Major focus area

Speech Therapy -> Receptive Language

Short description

Imitative modeling technique is an approach that presents the patient with a series of modeled utterances that are very similar in grammatical structure, but quite different in semantic content that facilitates learning to novel context and situations (Courtright, & Courtright, 1979).

Long description

Imitative modeling technique is a modeling approach that presents the patient with a series of modeled utterances that are very similar in grammatical structure, but quite different in semantic content. For example: the boy is running; the girl is playing; the dog is barking. Imitative modeling’s emphasis on similarity in grammatical structure allows the patient to extract the underlying grammatical rule from the series of utterances (is +ing) instead of mimicking (the boy is running; the girl is running; the dog is running). As a result; the child is able to internalize and retain the abstract rule of language, thus facilitating its application to novel context and situations (Courtright, & Courtright, 1979).