Facilitating Functional Requesting in Pragmatically Impaired Children

Abstract

Requesting has been described as an early communicative function, one which is often infrequently produced by pragmatically impaired children. This case study presents a framework for assessing and managing a child who displayed a marked deficit in his verbal requests for objects, actions, and information. The assessment focused on evaluating the child's prerequisite skills and on examining the environment for request opportunities. The intervention consisted of working individually with the child and training his teacher to maximize opportunities for requesting in the classroom. The data indicate an increase in the child's classroom production of elicited requests for objects, actions, and information, and of spontaneous requests for objects and actions. These findings suggest the value of using intervention strategies which focus on the impaired child as well as his or her environment when teaching functional requests. Specific procedures are provided for implementing this two-pronged intervention approach.