An Effect of Modeling and Imitation Teaching Procedures on Children with and without Specific Language Impairment

Abstract

Following a treatment program in which an invented morpheme was taught through either imitation or modeling procedures, the generalization of 40 specific language-impaired children was compared to that of 40 children learning language normally. The results of the comparison indicated that the two teaching procedures have opposite relative effects on the two groups. The abnormal group generalized more extensively following imitation teaching while the normal group generalized more extensively following modeling teaching. The opposing results of the two procedures on the two groups suggest that language-impaired children will benefit more from teaching strategies that are adapted to their unique learning styles than from strategies fashioned after the styles of children who learn language normally.

Treatment Research in Speech, Language and Swallowing: Lessons from Child Language Disorders

“…First, the original assumption that one procedure would be found to be superior to all others will have to be revised. The results as a whole suggest that all of these procedures are useful in particular situations depending on the purpose [24,25], the modality [22,23] and the characteristics of the children [21]. At this point, it may be more appropriate to ask a more complicated question than the one originally posed.…”

“…The results indicated that there were no differences between the treatment groups regardless of teaching method. Analyses of possible interactions between treatment methods and children's developmental levels within this study and others [22][23][24][25][29][30][31] suggest that there may be interactions between treatment method and subject characteristics such as language and cognitive level. Given the definitional differences across studies and the incompleteness of some of the subject information provided it is difficult to determine the nature of those interactions.…”

“…Control groups need to be included within comparative treatment studies to address issues regarding maturational effects. Subjects should also be randomly assigned to treatment conditions as was the case in the Connell [22], Yoder et al [21] and Camarata and Nelson [24] studies. There has been considerable improvement within treatment studies over the last 10 years in this regard [see ref.…”

“…For example, Connell [22] investigated the syntactic rule induction learning patterns of 40 preschool specifically language-impaired (SLI) children and 40 age-matched controls using two intervention procedures, imitation and modeling. Imitation was defined as repeating clinician models following direct prompts.…”

Communication Intervention in Natural Learning Environments

“…Modeling is a technique that is often used by therapists to promote communicative competence (Camarata & Nelson, 1992;Camarata, Nelson, & Camarata, 1994;Connell, 1987;Hart & Risley, 1985;Norris & Hoffman, 1990). When used in language instruction, modeling refers to the provision of appropriate examples of target sounds, words, or phrases.…”