Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, Volume 51,291-299, November 1986 INCIDENTAL LANGUAGE TEACHING: A CRITICAL REVIEW STEVEN F. WARREN ANN P. KAISER Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN Incidental language teaching refers to interactions between an adult and a child that arise naturally in an unstructured situation and are used systematically by the adult to transmit new information or give the child practice in developing a communication skill. The purposes of this paper are to review and critique current research on incidental language teaching, briefly discuss the theoretical reasons why incidental teaching might be expected to be effective, and to discuss directions for future research on this teaching approach with children who are language impaired and mentally retarded. The search for effective language intervention strate- gies has been a central theme in basic and applied research during the past 25 years. In recent years, there has been increasing interest and research on more "nat- uralistic" approaches to training. These approaches have been referred to by a variety of terms including "milieu training" (Hart & Rogers-Warren, 1978), "naturalistic training" (Hart, 1985), "transactional training" (McLean & Snyder-McLean, 1978), and "conversational training" (MacDonald, 1985). The common premises that connect these intervention techniques are (a) that language and communication skills should be taught in the child's natural environment, (b) in conversational contexts, (c) utilizing a dispersed trials training approach that (d) emphasizes following the child's attentional lead, and (e) using functional reinforcers indicated by child requests and attention. The impetus for developing and investigat- ing these procedures has come from two sources: growing evidence of the major role of routine conversational interactions in normal language acquisition (Bruner, 1978; McCormick & Schiefelbusch, 1984) and limitations of the more traditional, one-to-one massed trial training approach in achieving reasonable generalization (Costello, 1983; Harris, 1975; Johnston, 1982; Mahoney & Seely, 1976; Reiehle & Keogh, 1985; Warren & Rogers- Warren, 1980). One "naturalistic" approach that appears to have po- tential for remediating language deficits in children is incidental teaching. The purposes of this paper are to define and describe incidental teaching, review and cri- tique research on incidental language training, briefly discuss the theoretical basis of incidental teaching, and, finally, to discuss major unresolved research issues and questions as they relate to children with specific language impairments and mental retardation. DEFINITION OF INCIDENTAL LANGUAGE TEACHING Incidental teaching refers to the interactions between an adult and a child that arise naturally in an unstructured situation, such as free play, and that are used systemati- cally by the adult to transmit new information or give the child practice in developing a communication skill (Hart & Risley, 1975, p. 411). The child controls the incidences in which teaching occurs by signaling interest in the environment. The child often initiates interaction by requesting assistance from the adult. 1 For example, the child might point to a ball on a high shelf and simulta- neously say, "ball," with the intonation of a request. Comments and directions from the child can also initiate an incidental teaching episode (Hart & Risley, 1982). The child's initiation may be vocal or nonvocal. By indicating what is of prepotent interest to him, the child provides the topic (e.g., ball) and the opportunity for the adult to teach new language forms. Incidental teaching as language intervention involves (a) arranging the environment to increase the likelihood that the child will initiate to the adult and, thus, will provide incidences for teaching; (b) selecting language targets appropriate for the child's skill level, interest, and the opportunities the environment provides; (c) respond- ing to the child's initiations with requests for elaborated language resembling the targeted forms; and (d) reinforc- ing the child's communicative attempts as well as use of specific forms with attention and access to the objects in which the child has expressed an interest. Incidental teaching episodes are brief, positive, and oriented toward communication rather than language teaching per se. In these ways, incidental teaching resembles teaching that naturally occurs in mother-child dyadic interaction (Moerk, 1983; Schacter, 1979). Incidental teaching differs from naturally occurring teaching in two important ways: (a) General classes of communication or language targets are preselected for teaching (e.g., adjectives, nouns, three-word sentences, etc.), and (b) a sequence of increas- ingly specific prompts are employed to ensure the child's use of the preselected targets. Incidental teaching incor- porates learning principles and relies on techniques such as modeling, shaping, and reinforcement to teach new language in naturalistic conversational settings. Incidental teaching has been applied in a series of 1Although incidental teaching starts with a child initiation, and thus, is described as child-controlled, the adult's attention and response to child communication behavior are equally important in determining an incidental teaching episode. © 1986, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 291 0022-4677/86/5104-0291501.00/0 Downloaded From: http://jshd.pubs.asha.org/ by a University of Kansas - Libraries, Watson User on 11/30/2015 Terms of Use: http://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx