Major focus area

Speech Therapy -> Receptive Language

Short description

This is a child-centered approach where the SLP uses communicative context and linguistic mapping so that opportunities for the patient to provide target responses occur as a natural part of play interactions (Hubbell, 1977; Fey, 1986; Murray & Hornbaker 1997).

Long description

This is a child-centered approach where the SLP arranges activities so that opportunities for the patient to provide target responses occur as a natural part of play interactions.

ILS techniques include:

Self Talk – SLP describes his/her own activities when interacting with a patient.

Parallel Talk – SLP describes/comments on child’s actions during play tasks. Often this will elicit an imitation or a verbalization from the child that can then be expanded and/or extended.

Reversed imitation – SLP imitates what the child says and there is substantial probability that the child will imitate the imitation. The more the child says, the more the opportunities exist for practice of phonological, lexical, and syntactic forms and the more opportunities there are for feedback.

Expansion – Process of expanding a child’s incomplete or telegraphic statements into grammatically complete productions. Process of extracting the meaning of a child’s utterance and putting it into a more complex form. Expand the utterance by using adult grammar and do not add new information.

Example: Child puts a toy dog in a dollhouse and says “doggy house” SLP expands this by saying “The doggy is in the house.”

Extension – Process of putting a child’s utterance in a broader context, extending the meaning of the phrase. Therapist uses adult grammar, but takes it to the next level by adding new information.

Example: Child says “doggy house” SLP says “He went inside” or “yes, he got cold”.

Recasting – SLP expands a patient’s utterance into a different type of utterance or repeats incorrect responses back to a patient, with the error corrected.

Example: Child says “doggy house” SLP recasts it as a question, “Is the doggy in the house?” or a negative sentence (used as a playful denial of the child’s utterances), “The doggy is not in the house?”. Recast has shown to be highly effective in teaching grammatical forms to children with specific language impairment.

Buildups and breakdowns – SLP expands the child’s utterance to a fully grammatical form then breaks it down into several phrase-sized pieces in a series of sequential utterances that overlap in content.

Example: Child says “doggy house” SLP responds, “Yes, the doggy is in the house. The house. He’s in the house. In the house. The doggy is in the house. The doggy. The doggy’s in the house.”