How to Use Verbal Imitation to Teach Language
If your child isn’t making sounds yet, I’ve got just the right tool for you. Verbal imitation can be a powerful tool for a developing child learning to make sounds. It is a fundamental building block of language development. When children hear words and phrases, they begin to learn the sounds, rhythms, and intonations that make up language. You can start using this strategy to get your child to start making sounds today.
What is Verbal Imitation?
For a child to learn to produce sounds, it may take a lot of practice and consistent motivation. The way that we motivate a child to practice making sounds is through something called verbal imitation. We take a child who cannot currently make sounds on request, and we give them three verbal imitation activities in order to be able to verbally imitate.
First, we teach them to understand that when we tell them “say [sound]”, we want them to try to make that sound. For example, I look at a child and I say, “say ah.” Somehow I have to get the child to realize that repeating that sound is actually the thing that I’m looking for. Next, we start with simple sounds for the child to make. And finally, we have to find a meaningful way to reinforce the behavior of copying or imitating our sounds whenever it does occur.
Why is Imitation Important for Language Development?
Often one of the biggest sticking points for a child who is not able to imitate even very simple sounds is that nobody has been able to show them that making an imitative sound is what we’re looking for. Just because I stare at a child and I say, “say ah,” doesn’t mean that the child knows what I want them to do. For many of these children, their receptive language skills are just not complete enough to know what the word “say” even means. So to gain this first step, we might need the help of a little bit of healthy frustration.
What I mean by this is, we will have to find a motivating and fun experience that a child would clearly like to have or do. And then we need to make that available to them for free so that they’re aware that we can give them this activity whenever it’s desired. For many early learners, tickling or swinging them in a blanket, or bouncing them on a ball might be an activity that they would enjoy and like to see continue. For others, though, food items or video games might be the most valuable motivators. Regardless, we want to use what we think will be the strongest reinforcers for the beginning aspects of language development.
Vocal language can be hard to learn for a child and it cannot be physically prompted. And therefore the stronger the motivation you have working for you, the better. Then once we know what types of motivators have the most value to us, we can begin to give the child access to them. At some point, when they want the item more or they want it again, we can ask them to say their first echoic sound.
Vocal Imitation Examples
Now this is where a speech and language pathologist can be of help. They can help you to identify the easiest sounds for the child to make. As with anything, we always want to start as easy as possible. I found through working with many speech pathologists that the basic “ah” sound is going to be the easiest for most kids. It doesn’t take any special shaping of the mouth or the tongue. So this is often the first sound that I would go for.
However, if a child is currently making any sounds reliably during play, it might make sense to use that sound as your first goal. Just give them a good reason to make that sound under echoic control. Getting sounds under echoic control is not always an easy task, though. When a child has demonstrated no other forms of imitation skill, it might make sense to start them off with some non verbal imitation that you can prompt and then fade those prompts before starting with vocal imitation goals that cannot be physically prompted.
How to Teach Verbal Imitation Skills
When you feel the child should be able to make a sound and just needs to learn to do so on request, you can begin your verbal imitation practice. To do this, engage in your highly motivating game or activity with your child. Practice stopping the activity and giving the child simple instructions to follow in order to resume. After the child shows you that they know starting their highly preferred activity requires some response on their part, and they’re willing to give you a response, you can start to ask for verbal imitations. You look into the child’s eyes and say, for example, “say ah” and then continue to look at the child with what I call an expectant look. This is a look that tries to tell the child that you’re now waiting for them to give you a response.
The problem is, the child probably has no idea what response you’re waiting for. They’re likely to give you a non verbal indication that they want you to start the fun activity again. They might pull on you or wave to you to indicate that it’s time for them to start playing again. Don’t respond by returning to the play. Instead keep that expectant look and occasionally – but not too often – repeat the sound for them to echo.
This delay of reinforcement, and not responding to the child’s non verbal attempts, are likely to build up a little bit of frustration in the child. But this is okay. It isn’t until they see that you’re not going to quickly respond to their non vocal responses that they will consider trying something new. If this new thing they try is to make a sound that you’re looking for, great! That’s something we want to reinforce immediately and strongly.
Reward Any Vocal Imitation for Children with Autism
However, there is a good chance that in their attempts to get you to restart the fun activity, the sound that you hear will not be a replication of the target sound that you’re making. Just some form of frustrated release of tension with a gasp, a grunt, or even a loud exhale.
Where other language programs might fail is that they won’t see these non-word sounds as progress and usually won’t reinforce them. We need to remember the goal here is to teach the child that the word “say” followed by this expected look, is the signal that we want them to make a vocal sound. So even if a child were to burp or hiccup, at this stage, I would likely immediately stop and reinforce the child saying something like good job. Remember behavior that is reinforced is likely to be repeated. And even though I didn’t get the “ah” sound that I was hoping for, I did get some vocal sound. If I reinforce it, I will become more likely to get more vocal sounds in the future.
Reinforcing the first vocal sound is very important. The child begins to see that my look of expectation along with the use of the words “say ah” is a signal that reinforcement will come if they make some kind of a mouth sound. I can then begin to shape that sound that they make through differential reinforcement.
Troubleshooting Verbal Imitation
One of the things that I found is that if a child has a tongue and is able to formulate sound in any capacity, I can get them to understand that there is value in trying their best to make the sound that I make after the word “say.” If in the beginning I don’t get a sound from the mouth that I can reinforce, I don’t want to hold out for too long so that the child loses interest in the reinforcer and in me. So after several attempts to get them to make a sound, if I don’t get one, I’ll change to another instruction that I’m pretty sure the child can do without too much trouble. I’ll reinforce that response with more of the fun activity and try again later.
The goal overall here is to get the child properly motivated and willing to try anything they can think of after you’ve given them the instruction to say the sound. You should be ready to respond with reinforcement as soon as you get any verbal or even any mouth sound. As soon as you get the first sound and reinforce it, responding with a sound of some sort should be more likely to occur again. And before you know it, the child will begin making this vocal or mouth sound regularly whenever you give them the instruction. Then you can start the process of shaping that sound by more regularly and strongly reinforcing sounds that are closer to the target until the sound we are getting matches up with that target sound that we’ve been asking for.
How to Teach Language Using Verbal Imitation
So after shaping the sound, we should begin to regularly get the target sound we’ve been asking for. Once the child regularly hits the target, we can change the target sound from “say ah,” to perhaps “say o.h, Then we can begin to shape the sound we get towards the o sound. And as soon as we get the sound “oh” we can begin to differentiate between our requests for the two sounds. Can we get the “ah” sound when we request “ah” and can we get the “oh” sound when we request “oh”? As soon as we can, we begin to introduce and shape towards a third sound, and so on and so on.
Understanding verbal imitation is just one step to getting your child to start making important sounds. Once a child starts making sounds, you’ll need to provide them with sufficient reinforcement to encourage them to continue making these imitations and we need to transfer the imitation to other parts of language. A token economy is a great option when a strong reinforcer is not immediately available to you.
