April 22, 2026 · 2:35 · Target selection · Practice
Negative Practice: When to Set a Target Aside
How to tell a hard-but-good target from one that has become negative practice: keep the word while the child's productions change with your cueing, and set it aside when they don't.
Full transcript
Hi, it's Nicole from the NYU Motor Speech Lab. I just finished a session, and I've been thinking a lot about negative practice. I had a little girl today who was doing this somewhat, and I wanted to talk about it in your sessions and what it means.
In pediatric motor speech therapy, we say we don't want negative practice in our sessions, meaning we don't want the child to say the word or target incorrectly over and over again. We don't want them to lay down a motor plan for an incorrect production. We also don't want them to go into autopilot and not engage in conscious practice.
I think everyone, for the most part, understands that. Where there's a little blurriness is knowing when to take a target out because it's not appropriate and there's too much negative practice in the session, versus when a target is a good target. Because as we know, the targets we pick in motor speech therapy are going to be hard. That's what we do.
So what I want you to remember is that in this therapy, we're using multisensory cueing to get the child closer to the correct production. You want to notice that when you use multisensory cueing, the child's productions are changing. They're attempting the target, listening to your cues and feedback, and changing their production. They might not be changing it to the right production yet. Say the target word is "mom," and their original production is "bah." You say, "Okay, slow it down. Look at me. Look at my lips. Lips together. Mom." And maybe they say "mmm... bah." Well, it's not right, but they started pretty well. We're seeing that they're responsive to your cueing. That's the word that stays.
It's when the child keeps saying "bah, bah, bah," and you say, "Okay, it's 'mom.' Can you slow it down? Can you look at me? Can you move with me? Mom," and they still say "bah, bah, bah." Then you think, you know what? I'm going to take this word and push it over here for now, and I'll come back to it in a little bit. Because I do not want to keep prompting this child to say this target when they cannot use any of my cues to produce it better.
I hope that makes sense.
