Teaching Low-Income Spanish-Speaking Caregivers to Implement EMT en Español With Their Young Children With Language Impairment: A Pilot Study

Purpose: This study examined the effectiveness of teaching low-income Spanish-speaking caregivers of young children with language impairment a naturalistic language intervention, EMT en Español. Method: A single-case, multiple-baseline, across-behaviors design replicated across 3 caregiver-child dyads was used to examine the effects of teaching core EMT en Español strategies. The training program utilized the Teach-Model-Coach-Review instructional approach to teach strategies to support children's language development in Spanish. All sessions were at home and in Spanish. Results: Caregivers increased their use of matched turns, target talk, expansions, and a communication elicitation procedure following training on each specific skill. Additionally, caregivers generalized increased use of matched turns and target talk to an untrained activity during the intervention period and maintained their behavior 1 month after completing intervention. Two of 3 caregivers generalized their use of expansions, and 1 caregiver generalized her use of a communication elicitation procedure. Modest effects on the child's number of different words were observed for 2 of the 3 target children over the course of the intervention sessions. All 3 children demonstrated increases in total spontaneous words. Conclusion: Spanish-speaking caregivers were able to implement naturalistic language teaching strategies with their young children with language impairment in a relatively short-term intervention.