Verbal Feedback

During treatment (not evaluation), verbal feedback of some kind needs to come after each response elicited.

This verbal feedback can be "that's right" vs. "that's wrong" or "that's not right" followed by a cue of some sort. Most semantic cues can be drawn from semantic feature analysis with questions such as:

"where is this found?"
"what do you do with this?"
"what does this item do?"
"to which group does this item belong"
"what does this look like, feel like, taste like, smell like...etc?"

If the question does not elicit a correct response, then providing the information in statement form, such as "you use this to open cans" may assist the person. If not, the first letter of the target word sometimes triggers word retrieval. Finally, the phonemic cue may be given. Often it helps to remind the person to attend to your face with "watch me, listen to me, do what I do."

The verbal feedback that you gave today re: sustaining attention via eye contact, etc. was very appropriate.

Keep up the good work.