Relationship of clinician feedback to child initiated verbalization during language training

A systematic observational procedure was used to obtain frequency counts of client and clinician initiated interchanges and clinician feedback during these interchanges. Repeated recordings were made of eight different speech pathologists interacting with two groups of four preschool children. Child responses to clinician initiated interchanges received significantly more positive feedback than child initiated verbalizations to the clinician. However, considerable variation among clinicians was found both in the frequency of spontaneous verbalizations by their clients and their reaction to this verbalization. Stepwise multiple regression analyses indicated that the type and amount of clinician feedback for client initiated verbalizations was significantly related to the frequency of these utterances to the clinician, but not to other children.