Establishing Generalized, Productive Verb-Noun Phrase Usage in a Manual Language System with Moderately Handicapped Children

Abstract

Strategies for producing generalized language skills continue to be of considerable interest to those working with severely language-delayed children. Research on generalized instruction-following suggested that strategies employing linguistic elements (verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.) arranged in systematic combination matrices were successful in producing generalized and novel responses among handicapped children. The efficacy of a training matrix in the development of expressive verb-noun phrase usage was demonstrated. Two of the three students showed considerable gains in trained responses as well as predicted, novel responses, while a third who had much less training, showed some gains. Increases were also found in the overall development of expressive language tests. This approach is discussed in relation to other experimental approaches to language development.