Working on Speech or Language? Provide Opportunities for Errorless Learning

Last Friday, I attended Nancy Kaufman’s seminar on “Children Who Struggle to Speak”. First, I want to say how awesome and informative this seminar was! If you’re a parent of a child with Apraxia of Speech, or a professional working with children who struggles to speak, I highly recommend attending one of Nancy’s conferences. Second, I want to comment on how entertaining Nancy was during her presentation. A 7.5 hour conference may sound daunting, but I assure you that Nancy knows how to keep an audience engaged! The point of this blog post is to mention that during Nancy’s conference, she frequently touched on the very important theme Errorless Learning.

Errorless learning was first introduced by psychologist B.F. Skinner. I think some speech-language pathologists and educators use this principle instinctively. If you don’t know what I mean by errorless learning, it refers to giving the child the answer, or information needed to be successful, before asking him a question. For example, I might say, “Look at that little boy in the helping his mom dry dishes in the kitchen. Where do you think the boy is?” Before posing the question, I have already set the child up for success by providing him with a correct answer. The child would then (hopefully!) answer kitchen, in his house, by the sink, etc. This method is especially advantageous for those who struggle to independently generate answers, don’t take communication risks without support, and/or have low receptive and expressive language skills. As a clinician or educator, you’ll soon figure out when the child is ready for decreased support. For now, start those kiddos off with errorless learning.

As always, thanks for reading my blog!

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