Treatment Experience of a Case of "Labiodental Sounds" Diagnosed in Adulthood

Abstract

Labiodental sounds such as /f/ or /v/ can be spoken normally in English but not in Japanese. We treated a patient with a labiodental sound problem. Here, we report this case together with a review of the associated literature.
The patient, female, became aware of her mispronunciation as a child, as it was pointed out to her by many people. However, she started treatment for the problem only after reaching adulthood. Because she had mispronounced words for a long time, she had a fear of face-to-face and telephone conversations. The problem also caused problems in her social life. We used the same maneuver in this case which is commonly used to treat functional articulation disorders. We gave her speech therapy once a month, each session lasting 30 minutes, and continued at that pace for six months. After therapy she became able to perfectly pronounce all Japanese phonemes, and her sense of fear in personal relationships disappeared.