In the literature, there are various treatments for children with speech sound disorders (SSD) but few discuss treating specific phonological interventions processing disorders with specific interventions. According to Allen (2013), phonological interventions are effective as gleaned from the narrative reviews of many evidenced based intervention approaches for children with SSD. Due to the lack of breadth in the number of studies being compared, there are few studies that show that one intervention approach is unequivocally superior to another with a particular client group (Baker & McLeod, 2011). Knowledge of optimal intervention intensity for each approach will be integral to any investigation. Phonological processes that occur in the early stages of normally developing children can signal a delay in development (Beers, 1992; DeBree, 2007; Mediavilla et al., 2002). Phonological processing disorders can be challenging to treat in preschoolers with severe phonological processing delay. There are several treatment approaches that have proven to improve the disorder, however; there are no recommendations for speech-language pathologists to treat a specific phonological process.The purpose of this project was to evaluate the efficacy of the empty set intervention approach on preschoolers with the phonological process fronting to determine an efficacious treatment for the treatment of fronting. This single case research design investigation focused on the empty set intervention approach and its effect on retention and generalization of targeted speech sounds. The treatment, in this A-B single-subject design, was intensive to both production (20+ prompt sets) and session frequency (three times per week for 3 weeks).The outcome revealed improvement in the ability to correctly produce initial /k/ and /g/ phonemes of words in preschoolers who present with a severe phonological process fronting. Treatment effects generalized to untreated phonemes and improvements were noted with unaffiliated sounds.The results supported the use of the empty set approach to address fronting in preschoolers with severe phonological processing disorder.
