Uso de la Imitación para Mejorar los Fonemas Oclusivos en un Paciente de Trece Años con Retraso Mental Moderado y Síndrome de Down.

The learning process in the human being is given by imitation in its beginnings and then it is perfected as it advances in its experimentation with its body, voice and objects that surround it. This process is very similar to that of the child in his development to acquire the necessary elements to discover the language of his parents, little by little he is listening to them and seeing them to try to be like them; that is, there is an imitation process to be able to interact with their loved ones. Under this premise, a study is carried out with the stops P, B, T, D, K and G with a thirteen-year-old patient with moderate mental retardation and Down's Syndrome in the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador; in order to improve stop phonemes through the imitation of sounds and words related to stop phonemes. This research is part of the thematic line of linguistics: in the branch of phonetics and phonology. The main objective of this research was the reinforcement of the occlusive phonemes through imitation exercises such as: repetition; the syllabification; the singing; emotions and acting; in order to motivate the patient to improve their occlusive phonemes and their interrelation with their environment. To achieve this objective, a mixed qualitative (bibliographic review) and quantitative study (phonetic records) was carried out, with observation processes (recorded zoom sessions) and a scale of measurements (audio), to record the linguistic progress of a 13-year-old patient with moderate mental retardation and Down syndrome in his communication process. The following results were achieved: in twenty thirty-minute sessions the patient improved the pronunciation of the occlusive phonemes / p /, / b /, / t /, / d /, / k / and / g /, with imitation exercises that They were made from the exaggeration in the movement of the mouth to the rhythmic body movement so that the stops flowed with the corresponding breath; a video record was kept to analyze the movement of the lips in words containing stops; and in audio, to analyze the occlusive phonetic records in the praat program in order to measure the patient's phonetic progress. After this first phase, it is expected to continue with the study of the affricate, fricative, sonant and palatal consonant phonemes to study each of the patient's phonetic registers and reinforce their pronunciation.