December 12, 2023 · 1:48 · Practice · Making the shift
Key Elements of Practice, Part 5: Positive, Not Negative, Practice
Stop an incorrect attempt right away and cue the correct movement, like a GPS course-correcting, so the child never practices a motor plan for the wrong target.
Full transcript
Hi, it's Nicole coming in from the NYU Motor Speech Lab with part five of our key elements of practice, helping you make the shift to motor speech therapy with your pediatric kiddos.
We talked about structured practice, conscious practice, and using multimodal cueing. We also talked about varying prosody from the start. And the last point we want to make is always engaging the child in positive, not negative, practice.
What does this mean? As soon as the child starts to say the target word incorrectly, you stop them. You give them the cueing and the feedback they need to get the correct articulatory configuration for the target.
For instance, say the target word is "open." Your child starts to say it incorrectly. "Nope." You stop them right away and say, "No, look at my lips. We have to start with our mouth open, like that." Or the target word is "banana," and they start to say it with an "m." You stop them and say, "Nope. That first sound is 'ba.' It's not 'mmm,' it's 'ba.' Banana."
We do not want to let them practice incorrect targets, because we don't want a motor plan for an incorrect target. I like to think about it like GPS: as soon as you make a wrong turn, the GPS course-corrects and you're back on the right track. That's what we're doing in therapy. It's our job, with cueing and feedback, to get the kids back on the right track with their articulatory configuration so that they know and feel how to produce the target correctly.
I hope that's helpful.
