Teaching a complex verbal response to a hearing-impaired girl.

The team worked with a toddler who was deaf. She had no spoken words.

They wanted her to say full present-progressive sentences like "The girl is running."

First they taught her to copy the sentence. Then they slowly removed the help.

The girl learned the sentences fast. She used them with new pictures she had never seen.

When praise stopped, the sentences stopped. When praise came back, the sentences came back.

Garcia et al. (1973) copied the same plan one year later. They switched from present-progressive to singular-plural and got the same strong gains.

Neves et al. (2023) moved the idea to kids with cochlear implants. They added errorless exclusion trials and still saw good sentence growth.

Sanders et al. (1989) tried verbal-only fading for sound blending. They dropped pictures and got better generalization. The 1972 study kept pictures for grammar, so the picture piece is still open to test.

If you have a learner who is deaf or hard-of-hearing, start with imitation plus prompt fading. You can shape full sentences in minutes a day. Track generalization to untrained photos to be sure the skill sticks. When praise drifts, expect the sentences to dip—just bring the praise back and the words return.