Final answer:
The Hodson Cycles Approach is a speech-language therapy technique for children with phonological disorders, involving cyclically targeting phonological patterns without requiring mastery before moving on, which promotes gradual speech improvement.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Hodson Cycles Approach for speech sound disorders (SSD) is a therapeutic technique used by speech-language pathologists to treat children with phonological disorders, which are a type of SSD. This approach is grounded on the cycling of phonological patterns that are targeted one at a time, allowing the child to gradually improve their speech through structured sessions. The Hodson Cycles Approach does not require that the child masters one pattern before moving onto the next, which differentiates it from other traditional drill-based phonological therapy approaches. Instead, a cycle is determined by a specific timeframe, during which various phonological patterns are introduced and practiced. Once the cycle is completed, the next cycle begins, possibly revisiting previous patterns for additional practice, thus ensuring that the child experiences numerous exposures to correct speech production over time.
This approach is generally characterized by its dynamic, repetitive, and systematic structure, which seeks to enhance the child's phonological system as a whole. Professionals in the field of speech-language pathology often praise the Hodson Cycles Approach for its effectiveness in improving intelligibility in children with highly unintelligible speech, and it is just one of several methodologies implemented to address speech sound disorders.