EXAMINING THE GENERALIZATION OF MILIEU LANGUAGE OBJECTIVES IN SITUATIONS REQUIRING LISTENER PREPARATORY BEHAVIORS

Children were taught target communication objectives using milieu lang uage teaching. The construction of generalization probes and the categ orization of spontaneous occurrences of the target objectives were gui ded by a 4 x 6 matrix with setting/communication partner (SCP) variabl es on one dimension and situations requiring gradually decreasing dema nds for listener preparatory behaviors (LPBs) on the other. Both dimen sions also represented continua that progressed from situations that w ere most like those of intervention to situations that were less simil ar. The 2 children who acquired their objectives using milieu language teaching were observed to generalize their target objectives spontane ously and in probe situations that also required them to display liste ner preparatory behaviors. However, analyses of the generalization mat rices revealed that their patterns of generalization differed in a var iety of ways and that similarity to training offered only a partial ex planation of the results.