Banter Speech & Language

Sydney speech pathologists helping adults and children speak for themselves.

Social Skills

Project-based Pragmatic Language Interventions: The SENSE Theatre

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  • Play is not the only way: Play is one way to combine peer mediation and video-modelling to increase children’s pragmatic language skills.  Another idea is for students with pragmatic language challenges to work with peers on a project.
  • SENSE Theatre Intervention: Developed at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, the therapy uses theatre games, improvisation, character development, singing, and performance with peer actors to improve pragmatic language of children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
  • Real world goal: At the end of the intervention, participants perform a play with their peers about belonging, acceptance, and making friends for the public. 
  • Who? Students with high-functioning ASD are paired with typically-developing peer actors of similar ages.
  • Peer training: Peers and staff are first trained to work with people with ASD. 
  • Intervention: Participants engage in theatrical games, role-plays, singing, and exercises, and then rehearse their roles in the play with their peers.  
  • Home practice: For 15 minutes a day, participants with ASD watch and rehearse lines and exercises using video models made by typically-developing peers.
  • How long? Designed as a summer camp program, the manualised intervention involves 10, four-hour sessions across two weeks. 
  • Key Results: Participants showed improved social awareness, social cognition, adaptive skills, social perception (e.g. facial recognition), and theory of mind. Parents reported improved social communication at home and in the community. Some treatment effects were maintained two months post-intervention.
  • Why does it work? (a) Peer-mediation and modelling (live and video). (b) Peers were both the main teachers and social partners of participants, with frequent, direct interactions. (c) Fun activities, encouraging participants to join in and have opportunities to learn from social experiences. (d) Acting provides opportunities for children to engage in reciprocal social communication.

Key sources:

  • Corbett, B. A., Swain, D. M., Coke, C., Simon, D., Newsom, C., Houchins-Juarez, N., Jenson, A., Wang, L., & Song, Y. (2014). Improvement in social deficits in autism spectrum disorders using a theatre-based, peer-mediated intervention. Autism research: Official Journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 7(1), 4–16. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.1341
  • Corbett, B. A., Key, A. P., Qualls, L., Fecteau, S., Newsom, C., Coke, C., & Yoder, P. (2016). Improvement in Social Competence Using a Randomized Trial of a Theatre Intervention for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(2), 658–672. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2600-9

Related infographics:

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Planning a play date for your child during the school holidays?

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Why arrange a play date? 

Play develops motor skills, construction skills, symbolic pretend play, problem-solving, negotiation, reasoning skills, social language skills, independence, creativity and risk-taking in a safe environment.

More importantly: it’s fun!

Here’s an evidence-based list of toys to get kids talking and playing with each other:

  • Sandbox (buckets, spades, diggers, dinosaurs)
  • Small figurines (e.g. army, animals, pirates)
  • Dress-ups (e.g. superheroes, knights, princesses, emergency/medical workers)
  • Subject to parents’ views, stylised toy guns, foam bullets and swords
  • Board/talking games (e.g. Snakes & Ladders, Monopoly, Cluedo, Battleship, The Game of Life, Checkers/Chess, Ludo, Guess Who, Hedbanz)
  • Card games (e.g. Fish, Snap, Uno, Old Maid, Memory, Werewolf)
  • Blocks (classic wooden, Castle Logix, Lego, Jenga)
  • A train set (train engines, cars, cabooses, freight, bridges, ramps, tracks, landscapes, stations)
  • A large whiteboard and markers (or blackboard and chalk)
  • Playdough and tools (stampers, rolling pins, moulds) 
  • Small tables and chairs, blankets and cushions (imaginary forts, castles, secret bases, ‘cover’)  
  • Sports equipment (balls, hoops, cone markers)

Sources:

(1) Gray, P. (2017). What exactly is play, and why is it such a powerful vehicle for learning?. Topics in Language Disorders, 37(3), 217-228.

(2) Parsons, L., Cordier, R., Munro, N., & Joosten, A. (2019). The feasibility and appropriateness of a peer-to-peer, play-based intervention for improving pragmatic language in children with autism spectrum disorder. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 21(4), 412-424.

Related articles:

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Play-based, peer-mediated pragmatic language intervention for school-aged children

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Too many pragmatic language therapies focus on teaching individual skills with structured practice. But pragmatic language is about using social skills out in the real world.

This week, Cherie Finocchiaro and David Kinnane join forces to review a promising play-based, peer-mediated intervention for children (aged 6-11 years) that focuses on capacity AND performance. 

We can’t wait to give it a go!

  • We want all children to have friends. But too many school-aged children with pragmatic language difficulties – including many children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and/or Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) – don’t have any close friends and are lonely.
  • Lots of pragmatic language interventions for school-aged children are about building kids’ capacity to use different social skills. Examples include computer- and manual-based ‘social skills training’ programs with structured activities like role play and worksheets.
  • But pragmatic language is about performing language tasks in real life social interactions. Many kids learn social principles in the clinic, but have difficulties using them ‘in the moment’, e.g at home, at school, and in sports.
  • Pragmatic language interventions should focus both on practical knowledge and how to use language in real social situations.
  • A new intervention for 6-11 year olds seeks to to do this in child-led, free play interactions between a client with pragmatic language difficulties and a typically developing peer of a similar age (e.g. a sibling, cousin, or friend). 
  • The child is assessed with an instrument called the ‘POM-2’. Goals are then selected from a “menu” of pragmatic language behaviours (outlined earlier in this series).
  • Intervention includes:
    • 10, weekly in-clinic sessions: with self-modelling through video-feedback and -feed-forward, peer- and therapist modelling – all in the context of child-led play and therapist/parent discussions; and
    • home practice: 10 manualised modules with videos, weekly ‘play-dates’ with the peer between clinic sessions, and feedback/discussions with parents.
  • Randomised controlled trials show the treatment is effective in improving the pragmatic language performance of both children with pragmatic language difficulties (including children with ASD or ADHD) and their typically developing peers. Gains are maintained in the clinic/home for at least a short time afterwards. (We don’t know yet whether gains transfer to school or play with other friends.)

Principal sources:

(1) Parsons, L., Cordier, R., Munro, N. and Joosten, A. (2019). A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Play-Based, Peer-Mediated Pragmatic Language Intervention for Children With Autism. Front. Psychol. 10:1960. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01960;

(2) Wilkes-Gillan, S., Bundy, A., Cordier, R., Lincoln, M. and Chen, Y-W. (2016). A Randomised Controlled Trial of a Play-Based Intervention to Improve the Social Play Skills of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). PLoS ONE 11(8): e0160558. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0160558; and  

(3) Parsons, L., Cordier, R., Munro, N. and Joosten, A. Peer’s pragmatic language outcomes following a peer-mediated intervention for children with autism: A randomised controlled trial, Research in Developmental Disabilities. 99 (2020) 103591 (forthcoming).

Related infographics:

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

5 tips for using video self-modelling to improve pragmatic language skills

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After distilling some key themes of effective pragmatic language interventions last week, we now shift to looking at specific therapy options and techniques.

This week, our speech pathologist, Vivien Wong, looks at the evidence for video self-modelling.  

Related infographics:

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

Key behaviours to look for in the pragmatic (social) language development of children aged 0-5 years

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Last week, thanks to Cherie, we looked at some key pragmatic language behaviours of 5-11 year olds.

This week, in our third evidence-based infographic, our Speech Pathologist Emma Robinson takes us further back to look at key social language milestones for 0-5 year olds. 

Related infographics:

Hi there, I’m David Kinnane.

Principal Speech Pathologist, Banter Speech & Language

Our talented team of certified practising speech pathologists provide unhurried, personalised and evidence-based speech pathology care to children and adults in the Inner West of Sydney and beyond, both in our clinic and via telehealth.

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