Phonological Discrimination question

[Incognito]

DC is doing a program for helping with phonological processing and reading.  DC has gotten through most of the modules on phonological processing but is stuck with a couple of sounds - be/de  and bi/di.  The exercises practice listening to the sounds slowly and then more quickly, but my child can't signal the change in sounds fast enough for the slow exercises.  Are there any tips anyone has for helping a child learn to hear the difference between sound pairs like this?

 

DC was able to do it for many other sound pairs, so it is not that the ability to be fast enough isn't there, it's these particular sounds.

 

Thanks for any insight.

 

[EndOfOrdinary]

My mother is a reading specialist. I have no real outstanding knowledge, but I can pass on what she has shared over the years. In instances where identifying sounds are really a problem, she will have kids put their hand less than an inch in front of their mouth and then alternate between the sounds. The idea is that for some students this creates a mental bridge by activating more of the senses. In the b/d sounds a puff of air comes out of your mouth with the b sound but not the d sound. You feel the air only on b. She then asks kids to picture their mouth making the sound while they say the sound and feel the sound. In this way they say, envision, feel, and hear it all at once. After doing this a bit, she then has them look picture cards with an object and the word while reading/saying the words with their hands in front of their mouth again. Words in this instance would be things like bed, dead, belt, dribble, bitter, Debbie, debt, did, bid.

 

Apparently making the reading a complete sensory experience really helps some students. My son did not have reading issues, but I find her discussions of techniques she uses so fascinating that I often remember them. The brain is just incredible.

[PeterPan]

Technically both /b/ and /p/ are plosives and aspirated.  /p/ just has more.  Wikipedia has a complex article under plosives where they go into aspiration and which positions of /p/ are aspirated, etc.  If you use that as a way to teach a dc to discriminate, it might get complex or not hold up very well.  For instance it says medial /p/ is not aspirated.  If you teach them to use aspiration to check for a letter, it might not help them in all positions.  Better to feel by lip formation and turning motor on/off (voiced/voiceless).  But that's just linguistic pickiness.  :D

 

Incognito, that's a really close pair to discriminate, b/d.  What you might check is whether he can discriminate them AT ALL or if it's only the speed that is the issue.  And then can he discriminate them in all positions.

 

If you look at the speech production, /b/ uses the lips and is plosive (explosive, exploding, always a good thing with boys!).  /d/ is totally different, using the tongue lifted behind the teeth (dental).  There are different types of Ts, but that's just a generalization that gets you there.  For our purposes with ds' speech the muscle/sensory input for /b/ is to take your fingers lengthwise (parallel to the lips) and quickly swipe them out from the bone to lips in a quick motion.  The prompt/input for the /d/ is under the jaw, very close to the front lower teeth, because you're telling the tongue to lift there.  They are such radically, radically different formations, my ds doesn't seem to confuse them.  If his brain gets glitchy, I go back to giving that sensory input.  If you have the comfortable relationship to physically touch the person, it would not hurt a speech-typical person to receive this kind of sensory input and would in fact be a very kinesthetic, strong experience.  

 

You know, simply have HIM point his finger under his jaw, right behind the bone, and say /t/ and /d/.  Explore that the tongue goes up with both but that the major difference between them is motor on, motor off (voiced, voiceless).  This way he's making a more complete imprint of /d/, rather than doing /d/ in isolation in one place and /t/ in isolation in another.  That way, when you want to tell him /d/, your little code will be that you lift your own finger to that point under your jaw and say /d/.  You'll feel you're at the correct place, because your tongue will be raising there.

 

It's actually not rocket sciency hard for him to stroke his own lips like a duck bill as he says /b/ and feel them coming together.  Again, do the voiced/voiceless pair (/p/, /b/) so he builds the complete picture.

 

That's great that he's doing so well with the materials you're using!  You probably are seeing some processing speed issues there too.  If it's low, he's going to slow down and get glitchy where it's especially hard.  The trouble in that situation is they get stressed and feel like it's a TEST instead of a doable, fun exercise.  It would be better to go through those exercises, hitting the pause button after it tells them the sound, and doing the kinesthetic/sensory inputs TOGETHER.  Go through the entire lesson together that way.  Then go into the parent controls and hit reset so he can do it again the next day without your help, just doing the inputs on his own.  That's how our SLP uses Earobics, which sounds similar to what you're doing.  She'll start the exercise, hit pause, and DO the physical sensory of it to bring the task within reach.

[Lecka]

You can also use a mirror, and look at the differences your mouth is making.

 

I have heard the air thing to distinguish between b and p, holding your hand back farther from your face.  

 

I get the same air feeling for b and d, it is a little different but I can't tell them apart that way, the way I can for b and p.  

 

There are a lot of things like that for different pairs, for some you can touch your throat, also, 

 

I think the mouth position is different for b and d, in a way you could show with a mirror.

 

I am not that good at these, but this is stuff a speech therapist may know about, and the LIPS program talks about these ways to sounds apart, too.  

 

You can also find picture sorts in phonological awareness books, that have picture cards for words starting with the different sounds, and the child divides them into piles ------ that would be a more advanced thing to do, after there is progress in other ways.  But that is something, too.

 

And I think you could say different words and have her look at your mouth to see what your mouth looks like.  

 

Lots of things like that.  

 

I totally agree with the "say, envision, and feel" and ideas from pp!

 

[PeterPan]

Lecka is correct that in reality it's easier to teach the discrimination with minimal differences pairs, because the sounds vary with position in words and vary when you say them in isolation.  Because they're plosives, you can explode them as much as you want.  Clearly Lecka likes to explode things.   :D

 

The book I LOVE for auditory discrimination is Jean DeGaetano's Attention Good Listeners.  It's extremely easy to implement and lets them discriminate pairs in context, in an enjoyable way.  It was very effective for us and you can use the pictures to work on other skills as well, like RAN/RAS and working memory.

[Jenn in CA]

Slight hijack... OhE, thx for mentioning the Good Listeners book. The website has a lot of interesting-looking stuff for auditory processing etc.... have you used anything else?

[PeterPan]

Slight hijack... OhE, thx for mentioning the Good Listeners book. The website has a lot of interesting-looking stuff for auditory processing etc.... have you used anything else?

Our SLP recommended a couple of the books from there to us.  I've just been collecting them when I see deals.  Facilitating Word Recall was not one she suggested to us but I thought I'd try since word retrieval has been so poor for dd.  (I just figured his would be low.)  The materials are GREAT but either I wasn't using it right or he didn't need it.  I actually think it's the latter, but I really don't know.  She recommended Listening, Understanding, Remember, and Verbalizing and I have that, just haven't started it yet.  If I have more, I don't know.  Those are just what I found when I went to my shelf.  To me DeGaetano's stuff is intelligent and clearly based on experience.  That's why I felt like I hit this GOLD MINE, wow.  

 

The trick with things marketed to therapists is to remember the *aren't* just using it one way.  It's not like you just pick it up, end of story.  Think creatively about all the ways you could use it, expand, build, bring in other disciplines or goals.  That's what has fascinated me.