An experimental analysis of milieu language intervention: teaching the action-object form

The syntactic and pragmatic effects of a milieu language teaching intervention implemented to teach the action-object form were investigated. Subjects were 3 young children with borderline to moderate levels of mental retardation, all in the early stages of productive language development. After a prolonged baseline period, each subject received three to four training sessions per week in a small group interactive play situation. Experimental control was demonstrated by a multiple baseline design across subjects. Generalization was measured along a variety of dimensions. Results indicated that subjects learned to generatively produce action-object combinations. These combinations were used in nonobligatory conversational situations as requests for objects/actions and as declaratives. Subjects also began to respond correctly to probe questions. The results support the conclusion that milieu training procedures can be used to enhance the acquisition and generative use of basic syntactic-semantic forms. The results also suggest that systemic adult commenting, child conversational "scaffolding," and spontaneous imitation may play significant roles for some children in the acquisition and generalization of language taught via a milieu approach.