A minimal-world-pair model for teaching the linguistic significance of distinctive feature properties.

A word level behavioral routine for the remediation of distinctive feature errors was developed for resolving some current theoretical criticisms of minimal-pair therapy. Seven children with moderate to severe non-organic phonological disabilities were taught to correctly discriminate and produce sounds in words by utilizing lexical contrasts. A one-group pretest-posttest design was utilized to establish that the number and severity of the sound substitutions decreased with training. Phonemic improvement was demonstrated with as few as three minimal-pair-words. A paradigm is proffered for future development and explanation.