Facilitating Peer Interaction: Socially Relevant Objectives for Preschool Language Intervention

Research over the past decade has provided the rationale to target the peer-related social-communicative competence of children with specific language impairment (SLI). Yet our clinical experiences suggest that verbal interaction skills with peers rarely are emphasized in speech/language intervention with these children. We argue that it is particularly important for speech-language pathologists to target socially relevant language objectives with children with SLI because these children eventually must live up to standard societal expectations in social, educational, and vocational settings. In this paper, we identify several barriers that may prevent speech-language pathologists from addressing socially relevant language intervention objectives. Several case examples are provided to illustrate ways in which practitioners can address these types of objectives.