Quick Tip: Targeting Prosody in DTTC

Full transcript

Hi, it's Nicole coming in from the NYU Motor Speech Lab, and we're posting this week about varying prosody in your DTTC sessions, and sort of how you could get the child on board with that, because it could be a little bit awkward.

What I like to do is I like to set up sort of a social situation where I know that feeling would be evoked. So for instance, if the target word is, let's say, "cookie," and I want the child to say it mad, I might say, "How would you feel if your little brother ate your cookie?" "Cookie!" Right? Or, "How would you feel if Mom said you couldn't have a cookie because it was before dinner?" "Cookie." Right? You might feel sad. Or, "How would you say 'cookie' in a question?" Like maybe you were asking your aunt if you could have a cookie, right? "Cookie?"

So I know it's a little thing, but it could really go a long way in making this relatable and varying prosody with your target words. And also, I find that they kind of get into it, and they like doing it more.

And sometimes I'll give them, you know, the choice: "Okay, so how do you want to say it now?" This is after we've been practicing for a while. And I give them a little bit of autonomy over picking how they want to say it.

And this helps when you're at that level of varying prosody, which we know is just about every level of the hierarchy in DTTC, with the exception of spontaneous.