2025 Theses Doctoral

Generalization of a Language Intervention Conducted by Parents at Home: Extending the Effects of The Speaker Immersion Protocol

Yan, Han

Among studies conducted to examine the effectiveness of parent training, researchers have used measures of both parent and child performance. However, few studies have focused on the generalization of the acquired skills or repertoires from one setting to another. Several studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of the Speaker Immersion Protocol (SIP) in increasing children’s vocal verbal behavior when conducted in school settings, but none have reported training parents to implement the procedure at home. Further, no studies have measured the generalization effects of the SIP across home and school environments.

In 2 experiments, I examined the generalization of child participants’ vocal verbal behavior by training the parents to implement the SIP in a home setting and measuring the children’s vocal verbal operants at school prior to and following the SIP intervention. In the second experiment, I further examined whether the outcomes of the SIP would extend to parent-child interactions during play sessions at home.

In the first study, I found that after parent participants were taught to implement the SIP accurately at home, the child participants emitted increased mands and tacts at school. In the second study, I found that with the SIP being implemented effectively at home, there was an increase in parents’ and children’s verbal behavior in the free-play and structured play sessions. The frequency of the child’s emission of verbal behavior was also positively correlated to the mother’s frequency of verbal behavior. Results are discussed from the perspectives of how implementing an effective practice at home with parents contributes to the generalization of the skills for the children and its relation to parent-child interactions in general.