual focus that attempts to provide a visual representation of a phonemic category. The research compared the effectiveness of traditional articulation therapy with this multimodal approach to articulation therapy for each of two 4-year-old children. Participants demonstrated severe articulation deficiencies in the presence of two very different receptive-expressive language profiles. The findings indicated that the multimodal intervention not only directly improved both participants’ articulation abilities, but also enhanced their developing phonemic awareness and literacy skills. The analysis suggests that early speech sound intervention using a multimodal approach that emphasizes symbols may be more beneficial than a traditional articulation therapy approach for some children, because it promotes phonemic awareness and sound–symbol correspondence.