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Jamie Reilly's letter "Beyond Classical Conditioning" caused me to wonder if this writer was serious or is being sarcastic. The writer suggests the profession should "focus ... on increasing the tolerance of the peers of children who experience such [articulation] difficulties..." Is Reilly suggesting that we should be "educating" the public to think that speech errors don't exist? Perhaps the new treatment for learning disabilities should be to tell the public that learning disabilities don't really exist, therefore, if a student has academic difficulty, maybe he is just 'lazy' or dumb. As for the writer's first sentence asserting that articulation treatment relies on "outmoded" and "dubious" operant conditioning, I'd suggest the writer take a course in PROMPT, or Diane Bahr's Ages and Stages workshop, or my workshop on treatment of Intractable Speech Disorders, to find out what clinicians are actually doing in therapy today.
Donna Ridley
Beaufort, SC
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