Teaching Enhanced Milieu Language Teaching Skills to Parents in Multiple Risk Families

A multiple baseline design across three parent-child dyads of families with multiple risk factors was used to determine the effectiveness of teaching parents to use milieu language teaching procedures. Parents were taught to use two sets of milieu language teaching skills: responsive interaction and incidental teaching. Results showed that parents were able to acquire milieu language teaching skills and that they maintained those skills after the intervention was completed. Children increased their verbal behavior in the form of child comments and correct responding to parent questions. Increases in children?s mean length of utterance and Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development scores also were noted. Parents? use of responsive interaction skills was more likely to encourage child comments while parental use of incidental teaching was more likely to promote correct responses from children participating in the study. Implications for future research and practice include the need to explore implementation factors related to parent characteristics and environmental risks.