LANGUAGE IN INDIA

A Comparative Study on
the Efficacy of Two Different Clinical Language Intervention Procedures

Vishnu K. K., (Speech & Hearing)
Maya Leela, (Speech & Hearing)
T.A. Subba Rao, Ph.D. (Speecj & Hearing)
Shyamala.K.Chengappa, Ph.D. (Speech & Hearing)

Introduction

Delays in language acquisition are one of the most prevalent disabilities in early childhood. It has been documented that 70% of 3 to 5 year old children with developmental disabilities have language delays (Wetherby & Prizant, 1992). Language deficits beginning in early childhood can have ripple effect throughout the child's life. Not only do language deficits place children at risk for academic failure (Blank,1988) the lack of functional communicative skills also places children at risk for social failure in their interaction with peers (Rice,1993), for the development of dysfunctional relationship with their families (Embry,1981) and at increased risk for developing behaviour disorders (Goetz & Sailor,1985).

To remediate these deficits early on, widespread training is needed for early interventionists and parents regarding various effective intervention practices (Warren 2000, Wolery & Bailey 2002). Building support for children's development in the early stages of life may help to alleviate learning and behavioural problems as the child gets older (Calandrella & Wilcox, 2000).

Over the past three decades, numerous studies have been conducted to develop and examine different treatment procedures to enhance the communication and language development in children with disabilities. A majority of experimental research documenting treatment effectiveness are based on evidence based practices (Schwartz, Carta & Grant, 1996).

This impressive body of research provided a framework for a developmental model fostering language development and this model supports the use of different treatment approaches at different stages in a child's development. However, recent evidence has demonstrated that some teaching strategies by themselves may not be sufficient to ensure optimal language outcomes (Warren &Yoder1997).

Most preschool language intervention approaches have focused on the direct teaching of new lexical and linguistic skills as a means of improving child's functional communication skill. It has been assumed that as children's formal linguistics skills improved in the training setting, their functional communication in everyday environments would also improve. But this assumption has not been well supported by empirical research (Costello, 1983).

Traditional and Naturalistic approaches are used by interventionists to facilitate language and communication in children with disabilities. Traditional language intervention is typically conducted in a speech therapy room and is highly structured by the therapist (Fey, 1986; Sundberg & Partington, 1998). The therapist selects the stimulus items to be used during intervention sessions, divides the language target skills into a series of independent tasks and presents these in a series of massed trials until certain criterion is met. The child is often provided with an arbitrary reinforcer combined with praise.

Naturalistic teaching follows the child's lead in terms of the interest and provides a "natural rein forcer" (Sunderberg & Partington, 1998). The reinforcers delivered in naturalistic approach are considered to be more functional in relation to the child's response. To address the need for language intervention in the child's natural settings, including the classroom and home, a number of related natural language teaching procedures have been developed. These include Incidental Teaching (Hart & Risley, 1975), Milieu Language Teaching, Mand Model (Rogers, Warren.1980; Warren & RogersWarren, 1984) and Time delay approach. (Halle, Marshall & Spradlin, 1979). Taken together, these procedures might be termed as naturalistic teaching.

Hart and Risley (1975) characterized incidental teaching as the interaction between an adult and a single child, which arises naturally in an unstructured situation such as free play and which is used by an adult to transmit information or give the child practice in developing a skill.

In mand model procedure the main focus is given to child's interest and demands a response from a child. This procedure was found to be highly effective for children with very low rates of initiation. (Rogers- Warren & Warren, 1980; Warren et al., 1984). Time delay procedure is defined as nonvocal cues for vocal language. The trainer identifies a situation in which the child wants an object or assistance and then waits for the child to make a response.

Incidental teaching, the mand model procedure, and the time delay technique have been combined with other strategies to encourage child language in natural environments (Alpert & Kaiser, 1992; Hart & Rogers-Warren, 1978). Hart and Rogers-Warren (1978) termed this approach as milieu language teaching". Kaiser (1993) defined milieu language teaching as "a naturalistic conversation based teaching procedure in which child's interest in the environment is used as a basis for eliciting elaborated child communicative responses. Naturalistic language teaching approaches have been increasingly viewed as the treatment of choice for children at risk or children with developmental disabilities (Noonan &McCormick; 1993 Tannock & Girolametto, 1992).

Naturalistic language teaching has been compared to more traditional therapist directed language approaches to language intervention, such as discrete trial training (Fey, 1986; Spradlin &Siegel, 1982; Sundenberg & Partington, 1998). There has been consistent evidence that didactic instruction to teach formal language skills do not result dependably in increased use of functional language. McGee, Krantz, and McClannahan (1985) reported that naturalistic promoted greater generalization of new language skills, more across people and settings than did a more traditional trainer directed approach. Similarly, Mirandare a -Linne and Melina (1992) found that children are likely to generalize the new language skills following naturalistic teaching. However, traditional intervention has proved to be effective in improving the initial acquisition of new linguistic forms (Carr & Kologinsky, 1983; Kaczmareck, 1990) but failed to promote better generalisation of those skills.

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