Environmental Language Intervention: The Rationale for a Diagnostic and Training Strategy through Rules, Context, and Generalization

Abstract

The Environmental Language Intervention Strategy is proposed as a singular approach to the diagnosis and training of individuals with severely delayed expressive language. The strategy places in a clinical framework the semantically based approach to grammar of Bloom, Schlesinger, and Brown by selecting as the content for diagnosis and for training those eight rules governing the semantic functions of early two-word utterances in a variety of languages. The rules are elicited with linguistic and nonlinguistic cues that represent the full environmental context of the utterance. The strategy also samples and trains the early language rules in imitation, conversation, and play in order to include, from the beginning of intervention, procedures for training generalization of new language classes to spontaneous use. The theoretical rationale for the strategy is discussed, and operational definitions of the rules are presented. The procedures for using the strategy in diagnosis and training are introduced.