tips on Verbal Imitation? and compliance

[Guest guest]

Our daughter would not imitate words or sounds at the outset of our home

program. We did two things which resulted in consistent verbal imitation.

1) Motor imitation was a strong skill, she would imitate most gross

and fine motor movements with the Sd " do this " and a model of the desired

motor skill. We began to mix in a simple sound echoic. So it looked like

this;

Tutor: DO THIS (claps hand)

Child: (claps hands)

Tutor: DO THIS (pats head)

Child: (pats head)

Tutor: DO THIS (sticks out tongue)

Child: (sticks out tongue)

Tutor: DO THIS ( " Ba " )

Child: " Ba "

Tutor reinforces

This builds on behavioral momentum of easy responses to the difficult one

and uses an Sd already known to evoke imitation.

2) We did LOTS of mand trials with sign language paired with a vocal

word. We eventually faded the sign and used a vocal prompt which increased

the vocal repertoire and this increased her vocal imitation.

I would be interested to hear others opinions on the following statement:

Compliance is a learned behavior and the rate of the learner's compliance is

functionally related to the ability of the teacher to manipulate the

learner's environment.

_____

From: [mailto: ] On Behalf Of

mbanowaba

Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 11:12 AM

Subject: [ ] Any tips on Verbal Imitation?

Hi All, I have some troubles to teach a 2 yrs-old kid verbal

imitation. Even he can say several words such as baby, daddy, mommy

etc, but he is not following me on verbal imitation. I have no way to

prompt him either. I have tried this for several weeks and no

progress noticed. Any suggestions? Thanks.