Three F’s: False Assertions, Following the Child’s Lead, & Focused Stimulation

False Assertions – These may be considered a type of communication temptation.  False assertions are (often) obviously incorrect statements made with the intent to encourage the child to correct.  They’re great for negation, and also underutilized for expanded negation.

example: “Look at the elephant!” when joint attention is on a cow, encouraging child to say “That’s a cow!,” and/or “That’s not an elephant!”

example of expanded negation: “I could have lifted that truck.” encouraging something like, “You couldn’t have lifted that truck.”

 

Following the Child’s Lead – This occurs when the teacher comments on things a child is looking at, and/or imitates play behaviors.  Following the child’s lead involves observing and listening to the child, and waiting for the child to talk – great for working on initiation.

examples: an autistic child looks at his hands, so you make comments about his hands – a child makes a play noise (such as a car zooming) and you imitate.

 

Focused Stimulation -The teacher picks a target and attempts to use it over and over again.  In focused stimulation you can use children’s books, songs, blocks, pretend play.  It encourages, but does not necessarily expect child’s production.  Several target words may be combined in a single activity.

example:  the target structures, “off” and “on” may be repeated by the clinician fifty times in a Mr. Potato Head activity in an attempt to elicit the words from the child, such as… “The eye goes on his face.  The hat goes on his head.  I’ll put a different hat on his head.  I’ll take this off his head.”

Some Specific Language Therapies

What follows are some very general descriptions of popular language therapies, used primarily with younger children.  Much of this information has been taken from Roseberry-Mckibben and Hegde’s An Advanced Review of Speech-Language Pathology.

Recasting – When an adult repeats what a child says, altering it to make it grammatically correct.  Two types of recasting are  1)  Expansion – simply making the utterance correct; and 2) Extension – making the utterance grammatically correct and adding information.  Some examples are…

• Expansion – Child:  “That ball.”;  Adult:  “That is a ball.”
• Extension – Child:  “That ball.”;  Adult:  “That is a big red bouncy ball.”

Focused Stimulation – The clinician models target structures to stimulate child to produce these specific structures.  This is usually done in a play activity.  For example, the target structures, “off” and “on” may be repeated by the clinician fifty times in a Mr. Potato Head activity in an attempt to elicit the words from the child.  Several target words may be combined in a single activity.

Joint Book Reading – Involves reading high interest stories repeatedly over several sessions.  When children are familiar with the stories, they are expected to fill in target words.  For example, the clinician may say “The woman was _______”, to attempt to elicit -ing verb “driving.”

Self Talk – The clinician describes his or her own activities while playing with the child.