Manipulating Context Flashcards
Manipulating Context
Goal
In what type of context ?
Primary goal of language therapy: Child to learn appropriate language skills to function
as a competent communicator in his/her daily communication contexts/environments
◉ SLP:
○ Manipulate nonlinguistic and linguistic contexts where language occurs
○ Strategies presented within everyday activities–functional!
○ Natural everyday activities of child—become part of natural environment
○ Nonlinguistic contexts: what happens in the environment
○ Linguistic contexts: Eliciting language through modeling or through
directly/indirectly cueing child’s responses
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Nonlinguistic Contexts
What happens in the environment–SLP can use this to elicit desired language
◉ SLP: can manipulate nonlinguistic contextual cues
◉ Targets that have been selected–SLP identifies contexts in which child can attempt the
target language
◉ Nonlinguistic context serves to elicit the language behavior
◉ Examples: See Table 10.1 for examples of nonlinguistic contexts & different types of
language that can be elicited, such as following directions, directing others, requesting
information, requesting help, giving information, reasoning, protesting, initiating,
imagining & projecting–many good examples of nonlinguistic contexts to manipulate!
○ Individual/group therapy
○ Model for parents/teachers—train how to manipulate environment
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Nonlinguistic Contexts
◉ Goal of nonlinguistic contexts:
Goal of nonlinguistic contexts: evoke communication
○ Novel and unexpected events
○ Oversight/confusion/SLP ‘’forgetting’—good for child to be a ‘teacher’
○ SLP ‘playing dumb’ to elicit assistance from child
○ Omitted (but needed) objects not included–evoke communication
○ Items used incorrectly to elicit assistance from child
○ Sabotage of activities/events
◉ Can be used for varied ages in different ways
◉ Very beneficial–very motivating
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Linguistic Contexts
2 types of
2 Overall Types:
○ Contexts that model language (with and without child’s response)
○ Contexts that directly/indirectly cue certain responses
◉ Contingencies: strategies (used by the SLP) that follow the child’s utterance
○ Strategies that attempt to confirm the utterance
○ Strategies that modify the utterance in some way
◉ SLP should not use cues that are pseudoconversational: “What do we say?” &
“Now tell me the whole thing”–Why?
○ Don’t constantly prod/interrogate; one-sided, unpleasant for child
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Linguistic Contexts: Modeling
Modeling: A procedure in which an SLP produces a rule-governed utterance at
appropriate junctures in conversation or activities–initially, does not ask the child
to imitate.
○ Can use as a high-frequency response in very structured situations
○ Can use as a specific language stimulation technique
○ Can use as an element in comprehension training
◉ SLP:
○ Wants child to acquire some aspect of the language behavior he/she
facilitates to use at a similar, later context
○ Model the training target for the child prior to child attempting to elicit
○ Focused stimulation: High density of targets in meaningful contexts
without requiring child’s response
○ Self-talk: SLP talks about what he/she is doing (SLP is doing)
○ Parallel talk: SLP talks about what child’s actions
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Modeling
◉ Example of focused stimulation
Example of focused stimulation:
○ Child: Mommy made hamburgers. Mommy made ‘tator salad.
○ SLP: She must be a good cook. What else did she make?
○ Child: A cake.
○ SLP: She did?? She made a cake. Yummy. Did she cook any hot-dogs?
○ Child: Uh-huh?
○ SLP: She made a very nice picnic for the family. Did she get to play any
games or did she just work?
◉ Emphasis on the word is helpful–more salient/conspicuous
◉ Targets can be in the beginning/end of sentence (or middle with emphasis)
○ End of sentence-help to aid working memory/enhance learning
○ Ex. syntax: The girl is running to school. She really is.
○ Ex. morphology: He rides to work. He doesn’t walk; he rides.
○ Ex. semantics: Don’t put the block on the bus. Put it in. 7
Modeling
◉ Imitation:
◉ Priming:
mitation: Procedure in which child repeats language of facilitator, with
expectation for child to acquire some aspect of facilitator’s language
○ First step to teach specific language targets/correcting procedure when
child fails to respond, responds incorrectly
◉ Priming: Methodology: utterance of one person influences the structure,
vocabulary selection, or sounds used by a second speaker
○ Language intervention—used often
○ Structural Priming: Sentence produced by one speaker influences the
structure of the sentences of a second speaker
■ Can occur even when 2nd speaker’s productions have different
words/thematic relations as preceding sentence
■ Ex. structure: The woman sent presents to her friends.–>The girl
gave cookies to her parents.
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Modeling
◉ Parallel Sentence Production:
Parallel Sentence Production: SLP provides a model of the type of utterance
desired, and child provides a similar type of sentence
○ Works best when child already has the structure of the basic sentence
○ *Works well at the phrase level (less than sentence level)
○ Ex. S-V-O The girl is throwing the ball→ ‘catching the ball’ picture
○ Effects of priming varies with child’s age; varied research
■ 3 yrs old: if priming sentence produced by SLP overlaps lexically
with child’s target sentence & when child can imitate target sentence
■ 4 year old: effects of priming after only hearing target sentence
○ Flexible: works well with groups of children
■ Need sufficient models to be effective
■ Children can model for one another
Direct Linguistic Cues
Target Questions can serve as direct linguistic cues; Questions for what the SLP
wants to elicit:
○ Verbs: “What is he (are you) doing?” (can alter tense)
○ Noun subjects: “Who/what is verbing?” (can alter tense)
○ Noun objects: What is he/she verbing?” (can alter tense appropriately)
○ Adverbs: “When/where/how is he/she verbing?” (can alter tense)
○ Elicit process: “How did you _______?”
○ Adjectives: “Which one….?” (can alter tense)
○ Specific words: Completion sentences: “She is playing in the _____.”
■ “She went to the _______.” (SLP: rising intonation/play dumb—signal)
◉ SLP can model a response, prior to requesting one.
○ “I’m hungry. I think I will take a big cookie. What about you?”
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Direct Linguistic Cues
◉ Mand Model:
Mand Model: Technique to elicit language with young children with SLI
○ 1. Adult attracts child’s attention with interesting materials–joint attention
○ 2. After expressed interest, adult states (de (mands))–”Tell me about this,
or “Tell me what you want”–based on previously trained behavior
○ 3. If no response, adult prompts response, or prompts a model to be
imitated “I want+ car”
○ 4. Adult praises child for appropriate response–gives child item
○ *Production of children with LI generalizes to unprompted productions
◉ Substitution requests:
○ SLP can make statement & then ask child to make comment
■ “This bird is red.”….. “What else can you tell me about the bird?”
○ SLP can use as a guessing game
■ “Is the balloon big? Well, if it isn’t big, then what can we say?
Indirect Linguistic Cues
Indirect Linguistic Cues: more conversational cues/hints and more situational in
nature
○ Includes lots of comments/exclamations
○ SLP:
■ Can present purposefully wrong statements
● Ex. “I like your green shirt” (to a blue shirt)
■ Being ‘forgetful’ or ‘confused’ to elicit responses
● Ex. “Wait, I can’t remember what this is”
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Contingencies
Contingent responses–Adult modifying the language the child has produced; naturally
maintaining responses
◉ Semantic contingency: relatedness of a parent/facilitator’s response to the
content or topic of a child’s previous utterance; decreases the amount of
processing the child needs to do to understand/analyze structure and meaning
of adult’s language
○ Child: I saw monkeys
○ Adult: I think monkeys are funny!
◉ Pragmatic contingency: facilitator’s response must make pragmatic sense within
the conversational framework
○ Child: I want cookie, please.
○ Adult: What kind of cookie? / No cookies until after lunch.
○ NOT pragmatically contingent: Johnny wants a cookie
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Contingencies
Contingencies Requiring NO Response
Contingencies Requiring NO Response: Accepting in nature; used to correct production
or to highlight incorrect production (self-correction by child)
◉ Fulfilling the intention
○ Handing child requested item-shows message was acceptable/received
◉ Use of a continuant
○ Demonstrates message was received, filling speaker’s turn (agreement)
○ “Uh-huh”, “Got it”, “Okay”
◉ Imitation
○ Child’s utterance imitated in whole/part; emphasis can be added
○ “That’s right, she is riding a bike”
◉ Breakdowns/buildups
○ Dividing child’s utterances into shorter utterances…but then
combining/expanding
○ Child: It got stolen by the crook.
○ SLP: (Emotional, disbelieving) It was? (Hmm) It was stolen. Stolen by the
crook. (Disgusted) By the crook. (Finally) It was stolen by the crook. 14
Contingencies
Contingencies Requiring NO Response:
◉ Expansion:
Contingencies Requiring NO Response:
◉ Expansion: more mature, more correct version of the child’s utterance that
maintains the child’s word order
○ Child: It got stolen by the crook.
○ SLP; Uh-huh, it was stolen by the crook.
○ Older child: The dog bit the man. The man ran away.
○ SLP: The dog bit the man, who then ran away.
◉ Recasts: Modify the structure; maintain the child’s meaning but modify structure.
Immediately follow child’s utterance. Repeat at least one major lexical element
○ Child: He not eat.
○ SLP: The dog is not eating his food. Is he hungry?
*SLP can recast his/her own utterances or interrupt with “Yeah” and then recast, if
child continually speaks.
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Contingencies
Contingencies Requiring NO Response:
◉ Recasts
Recasts: Why do they work?
○ 1. Easy to attend: Child attends easily because it’s based on his/her
utterance
○ 2. Easy to comprehend: Recast similar to child’s produced sentence
○ 3. Easy to identify change: Child notices change, as recast sentence differs
only a bit–targeted feature!
○ 4. Easy to understand underlying relationship: Recast happens in
context–connection.
◉ **”Input effects are especially strong when the adult utterance builds on the
preceding child utterance, providing new grammatical information” (Owens,
2014, 274)
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