Elicited imitation in language assessment: A tool for formulating and evaluating treatment programs

Four different clinical populations were administered an elicited imitation task before and after therapy to determine the usefulness of elicited imitation procedures for formulating and evaluating language treatment programs. Children's imitations were analyzed according to the numbers and patterns of omission errors, substitution errors, and correct responses. Results indicated that (1) patterns of responding could be identified; (2) specific patterns were associated with different clinical populations; (3) performance on pretherapy measures could be efficiently analyzed and utilized for formulating language treatment programs; and (4) changes in posttherapy performance could be readily evaluated using this procedure. The data suggest that the elicited imitation procedures can be effectively used to increase the precision of the evaluation and clinical programming of children with language disorders.