Alert
Alert
Alert

Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching

Author-Avatar Emily Dayle Quinn

3/19/2016 3:18 PM

Are there any evidenced based practices suitable for individuals with emerging intentional communication skills? YES… one promising intervention is Responsivity Education and Prelingustic Milieu Teaching (RPMT).

PMT Contains two components:

 Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (PMT)
 Reponsivity Education (RE)

Implemented through:

 Arranging the environment
 Following the child’s lead
 Building social routines in which parent and child have predictable roles (e.g. peekaboo, pat-a-cake)
 Can happen during normal daily routines

Ideal participants:
 Have an expressive vocabulary of < 10 words

Intervention Goals
1. Establishing Routines
2. Increase frequency of nonverbal communication
3. Increase the frequency and spontaneity of coordinated eye gaze
4. Increase the Frequency Spontaneity & Range of Gestures
5. Combine components of intentional communication acts
6. Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (PMT) Procedures:

1. Several one-to-one sessions with SLP or teacher per week
2. Can range for a few weeks to more than 6 months
3. Specific techniques

1. Imitate motor/vocal acts
2. Model sounds within child’s repertoire
3. Provide desired object contingent on looking
4. Pretend not to understand gestures to evoke more communication
5. Prompting communication by saying “Show me!” “What do you want?”


For more information :
Warren et al. (1993)
Yoder & Stone (2006)
Fey et al. (2006)
Warren et al. (2008)
Yoder et al. (2014)

This post is part of the collection

The Communication Matrix is a service of Design to Learn at Oregon Health & Science University
© 2025 Charity Rowland, Ph.D.

Site by State33 and Smith & Connors