Teacher-Implemented Prelinguistic communication Intervention is a case study conducted by Rebecca B. McCarten to address the issue of exploration of the efficacy of a prelinguistic intervention which is implemented by classroom teachers in the ongoing daily activities of one special education preschool classroom.
The case study involves two participants. These are a teacher and a pupil who attends early childhood special education classroom for children who have some severe disabilities. The whole classroom contains six children, the teacher, the assistant of the teachers, and also educators who are experts in providing intervention services in the course of classroom education.
In order to identify whether the results of the intervention were successful, it is necessary to pay attention to initial characteristics of the pupil. The participant’s name is Michael, he has 3 years and 6 months and he is nonverbal. He does not tend to use the signs which were modeled by the teacher for him.
At school Michael receives speech language therapy; he also takes private lessons to address the same issue. Both therapists teach him to use sign language and both had to stop the education because they boy did not show any consistency.
Michael is also diagnosed to have limited play skills. Usually, he does not demonstrate any interest in activities which take place in the classroom; he is not excited about any toys and has no symbolic play skills. Communicational skills of Michael are limited as well; intentional communication is not frequently demonstrated by him in the classroom.
Interventions which were performed in the course of the case study were:
Data collection;
Prelinguistic Milieu Training;
Pragmatic Functions Approach
Data collection
The process of collection of data involved baseline sections which were coded with the help of event-recording behavioral code, which had been previously adapted from the Parent-Child Interaction Code (Yoder, Kim, 1994; Dahlgren, Liliedahl, 2008).
Behavior of the child was coded, as well as his conventional gestures, intentional communication, eye contact, consonants, vocalizations, and symbolic communication.
The gestures performed by the child were nodding, head shaking, waving, and distal point, upturning palms to the adults, shrugging shoulders, and “shh” sign.
Acts of intentional communication undivided making conventional sings and gestures, saying words, 3-point gaze, and paying attention to the objects which were pointed by the adults.
All the communicational prompts were coded because developmental delay degree increases, as well as frequently of communication (Yoder, Feagans, 1988).
A lot of attention was paid to responsively because it is very important in terms of helping the child to understand that he might influence the surrounding world (Cook, Tessier, Klein, 1996). The adults tended to respond to the topic of communication of their child in order to facilitate the acquisition of relations of means-ends (Risken-Walraven, 1978). A range of models of vocal and gestural type were also provided in order to facilitate imitation in the participant of the research.
As it has been already mentioned above, the data for the baseline sections were collected for 3 days. The teacher interacted with the child for twenty minutes and the whole process was recorded and later coded. The …