: In speech therapy, the use of therapies that belong to evidence-based practices is key, as this enables speech therapists to make evidence-based decisions, ensure a higher quality of services, and monitor the needs of individuals with speech and language disorders (Evidence-Based Practice (EBP), b. d.). It is also extremely important to choose the appropriate types of therapies that relate to individual disorders. One of the therapies intended to treat phonological disorders of spoken voices is the Cycles Phonological Approach (Prezas and Hodson, 2010). Theoretical part of this master's thesis describes key elements and guidelines for the implementation of this evidence-based approach, and briefly presents phonological processes and deviations from expected phonological development.
Primarily, CFP is used in the English language, but with this case study we studied its usability in Slovenian as well. In the case of a younger child who shows developmental deviations in phonological field and is unintelligible, based on the results obtained with the Nonlinear Phonological Scan Analysis for Intervention Planning, the phonological awareness test and our occasional test, we designed individualized therapy according to the recommendations of dr. Barbara Hodson. We discussed posterior-anterior contrasts, namely the sound /x/ at the beginning and end of the word, and the reduction of the consonant cluster, namely /ʃp/ and /ʃt/ at the beginning of the word. After the CFP therapy, we repeated the tests and assessed the final state, then conducted an intelligibility test for an unrelated person and inquired about how the parents' point of view about the experience of being involved in therapy after the CFP.
The test results showed a significant positive contribution of the CFP therapy to the improvement of the child's intelligibility. Namely, the selected child correctly pronounced critical parts of the word, which contained the same target phonological patterns as the target words in question. The improvement in the child's intelligibility was also confirmed by the intelligibility test for an unrelated person. According to the results of the phonological awareness test, the implementation of the CFP also had a positive effect on the child's phonological awareness, where the greatest improvement was observed in the recognition of the first sound in the word and in the recognition of rhymes. The parents of the selected child were satisfied with their involvement in the implementation of the CFP. The obtained results are an encouraging guide for further research and use of the cyclic phonological approach in Slovenia.
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