A Complexity Approach to Promoting Within-and Cross-Language Generalization in Bilingual Children With Phonological Delays

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of generalization when treating complex targets with shared sounds in Spanish for a 5-year-old Spanish–English bilingual child with a phonological delay. Method: Two complex clusters (/fl/ and /fɾ/) and one additional target (/l/) were chosen for treatment. Intervention sessions were held in Spanish over the course of 1 year on a weekly basis. The accuracy of the treated and untreated targets was monitored using a single-subject case design and was assessed using visual analysis. Results: The accuracy of the production of treated targets increased upon administering the intervention. Accuracy also increased for untreated /fl/ targets in Spanish and English, /l/ in English, and untreated /fɾ/ clusters in Spanish. Conclusions: The results suggest that choosing complex targets consisting of shared sounds helps promote the generalization of skills within and across lan-guages. Future studies should examine the outcomes of selecting additional forms of complex targets for bilingual children.